Manhattan is a strange beast for so many reasons. Nowhere else have I lived where people are so generally irreligious and yet swarm the church on Ash Wednesday. At Trinity we mark the foreheads of about 15,000 people in 12 hours. Given how hard we collectively seem to be avoiding the reality of our mortality, it’s amazing that so many come.

It’s an extraordinary opportunity to stand in one spot for an hour shift and say over and over to every stripe of human being “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s hard not to ‘get it’ after you’ve said it a few hundred times.

What struck me most this year was the standard response of about 80 percent of the people; it wasn’t “Amen,” it was “Thank you.”

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

"Thank you.”

What were they thanking me for? For the favor of being a dispensary? Something more. The “thank you” felt real, and meant, not perfunctory. Through the hour of my shift I started paying more and more attention; being more intentional with my eye contact, making sure I at least offered a split-second connection with the person, which seemed to deepen their response as well.

I remember the first time I got ashes as an evangelical college kid who had no previous exposure to the language of sacrament. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Scrape, scrape. Like a moment of conversion, I felt this huge weight slide off my back. Mortality felt like liberation and invitation at the same time: there was no point in perfection, because seasons pass quickly, and I would be dust soon. Life was Now. I’m sure I didn’t say Thank You, but I meant it.

15,000 people came to Trinity to get marked with ashes for a reason, even if they do not know entirely what it is. I don’t know their reasons either, but I know their instinct: when people can touch and be touched, when they can use their bodies to speak a soul language, something is transacted at the very center of life that transcends creed. That split-second eye contact, my ashy thumb on their soon-to-be-dust forehead, “Thank you.” In the midst of a sign of death we were sharing Communion, which is at the heart of life.