In the Christian tradition this is the period of Lent; a time that many people affiliate with sacrifice, giving something up as we look ahead to the life Jesus gave up through the crucifixion, and the time he spent in the wilderness preparing for his ministry. Not a happy time of year per se. But not entirely accurate either.

‘Lent’ derives from a root that simply means to lengthen and refers to the seasonal time of year in the northern hemisphere, a time of lengthening days, more sun, burgeoning life in nature. Hope. Liturgically (that is in the religious calendar of Christianity) it is a time when we recall those people who wandered in the wilderness as they sought to follow God. First the freed Israelites who wandered for forty years, Moses on the mountain for forty days, Jesus who spent forty days praying and fasting; a fun little fact of cognitive science, it takes about forty consecutive days of behavior to build a new habit so it feels like there is something in this about how long it takes you to make a substantive change whether religious or secular.

This time of year is not so much about punishing yourself or denying yourself a pleasure as it is, I think, about contemplatively, consciously working on building new habits, new ways of looking at the world, perhaps new ways of being in the world. But changing how you engage with the world or with yourself often means giving something up, it is hard to start something new if you don’t stop something else, you have to make space, and giving up is not all that easy to do. We like the things that feel good, that feel like they are comforts, the things we do to treat ourselves whether they are really healing or not, and the desire to have that thing that makes us feel good or safe or valued, well that can be a temptation to just stay the way we already are.

There are times when it is easy to say I need to change, something dramatic has happened and it is obvious that there is a problem; most of the time, for most people things are just basically fine and it can feel like a criticism to say you need to do a little more a little better. But I believe that is what we are all called to do in this life journey, learn to be a little kinder not just on the easy days, learn to love a little more completely even when it feels scary, pause more to see what is good and beautiful, laugh more with others and at ourselves, and doing all of this means we have to give up a little of the meanness, fear, and attachment to identity that holds us back. Push and pull, a step forward, those big and little temptations that pull us back.

In the wilderness the Israelites struggled with building a new identity and trusting God, where they had been wasn’t good but at least they knew who they were seems to be the language of the struggle in that story. In the desert Jesus was tempted by demons: use your power to control, to rule, to serve yourself. Not all that different than what a lot of us face in our own lives. We can use the gifts we have been given to love more, to care more, to build communities of joy, or we can use what we have to ‘take care of number one,’ make sure we have the things that give us that sense of power and control in our own lives and the lives of others. We give out love with strings attached, we use our money to manipulate outcomes, we tell the lies that make us feel safe. Because we are scared and we don’t always see God working in the world or in our lives, and trust is so very hard.

In the Abrahamic scripture that stories show us that God always came through; the Israelites were fed even as they did not understand how it was happening and they could not control the delivery system, Jesus shows us what faith looks like without any guarantee of the plan. Lent, these lengthening days shows us that after the dark comes the light, again and again; after death and dormancy comes life and growth.

There is evil all around us, that sounds like a crazy thing to say I know, but I have seen it, I have had to fight it, I have watched it sink roots deep into people I love so that the good of them could barely be seen. We are faced with temptation to serve ourselves, to feed our fear, to take as much as we can when we can because we don’t believe there will be more or enough. The invitation of lent, whether you are christian or not, is to set aside a little time in the year to notice what is true and what is not, what will bring you life, and what will make you wither: the bright green on the ends of the oak tree, the impossible pink of the plum blossoms, the eyes of the new born seeing a loving gaze for the first time.

The light does indeed follow the dark; as long as I remember that and reject the fear of the moment of dark I can be assured again and again.