Morning at the Creek
Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature… David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)
I’ve been sitting with what to write in the wake of violent events for some time. It seems an unavoidable question these days especially after last weekend’s attempted assassination.
Just after 9/11 I wrote an essay shared with colleagues and friends, Most Important Now is What We Think. I shared it in a weekly post some four years ago as we navigated the Covid pandemic.
We feed ourselves and we feed the collective with our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Healthy food in multiple forms surrounds us, reminding us of who and how we need to be in tumultuous times. Yet all too often we grab junk food.
I think of my friend, author, activist Rivera Sun’s words from The Dandelion Insurrection: Be Kind. Be Connected. Be Unafraid. Simple. And not so easy in our reactive world. Choosing this way of being requires us to be mindful. To think before we speak. And perhaps it asks that we be willing to be vulnerable, willing to discover and to speak our deep truth. Willingness to not join the chorus of negativity that pervades media and can so easily reel us in.
A Facebook meme currently making the rounds offers a reminder: “Post wisely over the next months. Contribute to discourse, not division. Check your facts. Resist memes and cheap digs. Create beautiful content. We can transcend the bitterness and be better, even when we disagree.”
Yes, I get that I’m sharing a meme that suggests resisting memes, but this one is near and dear to my heart, a heart visited with pangs of sadness as I saw cruel and crude comments posted after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Some of them were posted by friends and revered colleagues whom I know and love, and all prompted in me to wonder yet again ‘what will it take for us collectively to understand that our every thought, word, and deed is contributing to the collective and to what we experience in our world?’
Yes. My thoughts, words, and actions. Your thoughts, words, and actions. You and me, not just those of the talking heads whose words and deeds all too often seem hollow and desperate. Each is a vote either for continuing the discord of separation, polarization, and violence OR for taking a step toward unity consciousness and co-creating that as our reality on Mother Earth. We all matter to the greater whole!
As I often do when settling in to write this weekly post, I’d pulled a book from the nearby shelf, David Whyte’s Consolation: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (I LOVE this book!). Opening it to the contents page, I’d wondered what word would step forth. Courage? Maybe crisis? Despair? Anger? Honesty? Just as the book had a few moments earlier, ‘vulnerability’ came forward. I sensed it was the needed word. I read the short essay, and then I knew.
Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and, most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilise the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege, and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human – and especially of being youthfully human – but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance; our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
I read it aloud. I read it again. I listened to Whyte himself read it as part of an interview some years ago (listen here!)
I saw vulnerability as a doorway that I must walk through more fully and more generously on my journey in this chapter of life. I saw unpleasant glimpses of my futile attempts to avoid the natural vulnerability that is life here and now when I forget Source. I see that it’s time for me to pivot from avoiding vulnerability to embracing (or at least befriending) her. I sense vulnerability’s gifts and consider how I can open to receive them.
In the conflicts and violence of our world I see the high cost of collective efforts to avoid vulnerability. We favor guns over guitars, propaganda over truth, prisons over restorative justice, protection from over engagement with others, and so much more.
So, I move into this day, putting my toes in the stream of vulnerability, moving from avoidance to exploration, and then on to befriending and hopefully embrace. Where will opening to vulnerability help heal our fractured world? I wonder …
Toes IN!