What have you decided to give up for Lent? Someone sent me an e-mail this week with this message: "For Lent, I've decided to give up being right."

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent--forty days, excluding Sundays, leading up to Easter. Many people practice the spiritual discipline of giving up something enjoyable for this season. The idea is to give up some of our attachment to possessions or habits, just for a season, in order to be more in touch with deeper needs and values. Of all the things any of us might give up for Lent, however, the most valuable might just be our need to be right!

When I need to be right

Then you must be wrong

I'm opposed to you

Unless you agree with me . completely

That's how I'm right

But if you must be wrong

For me to be right

I've lost myself in you

I've given my power to you

But if my power

Rests in you

When I must be right

And you wrong

To preserve my own worth

What if I'm proven wrong?

Then my value is diminished

Either way, right or wrong

I've lost control of

My own sense of worth

But what if I

Give up my need

To be right

And my need

For you to be wrong

Then we can just be

You be just you

And I'll be just me

And our power returns

To our own center

And we both find

God there

Waiting for us

Return to the Enotes index