Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent, is a time when we have an opportunity to squarely face our humanness. It begins a season where we have an invitation to be honest with God, with ourselves, and with one another. The season of Lent, which begins this Ash Wednesday, offers us a forty-day time period modeled after our Lord's forty days in the wilderness. Some of us may not feel the need to take on extra disciplines during these forty days. Perhaps our lives already feel full of enough challenges that a day of prayer or fasting may seem trivial. Others of us who are just as challenged may welcome the external disciplines of regular prayer, fasting, and acts of service as opportunities to get out of ourselves and away from the messes that for many comprise significant portions of …