"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

This stark declaration is made to us personally at the Ash Wednesday service. It's a confrontation which shakes our assumption that we can live our lives on our own terms and puts us face to face with our mortality. Such a blunt message might be off-putting. But the sheer honesty of this bare truth at the start of a season of penitence and reflection dares us not to look away but to turn around, to believe and to change.

A service of Holy Communion, with the imposition of ashes. Presiding: Rev James Hughesdon