The desert is a place where needs and desires can meet. There are no cell phones! No vendors! No propaganda!

We come into this world naked – and we depart this world naked. This must surely define an essential identity.

But today we find ourselves flooded by an excess of “things.” So much going on, so much stress, so many pressures – how easy to forget who we are! As the poet Leonard Cohen sings, “the blizzard of the world has overturned the order of the soul.”

During Lent we simplify our lifestyles and trim down excesses in our patterns of behavior. With less noise we can
hear the voice of God more clearly: “You are a child of the universe, a son, a daughter of the Creator. You are loved. You belong!”

The palm branches from last year’s Passion Sunday have been put to the fire; their ashes remind us of our addiction to things, and our need to change.

Desire and need! Lent is desert time when desire and need find their rightful place in the order of the soul.

The real fire, the one that transforms, is God’s love – it burns as embers in a heart of faith.