One of the poll workers is a Roman Catholic so I had someone to field the tons of questions I have about the religion. As is often done in our rural areas, their priest conducts services in multiple churches over one weekend and lay people in the church have stepped up to help out in some of the rituals. In her church they had realized there weren't enough ashes for today's Ash Wednesday service and had spent Monday making more. I already knew those ashes come from the palm fronds saved from last year's Palm Sunday service but I wondered if they could use ashes from other things like dried grass or the paper towels used to clean blessed oil containers (which I hadn't realized couldn't just be tossed). She good naturedly answered and explained in the Age of Covid the priest would be sprinkling the ashes on their heads instead of making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. We all lapsed into an esoteric discussion on if people in Purgatory would receive a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' on the second-coming of Christ when someone came into the town hall to vote and we had to get back to the business on hand.
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