Where do we look for signs of love? And how do we prove our love to others? We all know the customary rituals: kisses, words, cards, and flowers. Over time the gifts become more expensive as greater investments of resources are made.

"Come, let us build the ship of the future.” With these remarkable words an Irish ballad invites us to participate in the world we are making with each new decision and every new day. Where do you want to be tomorrow, or a year from now?

The Passion narrative is so enthralling on its own terms it can be difficult to keep in mind that it is not simply a drama about the death of Jesus. Gospel stories are deliberately told in a way that always invites us to find our place in the story.

I’ve always felt a real affection for the anonymous Greeks who approach Philip in Jerusalem and make their request with disarming frankness: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”

To speak of faith as an activity may sound strange. Most of the time it seems like such a passive commodity. We make professions of faith, reciting lists of doctrinal statements that someone else wrote long ago.

In Torah commentaries rabbis always point out the unequal proportions of the Decalogue. The first four Commandments (concerning our obligations to God) take up ten extended verses, while the ensuing six (about mortal relationships) occupy a half dozen clipped lines.

Children have it easy when it comes to obeying authority. They know the drill: Adults are in charge, do what they tell you. When adults collide, what Mom and Dad say trumps the older sibling, the neighbor, the teacher, and the stranger.

More theology wars are likely to be fought over the meaning of Christmas than the substance of Lent. While many Christians gear up to do battle every December against an interesting assortment of enemies—Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty, the retail industry, and the term “X-mas,” just for starters—nobody seems to have energy left over to take on the secular foes of the Lenten season.

The man was serious: “I carry the memory of that night in me like a sickness,” he told me, shuddering. He was talking about a terrible choice he’d made long ago: what he’d done, what he’d failed to do—and how it affected people he loved, his career, his sense of himself.

So here you are, moving through life cheerfully in the midst of family, community, career. And one day you wake up with a mark on your skin. It itches. Maybe in a day or two it starts to peel, crack, bleed, or ooze.