"All we have in life is life. Things-the cars, the houses, the education, the jobs, the money-come and go, turn into dust between our fingers, change and disappear….the secret of life….is that it must be developed from the inside out." ~Joan Chittister, Illuminated Life

 I don't know about you but when I see the words ' the secret of life' I always perk up. Finally, someone's going to tell me the answer! Of course, we all know, in part, the answer to the question 'What is the secret of life?' But we mostly want to find a short cut, a Cliff-notes version that is easier, takes less time, can be completed with fewer headaches and heartaches. Mostly we want to stay on the surface and glide along with few bumps and bruises.

But if we are really honest with ourselves we know that anything that really matters takes time,effort, commitment, sweat and a few well shed tears. And since life really matters,the secret to its living should be no exception. Do you agree? Instead of living our lives like little water bugs flitting across the surface of the water, we must go inside, deep inside, to develop the gifts of this living.

The season of Lent is an invitation to going inside, to taking the time to search within to find what has been hiding there. Lent asks us to stop what we have been doing and take a look in the mirror, perhaps take off the masks we've worn for too long and see ourselves in new ways. These forty days give us the permission to stop clinging to those things outside us that seem to give us definition(do they really?) and remember the soil in which we have been planted. Lent is not so much a time of self denial as it is self assessment. What temptations are luring me? What roads am I willing to walk down? How might I be more authentically both my human and divine self? 

Lent is where the rubber meets the road. If we allow ourselves to be swept up in the gifts of this season, in this time of the year, we can come through these forty days a fuller picture of who we were born to be. And wouldn't that be a good thing? I think so. I believe the Holy One would agree. My mother has a saying: 'No one ever said life would be easy. But it will always be worth it.' She also says: 'A hundred years from now, you'll never know the difference.' But that is a thought for another day.

For this day, this first full day of Lent, I plan to allow myself to look inside. I pray I find some beautiful secrets there waiting to be discovered, secrets that will lead me to a fuller picture of my life.