Though I love it, I can’t really get my mind around Lent. I’ve researched it in a casual way—what is the practice about? How did it come into being? Why do people still do it? I can’t say that I have landed on many really satisfying answers, but I’ve found enough to make sense of it.

Technically, Lent is 40 days of fasting, prayer, and alms-giving at the end of the Epiphany season, which is closed by Carnival—Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday—and opened by Ash Wednesday. Lent is a ritual of readiness before Easter inspired by Christ’s ritual of readiness before, um, Good Friday. It is a somber season of abstinence and reflection in preparation for death—ashes on Wednesday remind us of the future ashes of us. These 40 days are meant to be a time of quieting the mind and body and opening your spirit to what God wants.

While predominantly a Catholic tradition, some Protestants practice Lent, and the idea of a 40-day personal “spring clean” as a path to self-improvement is growing in popularity in secular culture. I am not sure I have problems with that. I believe we all hear the voice of the divine and if, during Lent, an atheist feels called to stop scrolling Facebook for 40 days and spend more time with her kids, I think that fits the bill.

The pastor at my church delivered a homily about Lent a number of years ago that stuck with me. He said that Lent is not a time to “give up” something temporarily, but rather it is a time to make a change in your life that is sustainable—to spend 40 days engaged in a practice of fasting, prayer, and giving so that you can continue to do those things in your life after Easter. This is not to say that you can’t step away from something with a little more vigor during this time, but the fast of Lent is done to affect change not enable return to “normal.”

Lent lasts for 40 days. 40 days is the literal period of quarantine from the Italian, quarantine meaning the time (40 days) ships suspected of carrying disease had to stay in the harbor before unloading during the 17th century.

And I can get my mind around quarantine. The last two years of Covid quarantine did help many of us peel off parts of our lives that diminish us, seek spiritual practice, and give more time and presence to the people around us.

We are finally coming out of quarantine, and I don’t want to go back in.

Quarantine prevents something from advancing, and I am ready to move forward. Lent moves us out of quarantine and into a life readied for living. So, starting tomorrow and for the next 40 days, I am going to reflect on the life I am meant to live by doing the only thing I really know I am called to do: connect with words that connect me to myself and you and God.

Bring what’s hidden to light.

If you’d like to follow along with this blog and perhaps discuss it with me, follow me on Facebook @paulacaptures. I post a link to the daily blog as soon as they are posted. If you just want the journal prompts, I post them daily on Instagram at @paulacapturing.

fast | pray | write

Daily reflections on becoming who we are meant to be presented, in the spirit of Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel “Eat, Pray, Love” in three parts. The first 13 posts explore ideas of fasting and breaking habits that distract us from our purpose, the next 13 will contemplate prayer and making connections to the divine, and the final 13 delve deeper into writing and its power to connect us to ourselves and the world(s) around us. The last one, well, you’ll find out what that’s about when I do.

Above each post is a journal prompt that either inspired or came out of that day’s blog. I would love to have your writing company.