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The Bible opens with the story of the Garden of Eden. A story about the beauty of the natural world that God created for us to romp around within to discover our own calling as humans. Given the harshness of daily life as adults, the Garden often feels like something of a far distant past. Perhaps something that has never existed at all… only a figment of our imagination. But then there will come these moments that open windows to the Garden and remind us of the kind of life God has dreamed for us from the very beginning. Last week was such a window opening for me.

It’s been so long ago now I can’t quite remember when, but on a plane I watched the Romcom movie 50 First Dates where Adam Sandler falls in love with Drew Barrymore in a sweet Hawaiian beach town. They hit it off. Love at first site. But then the next morning when he runs into her again, she has no memory of who he is and is alarmed by his friendly advances. How do you build a relationship with someone who can’t remember who you are? It was a fun movie. Can’t say that if I were you, I’d rush to go see it necessarily.

Yesterday I remembered an episode that happened over 30 years ago related to peanut brittle in the backseat of a car. It came to mind late in the afternoon when I was getting a bit hungry and perhaps hearing about peanut brittle gets your stomach rumbling as well. I wish I had some to give you, but I don’t, so I’ll just give you the story instead.

This past Sunday in the atrium, six-year-old G. was working with the sayings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount again. “Knock and the door will be opened to you,” he read.

“I wonder what that could mean?” asked my fellow catechist.

“Hmmm,” said G. “Maybe it is the door to the Parousia.”

This child never ceases to stun me with his fresh takes on, well, just about everything.

One of the things about my life that I am most delighted by is the fact that I’ve gotten to visit all fifty states. I almost said “proud of” but really there is little I did to merit it. Most I visited because my parents took us camping there. Or a professional development conference took me. Or a CGS formation course. Or a work client. Then suddenly I was approaching my fiftieth birthday and I realized I only had a few states left and the “Fifty Before Fifty” effort became more focused. I started by coming up with a rubric for what counted as a “visit.” Did I have to stay overnight?

I spent ten years of my life working as a consultant on the topic of how to have constructive difficult conversations and receive feedback well. I can assure you that no one in the current U.S. executive branch was one of my clients. But many wonderful people of varied religious traditions (and no religious traditions) were.

As a child I loved Easter. There were jellybeans and chocolate bunnies and bright banners at Church which would be attended by me and my mom wearing flower corsages pinned on by my father. Not even sure they make those anymore. But the point is that Easter was a bright, sugary, joyous day. And I do mean day. I wasn’t aware that Easter was a whole season and would have had no understanding as to why the Church would have wanted to celebrate it longer than that. I mean how much could there to be to ponder about someone rising from the dead?

Since surgery last Fall, it has taken me some time to rebuild my walking endurance and speed. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I now see myself more as a semi-committed waddler than a serious walker. I used to do a fourteen-minute mile. (Yeah, I know. Real impressive to all you runners out there.) Now it is eighteen-minutes…. And if there is the slightest of hills, sometimes a bit more. And if it is too cold, I don’t go out at all. And if it is too warm, I don’t go out either.

It has been a remarkably rich week. The first couple days were spent close to home in Atlanta with longtime sisters in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd movement who are offering their time and energy to mentor a new generation of formation leaders around the U.S. Then, the past last couple of days have been spent at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis where I met with some of our current CGS students and participated in an alumni reunion.

Lent begins each year with the story of Jesus going into the desert for forty days. We know he fasted and was tempted there. We even have a good sense of what the three temptations were. But we don’t have a very good idea about what happened the remainder of the time.

I realize that might be kind of a quirky thing to spend one’s time wondering about, but (as you might already have guessed) it has been on my mind of late. Forty days is a long time to ponder three temptations.