As I sit at my kitchen counter, looking north over Lake Erie, the cloudy late-afternoon winter’s sky is streaked with grays and pinks; the lake, a steel blue streak across the horizon, gently moving water reflecting light back at the clouds. A gull is lifted by the breeze. I am touched – softened, opened – by Life’s beauty. I breathe in peace and spaciousness, a constantly changing tableau.
The root of the word ‘vulnerable’ means ‘able to be wounded.’ Yet vulnerability is also our ability to be touched: by the beauty all around us, by the uncertainty and gifts of the flowing moment; touched by one another, learning to trust and be trustworthy; touched by memories, by art; touched by Life’s evolving forms, including the mystery and wonder of the wise body and beautiful heart.
The power of vulnerability comes from the mystery of Life: Life evolves because we are all vulnerable to one another, in what Thich Nhat Hanh called, “inter-being.” We must learn to adapt to the Covid virus. And to all viruses, bacteria, fungi, plants, neighbors, and siblings. To all weather patterns and movements of Earth’s tectonic plates.
Our political and climactic context is daunting. Our task is to learn to use the super-power of vulnerability to respond to the collective challenges facing us as individuals, as communities, and as a human family.
We are living in a culture where collective power has been systematically shaped by the few for their benefit, with no regard for the common good. And where the power of advertising, psychology, politics devolves to click bait and scaring people who become locked into fear responses and scenarios.
Imagine what can happen when we learn to share the exponential collective power of vulnerability and inter-being.
We have a lot to learn. And we are not alone. Others are also sitting with this urgency and invitation, looking out their windows, looking to each other, in spiritual communities and justice-centered groups all around the world.
Our congregation exists to support one another in showing up as we are: Practicing being vulnerable in public, so that we may free and follow the deepest, wisest yearnings and guidance of the beautiful heart, in harmony and benefit to the world around us.
We are each that gull, soaring over the beautiful lake. And together, we are also the breeze lifting the gull, and the lake, waving and holding and reflecting it all.
In vulnerability, Rev. Mary
