As I am writing this column it is Valentine’s Day, a day we think about the heart. As you are reading this, it is the beginning of the season of Lent in the Christian tradition. Lent is a time of looking at the state of our hearts. It is a time of introspection and an awareness of what we need to change in our lives. This is not a practice only for the Christians among us. All the major religions practice mindfulness of the state of one’s heart.

One of the sacred texts read in Christian churches on Ash Wednesday, the day Lent begins, is from the prophet Joel who tells us to open our hearts — maybe even crack open our hearts as a way to repent. He compares the rending of our hearts to the common practice of repentance of tearing ones clothes and sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Here, the prophet urges the people not to make an outward sign, but an inward change. “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart . . . rend your hearts and not your clothing.”

Esther Menn tells us: To “return” in Hebrew means literally to “turn” around, to change one’s direction by halting the walk away from God and beginning the walk toward God. The “heart” in Hebrew anthropology is the site of deliberation and commitment. Turning to God with one’s whole heart therefore involves changing one’s mind, reconsidering one’s actions, and orienting oneself entirely toward God [WorkingPreacher.org, Feb 13, 2013].

I am inviting you to look at the next 46 days as a time out from the normal rhythm of our lives. Let’s take time out for our hearts- a time out from worry, a time out from fear, a time out from anxiety over our jobs, our families, our purpose in life, the state of the world. Let’s take a time out to be attentive to the state of our hearts. That might mean that we take a closer look at what makes our hearts hurt and what makes our hearts happy. Perhaps these next six weeks, we are called to face where we need to change direction in our lives and own it. We are called to crack open our hearts. After all, as Leonard Cohen wrote, “that’s how the light gets in.”