What if Lent isn’t about sacrifice?

“I'm dealing with a ton of anger. The more I learn about the patriarchy and feminism, the angrier I become, and I hate being that stereotype of an ‘angry feminist.’ I’m trying to figure out how to acknowledge that anger, feel it, and work through it, so that I can move to a more peaceful internal space.”

I wrote those words in an email in May of 2020. We were waist-deep in COVID lockdown, and I was drowning in anger as I worked to bring more domestic equity into my household.

That wasn’t the first time I had felt the weight of these tensions, but it was the first time I allowed myself to name them.

Reclaiming What Was Lost

Five years before that email, when I moved to San Diego, I entered a community of women who held motherhood as sacred in a way I’d never seen before—not as a burden to bear alone, but as something that wove us into deep interdependence.

These women—a group that happened to include midwives, doulas, and lactation consultants—embraced a way of life that most women in the modern U.S. don’t get to experience. They supported one another. They believed in their bodies, their intuition, and their wisdom.

Most of them also considered themselves feminists, but not the kind I had been warned about in church. They weren’t rejecting faith or “women’s roles.” They were expanding it.

One of them, my friend Janny, was the first to introduce me to the Divine Feminine. She never used male pronouns for God. Instead, every time she prayed, she said, "God our Mother." At first, it unsettled me. It felt almost heretical. But I kept listening. I kept wondering. And eventually, I started searching.

What I found in Scripture surprised me.

• The Spirit of God as a hovering, creative, feminine force present at creation (Genesis 1:2)
• God as a woman in labor bringing forth life with pain and power (Deuteronomy 32:18)
• The Wisdom of God personified as a woman, calling out to those who have ears to hear (Proverbs 8:1-2)
• Jesus longing to gather people like a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34)

These aren’t just metaphors. They are truths about the nature of God that we were never taught to see.

And yet, for centuries, Christianity has clung to the image of God as Father as if it were the only truth—not just a metaphor, but an unquestionable fact.

Why?

Because when women and people with other marginalized identities see ourselves in God, when we understand that the Divine is not exclusively white, straight, cis, male, everything changes.

We start to ask questions.We stop accepting our own oppression as “God’s design.”We begin to trust our own voices, our own wisdom, our own callings.

Why This Matters Right Now

In the past few years, we’ve watched the erosion of women’s/LGBTQ+/non white-people's rights in real-time. From attacks on bodily autonomy to the rollback of legal protections, we are witnessing a surge of Christian nationalist rhetoric that seeks to reinforce patriarchal control—not just in the political sphere, but in our spiritual lives as well.

We are told to submit. To stay small. To not trust our own wisdom. And too often, Christianity has been used to justify that oppression.

But the words of Jesus were never meant to shrink us.

What if Lent—a season often defined by restriction, self-denial, and sacrifice—could be about reclaiming wholeness instead?

This is why we need an intersectional feminist approach to Lent.

For too long, women and other people on the margins have been taught that self-sacrifice is holiness. That making ourselves smaller is what God desires. That wisdom belongs to men. That our intuition is not to be trusted.

But what if holiness is about expanding into our wholeness?What if wisdom has always been within us?

A new approach to Lent matters because…

We’ve been taught that self-sacrifice is holiness. But what if holiness isn’t about making ourselves smaller—it’s about embracing our wholeness?

We’ve been given an exclusively male image of God. But what if we could reclaim the feminine wisdom woven throughout scripture—God as Mother, Spirit, and Wisdom?

We’ve been conditioned to accept harmful narratives. But Jesus confronted oppression, uplifted people on the margins, and embodied a God of liberation—an intersectional feminist approach to Lent invites us to do the same.

We are ready to reclaim our spiritual authority. For too long, we’ve been told that wisdom belongs primarily to (white) men. But divine wisdom is within each one of us, waiting to be remembered through our own unique perspective.

Join Me for the Wisdom Calls Cohort

This is why I created the Wisdom Calls Cohort—a seven-week intersectional feminist approach to Lent.

We’ll gather each week to unlearn the old scripts and step into a faith that liberates. We’ll uncover the Divine Feminine in Scripture, reflect on the sacredness of our own stories, and make room for a new way of seeing God, faith, and ourselves.

March 5 - April 16
Live cohort calls every Wednesday (90 minutes on Zoom)
Optional Marco Polo group for ongoing discussion
Spots are limited | Registration closes March 3

Fast from patriarchy. Feast on wisdom. I hope you’ll join us.