Vulnerability and the One That I Am

My heart hurts for a friend, who opened her heart to another and the other chose to walk away. She gave completely, he took completely, then left. Left, I suspect, because, in his woundedness, he didn't know what to do with this precious gift. He may not have recognized it. My prayer is that she not take this upon herself or vow never to open again.

Vulnerability is difficult, even in the safest circumstance.

In our culture, we layer so many filters on top of our True Selves that we forget who we are, how we are. Much of the burden is the armor of our woundings, also our human need to feel in charge. Visually, I think of Adam and Eve in Paradise, naked, unburdened, content. That is how we are meant to be. Not clothed and hiding in darkness.

I remember in junior high all of the snickering when we watched films from a couple who traversed Africa. We were embarrassed by the nakedness. Even that young. The blatant, unassuming nakedness of Africans going about daily business. Perhaps we yearned for that same freedom.

Wouldn't it be simply energzing to strip ourselves and walk around with nothing to hide? It takes impossible amounts of energy to cloak our True Selves. Behind masks, material things, feelings, emotions, experiences, expectations, failures, mistakes, attitudes, stereotypes, roles and anything else we can latch onto.

Offering/pastel & paint on paper

One of the most courageous people I know has gone to great lengths to be who he really is, who he has always known he is. Assigned the wrong sex at birth, he eventually came to terms with his True Self thanks to a wise therapist and family support. He has taken extreme, but honest, measures to become more of who he is. He is a guiding light of exposing himself, being vulnerable.

That's one of the greatest lessons I desire to each my daughters: Be who you are! Not who I want you to be, who you think I want you to be or who anyone else feels you should be. With two teens, I observe them struggle to work this out. They're not even sure. Why should they be? Neither am I about myself.

Except I know for fact that that's all God really wants of us: to be our Truest Self. Vulnerability is one of the hardest destinations on the spiritual path, but the best introduction is to begin in prayer. In that quiet silence, I can remember who I am and, layer by layer, undress and give my naked self over. When I am really still, I unwrap my heart and offer it to God. That's all she wants from us.

Yet, complex as we humans are, we have to muck it up, draw it out and make it darn near impossible. And so often, when we give in that way to another person, we are wounded. Or, at least, we see it that way. Usually, it has nothing to do with ourselves, our True Selves, but the other, who can not accept or reciprocate.

When my girls were babies, I loved taking a bath with them, then holding them skin to skin, naked to naked. That's exactly how Spirit likes us, naked to naked. Nothing between. 

How amazing is that when we can also do that with another human? And, if we are burned, we have to do it again and again. Otherwise we lose who we truly are.

• When am I most vulnerable?
• How have I experienced acceptance of that?
• When was I wounded as a result?
• Have I let that fester or air out and heal?
• When am I naked to naked with Spirit?


so heavy
the accumulation

years
of waxy buildup

molten together
in an awful
swampy color

and the stripping
painful

until the
lightness is
tangible

stirring
the
remembering

awakening

the one
that
I am

Listen to this post:

Flying under the radar

Listen to this post:

Can't seem to get this little guy – I think he once told me Antonio was his name – out of my head. He's an elementary-aged student, probably seven or eight, in a school for autism-spectrum kids that occupies a part of the building where my art studio is located. As I come and go, I encounter him, with his kind and patient aide, at recess.

The first time we met, in the stairwell, he introduced himself with a big grin and asked my name. His outgoingness seems atypical of the other students.

A few weeks ago, in warm early-winter weather, I arrived at the time he was returning from an outdoor visit. The aide was holding the door as Antonio trailed behind, cupping something in his hands: earthworms. He held them up to show me, then nudged them closer in case I wanted to touch them. I politely declined. His aide remarked that the child "likes to take care of all the little creatures." I responded "He has a big heart, doesn't he?" The aide shook his head in agreement and Antonio parted my company repeating: "I have I big heart, I have a big heart ..."

I thought of Antonio yesterday when an ugly, ancient-looking beast of a bug straggled out of somewhere and crawled across my studio carpet. Happily, it's the only bug I've ever encountered there. I trapped him with a paint cup, slid a sheet of clean, white card stock underneath and traveled to another room ... several doorways down the hall ... opened the window and let him go. "Be free, my friend," I said feeling somewhat guilty as I released him into a colder climate than the one he'd been enjoying. Just not guilty enough to let him share my space.

What would Antonio have done? Let him crawl up into his hands? Let him stay inside?

Antonio is a wonderful reminder to pay attention to the small things in life, the little creatures, which are as much a part of Spirit's world as we. The boy reminds me of a little creature flying under the radar of the "normal" world, possibly at its margins in a better place of his own making. One filled with ordinary things many of us miss or merely bypass. How could earthworms, who really just lay there and wriggle around in their stickiness, strike tenderness in anyone's heart? Because they are living beings and part of God's Creation. Antonio seems to intuitively know this.

The concept of living at the margins has spoken to me ever since I first read about it in Henri Nouwen's work. An accomplished theologian, teacher, scholar and writer, that's where he chose to live the last 11 years of  life: among the most needy and castoffs in the Daybreak community for those with mental and physical disabilities near Toronto, where he is buried.

In a 1994 Christianity Today interview, Nouwen said:

"Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. I find it very important to stress that we are wounded healers; we don't have to run away from our vulnerability as if we don't hurt."

Maybe Antonio is confronting his vulnerability in the earthworms. I have grown to appreciate my reminder of vulnerability: each time I hear the whimpers, moans and cries from the school on the other side of my studio wall. At first, I prayed until someone knowledgeable about autism said it's more of a release than communication of pain. And yet is IS a call to vulnerability, to expose our wounds and pain.

Henri Nouwen believed so:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

• What or whom has been my reminder of vulnerability?
• How have I expressed or uncovered my wounds?
• How have my wounds become my gifts?
• How am I the wounded healer?
• What stretches my heart?


such a simple
act, one of
childhood

that, as adults,
we overlook

tending to
the little
in life,
the low-to
-the-ground

when a
grounding
is what may
push us

closer
to
Spirit