HALLOWEEN AND LETTING GO: IT ISN’T ALWAYS EASY
My family has lived in some very conservative areas, and this has had some interesting implications for Halloween.
For example, my first church was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is often called “the buckle of the Bible Belt.” What Jerry Falwell is to Lynchburg, Oral Roberts is to Tulsa.
Many fundamentalists and evangelicals in Oklahoma view Halloween as a gigantic sin. They see it is devil worship and teaching children wrong values. It was not uncommon to walk down a suburban street in Tulsa, trick-or-treating with my children (I was chaperoning), and easily half of the houses would be completely dark on Halloween. It was almost like the darkened houses were screaming at us, “Move on you sinners!”
My background, and relationship with, Halloween was of course, quite different. Halloween was a big deal in my family and neighborhood. My father was great at helping me make costumes. I remember one Halloween where my mother and father helped the children on our entire street dress up as different people in a circus. We had a lion tamer, ringmaster, strong man, high wire artist, half man half woman, etc.
In our town, there was a Halloween parade down Main Street, and it was followed by a costume contest in the auditorium of the junior high school. I remember being one of the winners one year with my scarecrow costume. My father had put in a 2 x 4 board to be my arms, while my real arms were tucked under the cloth of the costume.
People marveled at how I could hold out my arms straight and stiff for such a long time period. When the award for winning the costume contest was handed to me, the judges tried to give it to me via my 2 x 4 arms. Instead, my real arms reached out from under the costume to take the goodies. At first there was a gasp from the audience. But this was followed by laughter and applause.
As I got involved in New Thought and the Unity movement, Halloween started to take on some very important significance for me. The early pioneers in Unity often talked about “error thoughts” that block us from the truth about ourselves. These thoughts include lack, scarcity, feeling that we are not good enough, that we are somehow damaged goods, etc.
Back in Unity of Fairfax— my old home church— there were several licensed Unity teachers (LUTs) who would hold workshops on getting rid of error thoughts. These workshops were often held around the Halloween season.
The LUTs would point out that our negative thinking can be like ghosts and goblins, holding us back from what we can really become. They said that being haunted was not just something from the Gothic era.
What also made a big impression on me was the work of the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung. A mentor of mine, Rev. Robert Brumet, also had a big impact on me. Probably Rev. Robert’s most famous book is Finding Yourself in Transition. Both Jung and Brumet emphasize the importance of “shadow work.” The shadow includes parts of ourselves that we really don’t want to admit to and would rather bury under the carpet. We often project our “shadow thoughts” out on to others. It is easier to see them in other people than in ourselves.
Halloween is a very good time for us to do important “shadow work.” We can do this by centering and praying, inventorying and journaling, Spiritual Direction, and working with a spiritual mentor.
A key part of this shadow work is letting go of what is no longer serving us. Remember that Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of the Unity movement, wrote about the 12 powers that are inside of us all. One of these powers is the power of ELIMINATION. Our egos are often way too weak to get rid of error thoughts. But as Jesus said, “With God, all things are possible.”
Vicki Kuyper
However, this letting go process often is not easy. I recently read a story by the author, Vicki Kuyper, that drives this point home. Vicki reported that her broken tea cup sat on her kitchen counter for a long time “it had been my grandmothers, one of the few family heirlooms I possessed painted with dainty flowers and embellished with a gold rim, the porcelain was almost translucent,” she said.
With a small handle, the tea cup was really only fit for her granddaughter’s little hands. “But as I was washing up, I had bumped the fragile cup into a sturdier mug. That’s all it took for it to break into,“ she noted.
She could have tried to glue the cup back together, but she felt that even her best efforts would result in something that could not hold tea. Nevertheless, it took Vicky a very long time before she was willing to let go of the tea cup.
Vicki said she heard God’s “still, small voice” saying the following to her: “What other useless things are you holding onto?”
“Grudges, hurt feelings, bad habits that have become a comfortable part of my routine, outdated dreams that had past their expiration date… All of these, and more immediately came to mind. With renewed determination, I tossed the tea cup into the trash. Then I had that chat with God about what other areas I needed to attend to in my life,” she commented.
Why not use this Halloween as a time to start letting go of more things that are no longer serving you? This Halloween I am really leaning into something that the apostle Paul said, “God did not give us the spirit of fear, but he gave us power, love, and self-confidence” (2 Timothy 1:7).
