Robin's Musings

My friend the other day was saying Lent is coming. Lent. Isn’t that the holiday that leaves us all feeling guilty and bad and never good enough? Isn’t that like a 40 day period where you make your promise and break it over and over? Or did I miss something? Up until yesterday, I had no real knowledge of what Lent is all about. What I do know is whenever I tap into the energy of Lent, I get the feeling that guilt and shame are shrouding people. (I am sure it is also true that there are just as many of you out there who feel joy and delight at the idea of Lent- but you must be wearing your invisibility cloaks right now).

As a kid, I remember my little friends who HAD to give something up for Lent. They picked candy. They chose bubblegum. They gave up their favorite Barbie or GI Joe. Wowser! I was glad and relieved that I just had a casual relationship with Jesus and a part-time church going habit. I would watch my friends attempt the impossible and was like, “Ooooh! this is not going to turn out well for my friends. If God made ME give something up, I would choose something that was easy and left me feeling happy at the end.” Smart kid, right? It just never did compute for me.

So yesterday I got out the dictionary. And I looked up Lent. Then I Googled it. And I discovered that pretty much, my early intuition on what Lent could do to a little kid’s heart was accurate. Literally, I found many definitions of of Lent sounding like:
Lent is the time when Christians prepare for the greatest of the Christian festivals known as Easter, by thinking of things they have done wrong. In the past there was even a ’strict religious fast’ that lasted 40 days (again, wowser because I can’t make it 5 hours without eating). Today the Christian church doesn’t impose a strict fast, it is more about the attempt to overcome our own faults because they believe that it was man’s sin which led Jesus to be crucified. Somehow, it still feels like this could be challenging to avoid feeling my guilt and shame at not measuring up.

Maybe I can’t rattle off all of the rites, rituals and observances connected to the church. Maybe I assume that in my “job” of helping people heal, I am supposed to know it all. It is interesting studying all the various ways one can do God. In my heart however, I know that all religions and belief systems are talking about the same God, Light, Energy, Source. So simple. Why complicate things?

The question I often sit with when it comes to this topic is why do I have to make up for anything I did if it is true that He created me? If He created me, doesn’t that mean He also exists inside me? So what I want to know is: if He exists inside me, how can I be so bad?

It just doesn’t compute.

Let me try the math one more time. God created me. So God is in me, and I am of God. Doesn’t that mean I am holy? Doesn’t that mean I can’t have done anything wrong? I do struggle with my thinking at times… If I am being honest, I can say I believe I have done nothing wrong except for those times when I slip into profound forgetting that I am a child of God. When I forget that I am holy, and I beat up on myself for not doing every last little thing perfectly.

So I have this idea to give some interesting stuff up for Lent that will be somewhat easy for me and leave me feeling happy at the end:
40 days of knowing I am holy.
40 days of allowing myself to be loved.
40 days of trusting I am cherished.
40 days of accepting that I’ve done nothing wrong.
40 days of feeling beloved.
40 days of being debt-free… on all levels of my being.
And, I will keep my Barbies and my GI Joes. I will eat as much candy as I want. And I will absolutely blow the biggest bubbles I can make (I make good ones, by the way).
I also promise to laugh when they burst.