(RNS) — This year really puts the “’til death do us part” in the holiday of love.

When Ash Wednesday—the first day of the Christian season of penance—falls on Valentine’s Day (or is it the other way around?), it’s a curious marriage of holidays most sorrowful and saccharine. As priests draw a cross in ash on foreheads with the words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” the observant are faced with the ephemerality of life—and love.

As if Valentine devotees needed any reminding: Those roses will be dead in a week. The balloons? Deflated before then. And chocolate is but a moment on the lips before it turns to, well, you know.

Fun fact: The next time the two holidays will meet is 2029, but it’s not as common as that might lead you to believe. It won’t happen again this century. So, take advantage while you can to ponder the lessons of both. A few suggestions to help you give each holiday its due:

1. Send a card that does double duty.

The Indiana United Methodist Conference shared a candy heart on its Facebook page reminding followers not only that “U R dust,” but that you can’t spell “Valentine” without “Lent.” On Etsy, cardsmiths are sharing sweet nothings such as “There’s no fasting from your love” and “On Valentine’s Day, three little words mean so much to hear… LENT IS COMING.”

2. Fast from fighting.

Forget giving up sweets or alcohol for Lent: Instead, forswear one of the many things you do that really annoy your partner.

3. Embrace “Valoween.”

Technically, Valoween is a mashup of Valentine’s Day and Halloween celebrated by spooky season enthusiasts, but Ash Valensday shares the same “memento mori” vibes: Think sweet skulls in a heart-shaped box, shimmery ash-black candles sprinkled with flower petals and sentiments like “I love you to death.” Even Target got into the Valoween spirit this year, sharing love letters to its popular Halloween animatronic, Lewis, on Instagram.

4. Stroll hand in hand through a cemetery.

If Ash Wednesday is all about facing our mortality, go ahead and take your soulmate to the cemetery. Look for double headstones and imagine together their love stories.

5. Planning a candlelight dinner? Make it vegetarian.

Giving up meat for Lent is a long-standing tradition—whether it’s for one meal a day, one day a week, or every day but Sunday. It’s a way to live in solidarity with the poor and is better for the environment. If you’re not already a vegetarian, challenge yourself with a meatless recipe for your special date.

6. Remember that you are loved.

The last time the two days coincided, in 2018, the Rev. Peter Antoci, pastor of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, leaned into the discomfort. Instead of reminding parishioners they were dust when he marked their foreheads with ash, he told Religion News Service at the time, he said instead, “Remember that you are beloved, and to love you shall return.”

(RNS) — Michele Clark Jenkins and Stephanie Perry Moore have known each other for almost three decades and have worked together on two specialty editions of the Bible. But more than friends and colleagues, they say, they hold each other spiritually accountable.

After the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in 2020 by a white Minneapolis police officer, the duo say they felt compelled to do something new that combined their faith and their desire to advance racial and social justice.

The result is The Breathe Life Bible, the title echoing Floyd’s repeated insistence “I can’t breathe” as he was restrained with the officer’s knee on his neck.

The tome, set for release Tuesday (Feb. 13), introduces each biblical book with a “Breathe It In” segment and features “#Oxygen” tidbits that point to what they consider promises in the scriptural verses. The Bible includes devotions written by Christian leaders, including the Rev. Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the Atlanta peacemaking center named for him; NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson; and Thelma T. Daley, president of the National Council of Negro Women.

Each of these contributors expands on different imperatives summed up in the acronym BREATHE: believe, reconcile, exalt, act, trust, hope, elevate.

“You can be a part of groups that are doing things for change,” said Moore, 54, in a joint interview with Clark Jenkins. “You can also have an inward and a personal relationship with God for him to guide you on your own heart and mind on what you should do.”

Clark Jenkins, 69, wrote 49 “We Speak” segments that give brief first-person introductions to Bible characters and short interpretations of their role.

“It has been taught that the curse of Ham is on Black people and that’s why we were enslaved,” she said in the interview. “And that’s why we are on the lower rung of society and why we’ve been oppressed all these years. And that’s just incorrect. And so we wanted to make sure that when I’m talking about who people are, that we dispel rumors.”

They talked to Religion News Service about their reaction to Floyd’s killing and their hopes for their new Bible.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to co-edit The Breathe Life Bible and why now?

Clark Jenkins: The summer that George Floyd was assassinated was a very contemplative time, and so Stephanie and I started talking, and really the question before us was: There’s so much happening, there’s injustice, we’re feeling oppressed. What are we supposed to do as Christians? Are we supposed to go into our prayer closets and not come out? Throw Molotov cocktails through Macy’s window? That’s what caused us to want to do this project, to talk about how we as faithful people are supposed to respond, no matter what’s thrown at us.

Stephanie, you wrote in the acknowledgments that this Bible is “a road map of how we can allow the Father to lift the weight of this world off the oppressed.” How do you think a Bible might do that?

Moore: When you think about faith in action, there’s no other way to walk with the Lord than to have the Bible, every piece of it — your favorite scripture, what your pastor might say from the pulpit in taking a passage from the Word. It’s a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Authorities have identified the Lakewood Church shooter as 36-year-old Genesse Ivonnee Moreno.

Moreno, who according to investigators has used both male and female names in the past, entered Joel Osteen’s 16,800-seat megachurch building with an AR-style long rifle and opened fire in a hallway of the church around 2 p.m. as Lakewood Church was beginning its Spanish-language services.

While investigators have not yet established a motive for the shooting, they have concluded that Moreno identified as a female.

In addition to carrying the assault weapon, Moreno was wearing a trench coat and a backpack.

RELATED:Woman Opens Fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, Shot Dead by Church Security

After Moreno opened fire, two off-duty officers who were working security at Lakewood Church fatally shot Moreno before she killed anyone. Two others were injured during the shooting. One was a 57-year-old man, who was shot in the hip, and the other was Moreno’s 7-year-old old son, who was shot in the head.

Moreno’s son remains in critical condition at a local children’s hospital. The man who was shot in the hip was treated and released. It is unknown whether the two injuries were a result of the officers’ gunfire or Moreno’s.

Before the shooter died, she told the off-duty officers that she had a bomb. However, upon further investigation, her threat was found to be untrue.

According to the authorities, investigators found that Moreno had a history of mental illness. In 2016, she was placed under an emergency detention order by police.

Investigators are currently looking into whether a dispute involving Moreno and her ex-husband’s family was the cause of the shooting. Investigators reported that Moreno’s ex-mother-in-law said that she reached out to pastoral staff at Lakewood Church in 2022 during Moreno’s divorce and custody battle.

Investigators have not called the shooting a hate crime but did discover antisemitic writings by Moreno and reported that Moreno had a “Palestine” sticker on the buttstock of her weapon.