The season of Lent invites us onto a spiritual journey each year. It is a 40-day time of self-reflection, prayer, and cutting back on anything not life-affirming in our hearts and habits. It’s not for the faint of heart, starting as it does with the Temptation of Jesus and moving us right on through his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. These are the days to go deep, to risk seeing and learning things about ourselves we’d rather keep under wraps, in order that the truth of the death of death on Easter will work in us its true transforming power. This year, we are “Risking Forgiveness.” I commend to you all the little book from our February Book Study—The Book of Forgiving by Desmond and Mpho Tutu. Who but Desmond Tutu could challenge us with the moral authority to assert “there is nothing that cannot be forgiven; there is no one undeserving of or beyond forgiveness” and “forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world.” The 40 days of Lent will not be long enough for the spiritual work required of us on this one. The Tutus say it is the journey of a lifetime. May the example of Christ on the cross inspire and challenge us to take the first steps.