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I’m reading Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship along with our Lenten Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount. I’m not sure when I last spent any time with this Christian classic (25 years, 35 years?). Coming back to it after all those years, it’s striking both in the way it reflects its historical context and the ways in which it transcends its time and still speaks to us decades later.

Contrary to what you might have been told, Lent does not mean “40 days of beating yourself up.” It does not even mean “40 days of God beating you up and reminding you of what kind of a person you really are.” Lent means spring.

I vividly remember my day in Wittenburg, Germany. My husband and I had taken the train from Berlin in order to see the sights connected with the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Sure, most people who travel to Wittenburg are there to learn about Martin Luther, to stand at the church door where he nailed his 95 Theses, which rather than leading to profitable theological conversation, eventually resulted in his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently going into hiding. But I had made this pilgrimage to learn more about Katharina von Bora.

I did one good thing that day. Only one.  I did some things inadequately and halfheartedly. I mechanically responded to email, returned phone calls, chipped away at the mountain of paper on my desk. I was often bored and listless, and struggled to corral my wandering mind. I yawned a lot, and looked out the window.

“We don’t take sin seriously enough.” “We have lost the concept of sin.” Sooner or later someone always says something along those lines when talking about grace, don’t they? I mean, sometimes it’s me. In a certain sense we can’t talk about grace without talking about sin.

I am in a phase of radical decluttering. The phrase “spring cleaning” comes to mind, but it’s a bit too Disneyish and doe-eyed to describe the full-scale assault currently underway against old toys, outgrown clothes, and random piles of crap inside my house. Until this is finished, I can’t relax.

I became aware of my trust in God when I was 13, during an overnight with the daughter of our church’s minister. We weren’t in the same school, but that year her dad taught our confirmation class and we became friends. We had turned the lights out—her mother had asked us to—but, as usual, we continued talking. Eventually, the conversation took a turn when one of us asked, “What if God didn’t exist?”

Yesterday I offered “ashes to go” at the White Plains train station. It’s apparently controversial, but I’m letting others do the heavy theological lifting. I wanted to experience it before I reflected. It was cold. Below freezing. We still haven’t gotten out of the polar vortex, which I think has decided that it’s very comfortable in its new digs and it will never leave. Besides, spring has gone fishing. Ice fishing.

With the imposition of ashes imminent—this stark ritual signalling the onset of a season starker still in its confrontations with mortality and its fleshly (and fleshy) deprivations—I am reading about food. Glorious food.

This is why we came—not to be reminded of our finitude. God knows we feel it in our bones, and some of us in our backs and legs and arthritic hands. We come kneeling and hoping that something or someone will whisper forgiveness so that we might start again. Believing or at least hoping that these 40 days that lead to the cross might just touch something deep in our hearts.  The priest comes and dabs his finger into the ashes.

There are moments when I can see the walls melting away, short seasons of shalom when I catch glimpses of blessed unity. Then, even in places where unity should be most possible, the walls go up again, the circles draw in tighter. The depth of our dividedness baffles me. How can I love my enemy when that enemy deflects every overture of interest, denies any possible middle ground, demands agreement on an endless list of positions (political, theological, economic) before discussion can begin?

The “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda has become law. I had the chance to see God Loves Uganda, a documentary that gives part of the background of the bill, including the involvement of American evangelicals in advocating for its passage. But there’s a larger story that would provide important context—the history of colonialism in East Africa and of Anglicanism in Uganda.

After a childhood spent envying the boys on the football team, I joined my college’s rugby team. My first night I learned how to throw a tackle. More importantly, I learned how to be tackled. The idea was this: you’re going to fall. You’d might as well learn how to fall safely, so that you can stand back up.

Jimmy Fallon is succeeding a giant of late-night television, and he’s entering a crowded field. At 39 years old, he’s taking a leap onto a larger stage and needs to prove himself in some ways. As I watched, I was struck by the smart stuff that was going on under the surface, whether calculated or not, and I started to relate Jimmy’s debut to other situations leaders find themselves in.