The idea of unlearning keeps coming up for me during this season. Unlearning involves so much: letting go of old and comfortable ideas and stepping into something new. That involves relinquishing control. Well, I don’t really relinquish control. I relinquish my illusion of control. Unlearning parenting is one of the hardest for me for two […]
Lent: Remembering MY impermanence
I have written about impermanence for two days now. It occurred to me this morning that my writing has been about the impermanence of others. I, too, am impermanent. Several years ago I read a book, A Year to Live, an interesting book about how you might approach your life if you had only one […]
Lent: Remembering our impermanence, Part 2
When I was a psychotherapist, we had staff meeting discussions on several occasions over the years about the relative merits of time-limited therapy and open-ended therapy. This pertains to Lent, but some background is needed. Because the Counseling Center served a population of 40,000 students and the demand for our services was always high, we […]
Lent: Remembering our impermanence
A few years ago I was given the task of burning the palm leaves from Palm Sunday. The ashes were to be used for the next year’s Ash Wednesday service. Growing up Southern Baptist, I did not know of that tradition. “Cool, I’ll be happy to,” I replied. So on the Wednesday evening after Palm […]
Lent: Palm Sunday, unlearning greatness
Today is Palm Sunday. Christian churches everywhere will be commemorating the day Jesus and his followers entered Jerusalem in what we have come to call his “triumphal entry.” Children will process down the aisles waving palm branches, the organ will play loudly, and congregants will sing. Despite the legends we have built around this event, […]
Lent: Shedding our skin
Experiencing leg aches as I described a couple of days ago is an apt metaphor for the necessary pain of physical and spiritual growth. The world of entomology provides the most helpful metaphor to me: an insect shedding its skin. Insects do not have internal skeletons. Instead they have an exoskeleton, a hard outer skin […]
Lent: Losing your faith
Most of my Lenten entries have been about suffering, loss, and unlearning. As I was reading and writing this morning, I thought that perhaps anyone who has been keeping up these entries might be saying, “Enough loss and suffering already!” Yet, these are all necessary and unavoidable parts of life, and to me, frankly, the […]
Lent: Leg aches and growing up
I had intense leg aches when I was a kid. I did not feel them during the day when I was up, active, running and doing all the things that kids do during the day. But when I got in bed, stopped moving and tried to relax, my legs began to throb. I sometimes cried, […]
Lent: Even Jesus had to unlearn God
A couple of weeks ago, the Lectionary for Protestant churches suggested the New Testament text of Jesus’ temptations. It is a familiar story that took place at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. The traditional telling is of Jesus, alone in the desert, 40 days in prayer and fasting. Along came Satan who offered […]
Lent: Unlearning God, Part 2
“We can be assured that we are creating God in our own image when it turns out that God hates the same people we do.” Ann Lamott While preparing a sermon a few years ago for my home church in Illinois, I consulted the lectionary for the suggested texts for the day. The lectionary always […]