LENT: A TIME TO “LET GO, AND LET GOD”
Unity World Headquarters (UWH) this year has published an excellent booklet for Lent.
The booklet is entitled: “40 Days: Let Go, Let God,” and it contains some real pearls of wisdom from a number of ministers in the Unity movement. I would strongly recommend this booklet from UWH to help you energize your Lenten preparations for Easter.
I really like the Unity take, or perspective, on Lent. In so many other denominations Lent seems to be a time to give up chocolate, candy, and ice cream. Or it is presented as a time to give up alcohol, or not eat meat on certain days.
The bottom line is that all too often Lent is showcased as a time NOT to have fun. That is why Mardi Gras – – or Fat Tuesday— comes right before Lent. It is sort of like saying, “Let go of having a little fun, because the next 40 days are going to be sackcloth and ashes!”
Growing up, I remember during Lent going over to the homes of friends of Scandinavian origin. I would be invited to a Lenten dinner, which would consist of the Scandinavian Lenten delicacy called lutefisk. This so-called source of protein turned out to be a highly salted form of white fish. I was told that eating lutefisk was an acquired taste. Well, it was a taste that I never acquired!
Unity has a much different perspective on Lent which is well beyond giving up chocolate or eating lutefisk. This metaphysical view was awesomely presented in a wonderful book by Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of the Unity movement. This book is entitled: Keep a True Lent. In it, Charles says that the real things we should be giving up and letting go of during Lent are “error thoughts.”
What are “error thoughts”? They are ways of thinking that are holding us back from what we can realistically become. They are things that are no longer serving us. Error thoughts are such erroneous ideas as: lack; scarcity; fear of failure; thinking that we do not measure up, or we are not good enough. It is the idea that the mistake we made in 2007 permanently blotted our copybook for all eternity.
Charles and Myrtle Fillmore suggest that we use this time of Lent to journal and write down these false ideas that are no longer serving us. Then we turn to God— the “Christ within” as the apostle Paul put it— to “Let Go and Let God.”
The UWH Booklet looks at so many areas where we may have error thoughts, such as: shame, resentment, sorrow, limitation, resistance, self-pity, anxiety, fear of illness, perfectionism, worry, insecurity, negative, thinking, anger, blame, and fear of change.
Rev. Teresa Burton
The editor of the booklet is Rev. Teresa Burton, who is the editor of Unity’s Daily Word. I was a classmate of Rev. Teresa’s at Unity Institute and Seminary. It’s really neat to see a fellow student and friend “strike it big” and become the editor of this leading Unity publication.
Rev. Teresa kicks off the booklet with a great introduction. “How many times have you wrestled with a problem and been unable to see your way out,” she asks? Then we try all manners of ways to solve the problem. Usually we try to get out of the jam by using our ego power, she suggests.
These methods usually fail us, she notes. “At those times after every option was exhausted. the only thing left to do was to let go and let God,” Rev Teresa adds.
This reminds me of a quip that the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made during World War II. Churchill said that you could “always count on the Americans to do the right thing— after the Americans have tried all the other alternatives and failed!”
“There’s such comfort in turning over the concerns of our hearts into the care and keeping of God. It makes our struggles more bearable when we trust there is a power… who is recognizing our best efforts, and forgives us for our worst,” she writes.
“With this understanding, the idea of letting go and letting God takes on a new and deeper dimension. Even as we are fully human, we are also fully divine. We can respond to our worldly circumstances from our human us, or from our divinity. Letting go and letting God really means yielding our human efforts… to the divine within. When we do this, we avail ourselves of a new world of possibilities and potentials because we have aligned our thinking with divine mind and our feelings with divine love,” Rev. Theresa explains.
She adds that letting go and letting God is a “supreme act of faith.” Spirit is “with and within you, every day of your life,” my friend from seminary reminds us.
So, during this Lenten season, I would suggest that we do the following things:
First, I would highly recommend that we take the time to pray, meditate, and journal on the error thoughts that are holding us back. These ideas and patterns of behavior may have helped us in the past, but they are not serving us now, and we would be better off by getting rid of them.
Second, after acknowledging what these error thoughts are we might get over the notion that somehow our egos are strong enough— and willing enough— to remove these error thoughts from our systems. Our egos, as it were, are not going to get the proverbial ball into the end zone!
Third, there is a way to successfully remove these liabilities. That way is the path of: Letting Go and Letting God. As it says so beautifully in the Big Book of alcoholics Anonymous, “God could and would if He (She, or It) were sought.”
I promise you that this way of practicing Lent is much tastier and satisfying than eating a serving of lutefisk!
