I’m giving up religion for Lent. There. I’ve said it. The next forty days or so, I can devote my theological study hours to something comprehensible, like Bitcoin or The United States Constitution or Virus Data. Just kidding. Sort of.

Religion has been among the most disappointing of human interventions for understanding the mystery of life. Nothing human can be perfect, I know, but surely we could have prevented ourselves from spoiling, almost without exception, the enlightened discoveries of certain historic individuals, like Buddha and Abraham and Ahkenaten and Zoroaster and Jesus and Muhammad and Akbar. Their respective insights concerning the Ineffable were brilliant and beautiful. The religions that grew up after them? Not so much.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. Her descriptions of how the legacies of certain beliefs around the world have perpetrated inhuman suffering make my stomach churn, even though it isn’t news to me. I also launched into a “cover the whole book in one year” reading schedule of the Bible, a personal refresher course, only to find myself, this month, in bloody Leviticus. Obviously, any sacred text requires interpretation. But it’s hard to read these ancient Hebrew scriptures knowing that certain “believers” today describe this entire book as word-for-word, straight from the mouth of God orders for life. If this scripture was what Jesus grew up learning, I wonder how he ever managed to proclaim “God is love.”

As a girl, I lived in a Buddhist country, a Muslim country, and a Roman Catholic country. As a docent in a major art museum, I’ve delved into the iconography of religious traditions from China and Ancient Egypt and India. As a practicing Protestant Christian since childhood, I’ve worshiped and studied in several denominations, from Dutch Reformed to Southern Methodist to Presbyterian (PCUSA sect). And I’ve attempted to practice, from time to time, forms of spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition. I’m only in my 75th year of age, so perhaps there’s still time for me to discover the final answer.

But for Lent this year, I think I’ll let go of religion. I’m going to try to grab on with clarity to the free-form faith that God, by some name or other, or no name at all, has a love for creation—the earth and everyone and everything on it—an absolute love available for humanity to participate in. For that, we just need some humility, some gratitude, some wonder, some mercy and generosity towards every other being, animate or inanimate, as evoked in Robin Wall Kimmer’s love-filled book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

I’m not doing religion, at least for now. But I’m not giving up on Jesus, whose forever presence as Christ in the world originally and truly revealed to humanity the message of compassion over judgment, servanthood over power, love over death. That’s a message I’m not giving up.