Vulnerability and Weakness
In the stillness of quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. Howard Thurman
Gregg’s Reflection
I am an Enneagram 8. The EnneaApp gives this description: These children often grew up in an unsafe environment (emotionally and/or physically) and had to mature way too soon. They didn’t feel safe to show any vulnerability, and may have felt controlled. Weakness was used against them, so they focused only on building their strength. They hold a core belief that it is unsafe to be weak and vulnerable.
So, you can see how vulnerability and weakness would be hard for me. I spent 50 years propping up the idea that I was strong, competent, worthy. That is because I felt just the opposite. I grew heavily invested in being the ’expert.’ Getting an Executive MBA helped me overcome my imposter syndrome, but I still wasn’t willing to be vulnerable.
After we built our cabin, I began to have annual men’s leadership retreats for our church, CityChurch Eastside in Atlanta. The third retreat, Bryan Buck, then our assistant Pastor, and now the Founding Pastor of Oaks Parish in Portland, challenged me to open up and be vulnerable.
As the retreat was winding down, I spoke to the guys after dinner. I shared the pain of my journey, my failure in my Lutheran project, and let people see under the mask. This moment marked a shift when I let go of being the expert, and began to live into what it means to be an elder.
An amazing thing happened. Many of the men who had held me at arms length before, began to reach out. My opportunities to coach and mentor these young leaders flourished. Once I had shared my own weakness vulnerably, it gave these young men the courage to open up about theirs. What a blessing it has been to learn that vulnerability and weakness can be wonderful gifts we give each other. So, come along on a journey into the risky land of vulnerability and weakness.
Blessings, Gregg
Journaling Prompts
How hard is it for you to find places and spaces to be vulnerable? In a culture that values strength, what does weakness look like in your life? What does it mean to you when Scripture tells us, “My grace is sufficient, for power is made perfect in weakness?”
Scripture
A life that recognizes and confesses vulnerability is a life of well-being and power through God. It is a life that sends people to God for wisdom and security. It has room for such seemingly weak and trusting acts as prayer and prophecy and involves releasing our tight grip on all our arrangements for power so that God may inaugurate hopeful newness.
Rebecca Gaudino, RENOVARE Bible notes on 2 Kings
For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death, He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.
Psalm 72:12-14
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:26
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
1 Corinthians 1:27
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly in my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
2 Corinthians 12:9
Ancient Writings
Act in such a way that your humility may not be weakness, nor your authority be severity. Justice must be accompanied by humility, that humility may render justice loveable.
Pope Gregory I
Pray, even if you feel nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer.
Julian of Norwich
Modern Writings
In the stillness of quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.
Howard Thurman
Nancy Pelosi recalled a saying she’d once come across: “It said, ‘When one day I go happily to meet my creator, he will say to me, “Show me your wounds.” And if I have no wounds he will say, “Was nothing worth fighting for?” ’ You’ve got to be proud of your wounds.”
David Remnick, Nancy Pelosi’s Art of Power, New Yorker, 8/8/24
The Divine Choice of Weakness
God chose to enter into human history in complete weakness. That divine choice forms the center of the Christian faith. In Jesus of Nazareth, the powerless God appeared among us to unmask the illusion of power, to disarm the prince of darkness who rules the world, and to bring the divided human race to a new unity. It is through total and unmitigated powerlessness that God shows us divine mercy. . . .
It is very hard—if not impossible—for us to grasp this divine mercy. We keep praying to the “almighty and powerful God.” But all might and power is absent from the One who reveals God to us saying: “When you see me, you see the Father.” If we truly want to love God, we have to look at the man of Nazareth, whose life was wrapped in weakness. And his weakness opens for us the way to the heart of God.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 7/16/20
Sharing our Weakness
True healing mostly takes place through the sharing of weakness. Mostly we are so afraid of our weaknesses that we hide them at all cost and thus make them unavailable to others but also often to ourselves. And, in this way, we end up living double lives even against our own desires: one life in which we present ourselves to the world, to ourselves, and to God as a person who is in control and another life in which we feel insecure, doubtful, confused, and anxious and totally out of control.
