This is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about following the path of death and resurrection, about participating in Jesus's final journey.  To become somewhat more concrete, some of us may need to die to specific things in our lives -- perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief  or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness).  It is possible to leave the land of the dead.  So, the journey of Lent is about being born again -- about dying and rising, about mortality and transformation.

On Ash Wednesday, we Christians are traditionally reminded of our own mortality in a very vivid way, as the ashes are marked on our for heads in the sign of the cross.  In the sign of the cross we hear the words spoken over us, "Dust thou art and to dust thou wilt return".  This is a reminder, not just of our physical mortality, but also of the very path of Lent itself.

We begin this season of Lent not only reminded of our death but also marked for death, and that path of death is about our transformation.

The journey of Lent is about being born again by participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus, about that journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.  The journey of Lent with its climax in Good Friday and Easter is about embarking on the way of Jesus on that path of mortality and transformation that is at the very center of the Christian life.  When you think of it, which of us does not yearn for this?  Who of us does not yearn for a fuller connection to life?  Who does not yearn for an identity that releases us from anxiety and self-preoccupation?  To be born again, it seems to me, corresponds to our deepest yearning.  May we, this Lent, experience that internal transformation that is at the center of the Christin life.  May we experience being born again?

Let us fast for forty days.