I have been so grateful to be in Arizona this month.  

Especially because the desert – a place of preparation & purification – has been very fitting as we’ve entered the Lenten Season. 

Traditionally, the desert has been a place of preparation & purification for Abraham, Moses, Jesus and so many others in our Sacred Tradition.

Why? Because what is in the desert?

“Not a whole lot!”

(Said a kind priest to me recently.)

However, that is exactly why it is a great place – without distraction – to meet with God.

What does one truly need when one is in the desert?

WATER!!

And long before we became accustomed to packing plentiful bottled water in our hiking sack, one could only hope to find water while in the desert

in a well.

SO…..

What does the well represent for us in our spiritual life?

God!

Our relationship with God!

As God IS the source of life.

This month I have been “finding the well” while I have been in Arizona and discovering I can always go deeper.

And I am hoping to do so, even more, in these remaining days of lent.

I have 3 wonderful friends who are inspirational “Christ-Seekers” with me. We often share our spiritual highs & lows with one another. I always appreciate the opportunity this accountability provides for me.  I recently shared with them that for me; at the start of Lent this past Wednesday, I felt like a bicycle standing upright propped up by its bike stand – ready to head off on a journey but delayed.

However; just three days later, at the Saturday evening Mass celebrated at Our Lady of the Angels in Scottsdale, AZ, the Priest spoke something in his homily which provided the inertia necessary to kick the bike stand back and peddle forward!

“God does not want us to change….God wants us to become.” 

So I have adopted this as my Lenten focus.  

To become.  

To become more of what He desires me to be.  

*If you have been reading any of my recent blog-posts you will have heard how He has already been laying seeds in my Soul for this very thing!

I have identified some of the things which hold me back from becoming the full version of His design, shared these with my Christ-Seeking friends and shall work on those during Lent.

And I will use my lenten practices to hopefully put this into an active commitment.

You know, not just “saying it” but actively “doing it!”

Giggles.

God started this project out with each of us when we were born – when we were born perfectly and pure with the resources to complete that project. But as life goes along, we add complications and the complications get in the way and we get off the path of our completeness.

We need to remember that we are born pure & holy.

Nobody was born bad. Not even Adolf Hitler. He was born pure & holy just like us. Even Lucifer was the Angel of light. At some point it becomes a choice. They learned how to be bad. It was reinforced. And eventually embraced. That’s how good becomes bad. No one is born that way.

We are born pure & holy and if we believe God is the truest, purest, most generative, and beautiful form of love

– THAT –

is already within us!

Because we are children of God, it’s there already!

It just needs to come forth more.

Sadly, if we are not experiencing that true and pure and generative, holy form of love, it becomes complicated.

Because we complicate it.

We learn to simply survive in this world & that’s how we complicate God’s project in us.

Lent, however, is the opportunity to find and to let that pure, holy, and true God-Self come forth & be revealed by removing what is getting in the way.

Do you know what is the biggest block in that process?

What gets in the way most from becoming the best versions of ourselves?

We do!

We get in the way!

Through the choices we make.

Each year we come to lent to learn how to be in the world but not of the world.

To get rid of the “stuff” that keeps getting in the way from our becoming that pure and true and holy person that has a mission to complete in this life.

Will you meet me there, at the well?

Will you dig deeper into your own relationship with God these next 40 days?

Please know I will be praying that you do!

Step out of (your own) way!

hugs n’ blessings will be waiting for all who do!