During this Lenten season...

During Lent, the forty-day season preceding Easter, the theme of each day is soul-searching and submission--for reflection and repentence. It is a time for abstinence and prayer.

I was reminded that we are now in the Lenten season today when I heard on the radio news that Vatican officials have admitted Pope John Paul II to the hospital for a relapse of the flu.

For Pope John Paul II, that he may have a speedy and complete recovery to health, we pray.

• Lord Hear Our Prayer

For all the sick and injured around the world, that they may have a speedy recovery to good health, we pray.

• Lord Hear Our Prayer

For the sinners in us all, that we may find salvation through penance and abstinence in this time of Lent, we pray.

• Lord Hear Our Prayer

Today is what many people would call a "cool and crisp, yet beautifully sunny winter day." I understand what it means. I agree that is how most people would report the day's condition, and I know that is what the day is; yet, I somehow don't feel it inside me. I don't believe it.

So what do I feel about this so-called beautiful day?

Nothing. Numbness. Emptiness. Bleak, even. Day 55 of the Julian calendar.

Lord, Hear My Prayer.

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Last night, I reconnected with an old friend from the old Fidonet BBS days--from the International TEEN Echo. We were close once, and it was almost like going back to the early- to mid-1990s the way we hit it off again. I visited her once in Jacksonville, FL when I was in Atlanta, GA volunteering at Comdex for Team OS/2. She reminded me that imperfections are what make us human. We've all heard it before; "...gives it character," or "You are what you eat," or "To err is human...." They're not new aphorisms. But they are truisms.

We often take for granted these simple truths in life. We think we know them so well, we never give them a second thought. But have we ever even given the first thought a fair shake?

That's food for thought, isn't it? Many of these truisms we take for granted were just sayings we heard, accepted as true, and never bothered to think them through. Why are they true? Are they always true? It's profound. For many of you who try this, I am sure you will reach a state of being akin to being reborn--reborn into the world with your eyes wide open; reborn into the world with a higher state of consciousness.

They are often the most simple truths in life that we take for granted. That we take them for granted, by definition, means we never thought about them--never tested them. And that, by definition, means we don't know them.