Repent and believe in the Gospel!

Repent means "Turn around."

In some manner, or shape, or form, Lent is turn around time.

It is not "business as usual time."

It is not really "turn down time," just a matter of giving up something, although that might be a beginning impulse toward turning around.

We are creatures of habit and we can get stuck, in the same old thing.

I recently received a hand written note. Remember those?

It came from a lady in my parish over thirty years ago!

She wanted to thank me for some patience I had shown her 30 years ago.

How wonderful!

Have you written any notes lately?

Why not?

This laudatory note was an unexpected "turn around" moment which brought me back in time.

On the other hand, one time I received a note on Facebook from a person who I had in the sixties in grade school, admonishing me about an unkindness she hd received from me in grade school in the 60's.

That too was a moment of turn around time for me to look at my shadow side and ask, "Who was I then?"

"Who am I now?"

On Ash Wednesday, we received the "Holy Dirt."

What shall we plant in it, so we can turn around at Easter and see new flowers blooming behind us?