Today’s first reading from Deuteronomy describes Moses’ conversation with the people of Israel concerning whether they should follow God or not. Moses lays the matter out rather clearly, choose life in the Lord so that you may live. Not all our choices appear that clear but the values that shape these choices can be defined with great clarity. The season of Lent embraces abstinence and fasting as well as other austerities, not so much to see how long we can go without caramel mocha lattes. Rather we do penances to uncover and examine our values, the values by which we make our decisions. We all make mistakes based on bad information. What we really want to avoid is making mistakes based on bad values.