SERMON
March 5, 2017
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
You know the expression: take the edge off.
Get a drink at the end of a stressful day to take the edge off of that tension. Turn the TV on to take the edge off of that boredom. Get a drink at the party to take the edge off that anxiety. Crack a joke in an awkward moment to take the edge off of that discomfort.
In the edge there is vulnerability.
Vulnerability is not so much a choice but a reality of life.
We are vulnerable – vulnerable to loss, vulnerable to heartache, to doubt, to failures and flaws, to uncertainty, and hurt.
Our choice is about how we respond to this vulnerability: do we enter into it? Or do we push it away, build defenses, lash out, shut down…?
Indeed, the word vulnerability comes from the Latin: “to wound.” No wonder we run away!
But in taking the edge off, what do we miss out on?
The researcher and author Brene Brown has studied vulnerability extensively.
She conducted interviews and collected huge amounts of data about how our lives are shaped by the “struggle with shame and the fear of not being enough.” She analyzed the data for common characteristics of people who were resilient in the face of adversity and who were living what she calls a “wholehearted” life. ((http://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2014/04/brene-brown-and-the-gifts-of-imperfection/))
Emerging out of that huge data set were some clear patterns. She says:
The Do column was brimming with words like worthiness, rest, play, trust, faith, intuition, hope, authenticity, love, belonging, joy, gratitude, and creativity. The Don’t column was dripping with words like perfection, numbing, certainty, exhaustion, self-sufficiency, being cool, fitting in, judgment, and scarcity.((https://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Imperfection-Think-Supposed-Embrace-ebook/dp/B00BS03LL6/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1))
It turns out that everything in the Do column is linked with vulnerability. Everything in the Don’t column is linked with escaping from vulnerability.
Brown confesses that her initial reaction to those two lists was horror:
I thought I’d find that wholehearted people were just like me…: working hard, following the rules, doing it until I got it right, always trying to know myself better, raising my kids exactly by the books…
So, she packed up her research and hid it under her bed for a year-and-a-half!
Then she went to therapy and church, and once she was able to practice befriending vulnerability, she was able to continue with her work.
She came to this conclusion about people who live whole-heartedly:
There are two things [whole-hearted people] shared in common. The first is a sense of worthiness – they engage in the world, with the world, from a place of worthiness. Second, they make choices every day in their life, choices that almost feel subversive in our culture. They are mindful about things like rest and play. They cultivate creativity, they practice self-compassion. They have an understanding of the importance of vulnerability and the perception of vulnerability as courage. They show up in their lives in a very open way that I think scares most of us.((http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/bren%C3%A9-brown-how-vulnerability-holds-key-emotional-intimacy))
So let’s think about how vulnerability is related to each of those elements of what she calls a “whole-hearted” life.
LOVE
As Leonard Cohen sang: “Love is not a victory march.” When we love whole-heartedly we risk getting hurt – by the other person, by loss, by our own failings.
FAITH
As Brene Brown said, “Faith minus vulnerability is fundamentalism.”((“Shame and Vulnerability” Video with Brene Brown on www.theworkofthepeople.com)) True faith is inextricable with doubt, with risk, with vulnerability.
BELONGING
Belonging both creates and undoes us. ((Pádraig Ó Tuama – http://onbeing.org/programs/padraig-o-tuama-belonging-creates-and-undoes-us-both/)) Oh, the vulnerability of opening oneself up to a community: where we can find belonging, yes, but where we will also inevitably be wounded, be stretched, be obligated.
CREATIVITY
Oh, how vulnerable to create something and put it out into the world! To say: I made this! I tried this! I have this idea! …The vulnerability of judgment, of failure.
AUTHENTICITY
Living into what makes us feel alive. In our world, that is a vulnerable place to be: because of all the voices that say we are not enough, that we have to fit into a mold, that we have to be smaller, or bigger, or more “normal.”
