Lent

Another Lent had begun, but i'm more different than ever. This is a time of questions. There are so many things I've taken for granted.

This is the second year in a row I went to Ash Wednesday Mass at my parish, Saint James Episcopal, and not Sacred Heart. I stood at the lectern reading the first lesson from the book of the prophet Joel, "Rend your hearts and not your garments..." We kneel as the ashes are crossed on our foreheads. We kneel to receive the chalice. The chalice, the dish of bread, the dishes of ashes: these are all the same, but I am not. We are not. And so they don't mean the same things.

Lent strikes at the heart of the faith I have practiced all my life. But it feels like many lives and many faiths and this year I want to know what it means now. What does it mean to repent? What does it mean to sin? What is mercy? What is dying? What is rising? I don't think God will give only one answer, if he should give any answer at all. God gives questions. Questions are his friends.