Keeping Our Center ~ Day 83

Over these many weeks I’ve found that the reflections I receive the most feedback about are the ones in which I’ve shared a personal story or personal feelings and allowed myself to be vulnerable. It doesn’t mean I was weak, it means I was consciously risking showing you part of me in hopes that you wouldn’t smash my ego to bits, but that you would be able to relate and we would connect on a spiritual level.

Spirituality is relational. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists because of a connection between us and the Essence of All That Is, whether that is a mystical connection, or a connection with another person, your dog or cat, nature, music, poetry, art or whatever.

The pastor I finished my student pastoring with was an excellent pastor and a really good preacher, but she hardly ever shared anything about herself in a sermon. Not that everything should be about the person preaching, but an occasional anecdote is nice. Anyway, she rarely allowed herself to be vulnerable. It took me until years later to understand that she most likely felt she had to protect herself, for reasons I won’t go into here. And I get it. Still, at the time I knew that there was a key element of connecting that was missing because she was afraid to let anyone past the wall she had erected.

As Brene’ Brown states in her book, Daring Greatly, “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences. Perhaps this is what we’ve lost in our modern, achieving, consuming, independent, dog-eat-dog world. We risk our true selves much less, we don’t like to ask for help, we shut down or shut out when we’re hurt, we don’t typically ask others their story, and no one asks us what our story is. We wonder if anyone truly cares.

I’m not saying we need to let it all hang out on Facebook, either. I do personally believe there is such a thing as over-sharing. And we do need to be judicious about who we share with. But, if we’re going to make honest progress in this world around racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and so much more, we have to risk sharing our stories and feelings, and we have to risk really listening to others.

Love & Light!

Kaye