THE SEASON OF LENT

With all that is happening in the world, do you ever find yourself wanting to fix everything? You may have the thought that certain people need to change, or act differently, for the world to be right! When you pray, are you giving God a list of things or people that need to be changed for you to be happy? How is this working for you? It leaves me continuing to feel only lack and still seeing problems. This is not a place I want to be.

This response is very human and one, very often, we are not aware we are doing. We may do it to feel safe and secure, to feel loved – two very basic human needs. Yet, when it doesn’t work out the way we want, we blame God, ourselves and each other. It reminds me of when I was a teenager, overrun with hormones, storming upstairs and slamming my bedroom door, because my needs were not met. Sorry, mum and dad!

Lent offers us the time and space to let go of the need/want demand; to let go of responses that keep us stuck in need and learn to live in a new way. To recognise that any changes we want to see, begin in us. This is not easy for our ego-led mind to understand. Yet real transformation can only be within us. Instead of demanding change, we can ask to see the world differently and to respond in a new way.

We can do this because, as we say in Unity, we are divine beings having human experiences. When we put our focus on God within, through and as us, as Jesus did and say, “I am a divine being, one with all that God is. You are a divine being, one with all that God is”, we are living from our divinity, powerfully enabled to experience transformation from within and align with all that is God as good without opposite.

In the Gospels, Jesus represents our divine nature that knows its oneness with God and expresses as the Christ energy. The Pharisees and Sadducees represent out ego-led thoughts, which are all about what we need and want. Jesus did not demand they change (though he did get frustrated at times) but offered the opportunity, through stories and parables, to see the world in a new way.

Instead of demanding our needs be met, we can align with the creative energy that is God active in us and in our world. We can release what no longer serves us, including the thought that our needs must be met, and respond from our True nature; our divinity. Now, we are changed, we see the world differently and our world experience changes. Now we can show up in the world in dynamic, creative, positive ways that bring about change which blesses everyone.

How do you want to experience Lent? Can this season be one of transformation that deeply changes how you show up in the world? This is the invitation offered to you to make your own.

​Rev Kimerie Mapletoft
Director of Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

---