Often I became aware of the fact that in the sharing of my weaknesses with others, the real depths of my human brokenness and weakness and sinfulness started to reveal themselves to me, not as a source of despair but as a source of hope. As long as I try to convince myself or others of my independence, a lot of my energy is invested in building up my own false self. But once I am able to truly confess my most profound dependence on others and on God, I can come in touch with my true self and real community can develop.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 7/27/21
When God looks at us, God can only see “Christ” in us. Yet it's hard for us to be naked and vulnerable and allow ourselves to be seen so deeply. It is hard to simply receive God's loving and all-accepting gaze. We feel unworthy and ashamed. The very essence of all faith is to trust the gaze and then complete the circuit of mutual friendship.
Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, p. 94
Vulnerability: A Divine Condition
We live in a finite world where everything is dying, shedding its strength. We look for something certain, strong, undying, and infinite. Many of us envisioned God as strong, complete, and all-powerful—a God removed from suffering. In Jesus, God comes along to show us: “Even I suffer. Even I participate in the finiteness of this world.”
The enfleshment and suffering of Jesus reveals that God is not apart from the trials of humanity. God is participating with us in it. Living it alongside us and with us. That is what gives us eternal purpose and hope. Through encountering the Living God in our pain, we can experience another kind of life, another kind of freedom. Pain and beauty constitute the two faces of God. On the one hand we are attracted to the unbelievable beauty of the divine reflected in the beauty of human beings and the natural world. On the other hand, brokenness and weakness also mysteriously pull us out of ourselves. We feel them both together.
Only vulnerability forces us beyond ourselves. Whenever we see true pain, most of us are drawn out of our own preoccupations and want to take away the pain. For example, when we rush toward a hurting child, we also rush toward the suffering God. That’s why so many saints wanted to get near suffering—because as they said again and again, they meet Christ there. It “saved” them from their smaller untrue self.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 8/1/21
To reach the unveiled part of ourselves that is deep enough to express the most profound and untamed aspects of our being means learning how to love and be loved without defenses and without obstructions. It means cultivating the capacity to be emotionally present even when we feel exposed or vulnerable; learning to relinquish the many strategies we have employed to feel safe and in control; and finding the courage to love without guarantees or requirements. Through developing the capacity for intimacy in this way, we discover love as an abiding presence in the emotional center of our being, our heart, and from that moment on, we will never again feel emotionally disconnected, incomplete, or unloved.
Most of us have defended and protected ourselves for so many years we have lost direct access to our hearts; we do not know how to love in an unguarded way. We keep waiting for the right circumstances, the right partner, the right moment to be vulnerable….
When we allow ourselves to be known and loved for our essential openness, which can feel both vulnerable and exhilarating, and choose to know and love another, totally and without reservation, we arrive at the heart of intimacy. It will lead us beyond our current limits and defenses until we eventually know ourselves and another at our most vulnerable and authentic levels.
Ultimately, intimacy is about the freedom to be ourselves. True emotional freedom means no longer needing confirmation, agreement, or validation from another to know our basic goodness. Knowing our intrinsic worth, we are able to be present with ourselves and our partners, whatever the circumstances. This freedom means no longer being defined by our personal history. It means being who we are essentially, unencumbered, and undefended. . . .
When we open our hearts to the wonder of the journey and search through the pain for the truth of our experience, we begin to glimpse a new light that will guide us deeper into ourselves, below our insecurities and the broken dreams of our lives. There we will meet our whole, undamaged, and pristine essential self [or True Self]. In touch with this essential self, we can experience powerful levels of intimacy while engaged in the most ordinary behaviors. This is the promise of undefended intimacy. This is the satisfaction of the longing to love and be loved, directly, immediately, and without restriction.
Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons, Undefended Love, p. 15, 22, 23
We long to love from the fullness of our undefended hearts and we long to be loved unconditionally and without reservation. . . . The dual yearning of the human heart finds its satisfaction in the struggle to know ourselves at our most vulnerable levels. The deeper we know ourselves, the deeper is our capacity to know others intimately. . . . It is our deep hunger for this level of loving that moves us beyond our resistance, fear, and shortcomings to see what is special and unique about us. It allows us to see the profound core of another and to have that core be fully seen in ourselves.
Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons, Undefended Love, p. 14, 15.