With many of you, I suspect, I enjoy being a traveler. Representationally through books, movies, or dreams or literally on the wings of Southwest or Delta, traveling exposes us to new cultures, climates, and characters. Journeys wake up the curious inner wanderer to challenge one’s complacency, moving one from the routine rituals of daily life to something new and unexpected. As a contradiction, while exciting and stimulating, all of us who venture forth to explore unknown places know that traveling can be simply exhausting, making the return home usually favorably embraced.

Welcomed or not, the persistent and insistent pandemic has jettisoned all of us to new, unexplored, and foreign places. Like it or not, our familial routines are being done differently, and our year continues to demand the limberness of a nimble athlete. Willing or not, we can feel as “strangers in a strange land,” (like the main character in a sci-fi classic of the same title) while traversing the new terrains of relationship, educational practice, and school community. This year, we do not have to travel to distant lands on our Lenten journey for it to find us. It is finding us right where we are. Like the Prodigal Father, it is waiting for our return.

To each one of the readers of the Blog, I hope that your Lenten journey is an experience of finding Jesus right where you are; and finding His vast Open Heart in your silence or suffering, discomfort or disappointments, victories or trials. Together, let us lighten our load on the Lenten journey, face forward with hope for a new day, and find the “ground of our being” (Paul Tillich) in the infinite mystery of Christ’s redemptive unconditional presence at the heart of everything. That is the promise of Lent: peace, joy, and gratitude. These gifts wait for all travelers on the Lenten journey. See you on the pat