Church Offers 'To Go' Ashes For Ash Wednesday

AUSTIN, TX -- With our hurried lives, the convenience of “drive thru” options to pick up our stuff on the way to or from work is something of a godsend. But “to go” ashes on Ash Wednesday?!?!

To some, the very idea could border on sacrilegious.

Yet that’s what St. David’s Episcopal Church in downtown offered on Feb. 10, as it has for the past several years. The makeshift drive thru was set up at Sixth and Congress streets -- in the heart of a popular bar-lined corridor associated with debauchery and decadence, no less.

A second location was set up at Republic Square, at Fourth and Guadalupe, where dozens of bus lines converge intermittently throughout the day and night.

But those availing themselves of the “ashes to go” didn’t seem to mind this new twist on an old classic.

“We come out to the street because not everyone has the opportunity to go into the church on Ash Wednesday,” St. David’s parishioner Bob Davis told KVUE-TV.

The ashes-to-go option also yields an opportunity to meet other parishioners in a more relaxed setting, Davis said: “So this is a chance fo us to meet people where they are.”

Mimi Doe told the television station that the ash stop reminded her that it was, in fact, Ash Wednesday which had slipped her mind.

“I totally forgot it was Ash Wednesday, saw the great sign, ashes to to, what a great concept,” she said.

But she added that only in Austin -- with its mantra to “Keep Austin Weird” -- would such an option be made available.

“You’ve got to love Austin,” she said. “Yesterday, on the same street, there was a completely naked man walking down the street. And today...ashes to go.”

Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent in Christianity. The name derives from the burned palm branches blessed at the previous year’s Palm Sunday. Ashes are placed on the foreheads of the faithful as a reminder that they are dust, and to dust they shall return.

No word if the church plans to offer drive-by baptisms or confirmations anytime soon.