Unlearning.
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
~ Matthew 18:2-4
lent 1. From learning to unlearning
This Wednesday begins the 40-day journey of Lent that commemorates the days of testing that Jesus spent in the desert before his emergence into public ministry. As the lead-up to the jubilance of Easter, Lent invites us to inner reflection upon our own “demons”—the places inside ourselves that are unformed. The places that sabotage us and constrict the generosity of Christ that seeks to flow through us to the world.
I hope you can sense how different this is from, “What will I give up for Lent?” This journey is not about self-denial nearly so much as it is about self-awareness and self-preparation by the Spirit so that we too, like Jesus, can be that conduit of healing and redemption to those around us. As usual, it begins with our own healing and redemption from what Thomas Keating calls our “emotional programs for happiness.”
I am calling this year’s Lenten series “Unlearning,” and it tracks pretty closely with our two cohorts of the SOUL Journey that also, interestingly enough, launch this very weekend. Unlearning? you ask. Yes, unlearning, I say. In fact, the “soul” of our entire SOUL School is an acronym for the “school of un-learning.” Clever, you respond. Yes, clever, I smile broadly.
What does it mean to embrace unlearning?
I think it’s pretty close to what Jesus was after when he sat a spunky dark-haired girl on his lap and offered her as an example of how greatness looks in God’s world. Jesus was obsessed, if you will allow me that expression, with God’s world. Over and over, he told this story and that story to open up portals of perception into the divine realm: “The kingdom of God is like…” More than fifty times, the gospels record Jesus describing the fundamental priorities and orientations of the sacred dimension, implicitly contrasting those qualities with our human defaults toward power, safety, and approval.
Unlearning calls us to childlikeness, a letting go of the “security blanket” of all our established and defended knowings. Could these coming 40 days be such a journey toward the upside-down world of God? Toward the counterintuitive vulnerability and openness of children-at-their-best?
Let’s find out.
By the way, I’ll be adding a contemplative chant at the end of each post in this Lenten series. Chanting is a way to rebalance our three centers (head, heart, and body) by easing the overload we often carry in our minds and letting our hearts take the lead and our bodies get in on the action. Through the simplicity of a single repeated thought and the harmonic resonance of the musical vibrations, our souls are tended and nourished. Take a couple minutes to join in with the short clip below…
growing your soul
How do you protect your emotional stability with all your knowings? Can you feel known and held enough by God to let go and embrace the unknowing this Lent? Just imagine the possibilities of becoming childlike!
serving our world
One of the many benefits of entering the unknowing is that we’re so much slower to evaluate and judge others by the measure of our rightness. There is great freedom here… for everyone.
takeaway
Unlearn. Relearn.
soak
This week’s chant connects the dots between knowing God and knowing ourselves… with an “unknowing” approach. Check it out.