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We are just about smack-dab in the middle of Lent, the period of time leading up to Easter (measured either from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday or the six weeks prior to Easter, depending on your particular flavor of Christianity). For many Christians, Lent is a time to deprive oneself to attempt to better understand the sacrifices Jesus made.

It was the 1522, and Katharina von Bora was hiding in a herring barrel. Along with her were eleven other nuns in herring barrels, all in a horse-drawn cart, escaping their convent. Since March is Women's History Month, I was asked what woman I would like to see written back into history, specifically the history of religion. For me, it's the nun hiding in the herring barrel.

"Veiled Voices" is a documentary soon to be shown across many PBS TV stations, starting March 8th for International Women's Day. It's about women religious leaders in Islam.

March 5th is the World Day of Prayer. There was strong resistance from all-male mission boards in the late 1800s, when talk of a World Day of Prayer (WDP) first surfaced among women in the American and Canadian missionary societies of various Christian denominations. Women saw the special needs of other women and of children in the developing world. They understood that prayer was needed but was not enough. Action was required, as well. And so they organized. One result was the World Day of Prayer, which has grown into a global movement.

When a cousin died five years ago, I came back to my small home town's Polish funeral parlor for an afternoon wake. I sat unobtrusively in the back. A small group of women filed in front of me who are the salt of this town's earth. They were members of the Rosary Sodality. They live lives of necessary and practical frugality. All were dressed in similar fashion -- sturdy snow boots, slacks, puffy, quilted snow parkas and hand knit hats and scarves. They are the family farm wives, with ruddy faces and chapped, calloused hands. They and their husbands have worked hard their entire lives, hoping to help their children to a better life. (The New England farm tends to be a small family business, not the large thousand-of-acres-farm of the American West and Midwest.)

Hatred has become a frightening part of everyday life. From the web to Congress, from casual remarks over paper cups of coffee to snide remarks over cocktail glasses, the shadow of hatred can be found lurking. Hate crimes in America continue to rise. It is time to step further up and to support positive change, both in our communities and in ourselves.

The three days before Esther went to speak to King Ahasuerus, she and her handmaidens fasted. Requesting an audience with her husband was tricky business, after all, her predecessor, Queen Vashti, had been executed for refusing to attend her husband's party ("attend" seems to be a child-friendly way of saying that the king wanted her to entertain his friends with an ancient, Persian-style pole dance).

Buddhism has people talking. From reactions to the Tiger Wood's press-speech wherein he claimed his Buddhist heritage to President Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama this week in defiance of the threat from China that he should not. Buddhism, the fourth largest religion in the United States, has experienced an explosive growth. Current estimates are 1.5 million Buddhists in America.

Lent begins on Wednesday, February 17th. It has layers -- with something there for everyone, from the most traditional to the most innovative. But it wasn't always that way.

When we work on our computers if things start to slow down or go wobbly we can try and start fresh by hitting a reset button. When it comes to our lives however, finding the reset button can be difficult. When times get tough how can we find that button? I've got six tips for making the search a little easier.

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