Today is Ash Wednesday; in the western Christian tradition this is the day that marks the start of the Lenten season. For the next six weeks or so we are in a space of preparing. Lent is not a practice of the ancient church, or of the earlier days of Jesus. As a Jewish man, Jesus certainly would have been aware of preparing for Passover which involves cleaning and removing any leavened goods from the home, but the practices of Lent as we understand them are a function of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.

For all the beautiful, mystical work that came out of the Middle Ages, it is fair to say that the church as an institution spent a lot of time fixated on evil, punishment, sin, and suffering. There was much expansive theology, and there was at least an equal portion of abusive theology that unfortunately continues to cause harm and obscure the great goodness of a loving God in too many ways. Lent, then, was a season of fasting, punishing the body to cleanse it of sin, depriving yourself somehow to prove your worthiness to God. It was a time of confession and repentance, and a time of preparation for initial baptism, when you would commit yourself to walking with God. In a world hyper-focused on sin and punishment it was the former that claimed and held the attention, but the latter, I believe, is the more important point.

If you are of the Christian tradition at some point you will have been baptized, committed to a life with God, reminded that you belong to the divine and that some day you will return to that embrace. If you are baptized as an infant there is little preparation needed other than getting yourself born. If a child you likely have some classes you have to take, but still perhaps not a lot of autonomy in the decision. But if you are an adult, if you are choosing this act, one would hope that you are coning to it with intentionality, with a desire to be committed, a murmuring somewhere in your heart that you are listening to. And so you actually have to prepare, to ready yourself to answer ‘yes’ to the questions you will be asked, and to respond with an energy of yes to the call you are hearing. That is what this season can and should be, year after year, again and again: a way to prepare ourselves for another yes to working with God in the world and letting God work in our lives.

Lent starts in the earliest moments of spring and concludes in the full blossoming of new life. What a perfect time to ask ‘how am I preparing to grow this year?’ The beauty and the value of this season is not in spending a month and a half punishing yourself for whatever you did or did not do that you should or should not have done, but in pausing to invite in what it is that you want to be, where you want to be, how you want to be in the next season of growth in your life. You can do this regardless of your faith tradition, there is an easy system in place if you are Christian or Christian leaning, if you are Jewish and cleaning and rooting out the things that need to be let go of, or if you are just spiritually inclined and want to join a seasonal practice that carries you into the vernal equinox. It’s almost like there is some master plan that has made this a rather obvious time for a readying practice.

The goal is not to be purified or perfect, the goal is simply to be ready to let more good energy, more God, more growth into your life. You may not arrive at Easter and feel renewed, you may not celebrate Passover and feel free, the conclusion is not the point. When you engage in a practice of preparation you commit to saying ‘when I get to Easter I want to be ready to be renewed,’ or ‘when I get to Passover I want to sit at seder ready to follow Moses through the water to freedom.’ You say spiritually, I’m not there yet, I want to ready myself to be ready to go, to do, to be, when the time comes.

In Twelve Step work there are two steps that ask only that you get ready to be ready. All you have to do is prepare yourself for the doing. It’s an important step we skip over too often and then wonder why the doing didn’t work out the way we had hoped. Hint: it’s because we were not actually ready for the doing part. Step 6 says, “we’re entirely ready…’ but it’s not until Step 7 that we actually get to the action. Step 8 says, “and became willing…” but it’s Step 9 that has us going out into the world to do the thing. Let Lent be that readying for you, that preparation for a greater yes to divine companionship and encouragement.

My Lenten practice involves taking something away, not to punish or torture myself but simply to mark the time as different, to move me out of habitual behaviors and into something that requires more attention to how I move through the day. And my practice brings something in: either reading a specific book or guide, adding time to my mediation practice, or including a new kind of prayer. I’m working on my heart, cleaning up some of the things that get in the way of hearing God, building the muscles that can carry me into wherever it is I might be growing next.

I hope you will choose to use this season for your own growth, in a way that helps you to get ready so you can be ready for the expansive love that is waiting for you.

From now through Maundy Thursday, and not on Saturdays, I will be posting an image that I find to be an invitation to growth in my substack notes. This can be used as a meditation point for your own practice and I hope you will join me there in sharing the invitation of the season.