REST & PLAY
These are both vulnerabilities in our culture in large part because we are still influenced by the Protestant work ethic. That phrase gets thrown around a lot, but here are its roots, which begin back during the time of the Puritans, our nation’s beginning: The Protestant work ethic came from the belief that hard work, frugality, and discipline were a result of a person’s salvation.
Look at that line of causality. Not that a good work ethic resulted in salvation, but that a good work ethic was a result of your salvation. This might seem backward until you remember they believed in predestination – the belief that it has already been decided who is saved and who is not. They wanted to limit membership in their churches to the saved. So they had to come up with a way to know who was saved and who was not. They decided one could tell based on their hard work, discipline, and frugality.
This is how we inherited perfectionism and competition – we are all constantly measuring ourselves and each other against this moving target of success. I think this is why anytime we ask each other, “how are you?” a very common response is: “busy.” We need to account for our time. We cannot be caught resting or playing!
JOY
Brene Brown says the most terrifying, difficult emotion for us to experience as humans is joy. Often what happens when we start to soften into joy is we get this little “shudder of terror.” It happens to me every time I gaze down at my two-year-old sleeping in the night, or as I watch her laugh with abandon… I feel this need to pull back from the joy a bit, because I get this flash of “I might lose her – something awful might happen to her.”((http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/dr-brene-brown-joy-gratitude-oprah_n_2885983.html))
Brene Brown says:
When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding: ‘I’m scared it’s going to be taken away. The other shoe’s going to drop…’ …We try to beat vulnerability to the punch.((http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/dr-brene-brown-joy-gratitude-oprah_n_2885983.html))
HALF-HEARTEDNESS
So out of a low tolerance for vulnerability, in all of these areas we often live half-heartedly, which Brene Brown says is the opposite of whole-heartedly.
We don’t go all in because we want to hedge our bets. We think by protecting half of our heart, we’ll be less hurt…but perhaps it’s not true.
C.S. Lewis said, that we can
“Lock [our heart] up safe in the casket or coffin of [our] selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
So by embracing vulnerability and all of that which it opens into…we can live life fully…we can live fully ALIVE!
WE DON’T KNOW HOW!
So, why is it that so often we don’t? I know sometimes I don’t.
I want to shut down, to numb out, to stick with my defaults.
I don’t think it’s that we are cowards.
I agree with Brene Brown when she says that we most of the time, we just don’t know how to risk vulnerability.
But the good news is that we can practice. And you might just be in the right place this morning to learn those practices!
100% of the time, Brene Brown found that people who were whole-hearted did so with the help of spirituality. ((“Shame and Vulnerability” Video with Brene Brown on www.theworkofthepeople.com))
She defines spirituality as:
…the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to each other by something greater than we are, and something that’s about love and compassion…((“Shame and Vulnerability” Video with Brene Brown on www.theworkofthepeople.com))
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
So, what are some spiritual tools that help us practice approaching vulnerability? There are so many!
The trick is to practice all of these not from an approach of fixing, of perfection, of certainty, or success.
Practice these from a place of surrender, curiosity, humility before the mystery…
Gratitude is a spiritual practice. Brene Brown found that people who could soften into joy all had regular practices of gratitude. Practice means regular, intentional practice. Some people make a gratitude journal. The practice of gratitude shapes us so we can lean past that shudder of terror and fall into joy.
Meditation is a spiritual practice for vulnerability. The American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron talks about meditation as a way of softening us. …Of helping us approach the places that scare us and befriend them, even the anxiety, heartbreak, and rawness. Through meditation, we can practice our heart’s ability to respond to vulnerability by opening rather than hardening.
This is how Brene Brown describes her practice of faith, and of prayer:
I thought faith would say, I’ll take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying is, ‘I’ll sit with you in it.’ I never thought until I found it that that would be enough. But it’s perfect. I don’t feel alone in it anymore.((“Shame and Vulnerability” Video with Brene Brown on www.theworkofthepeople.com))
Some of you have heard the story of when I first found a Unitarian Universalist Church. I had been going through a difficult time; I was alone a lot; and I hadn’t been to a church of any kind in years. I found a local UU church and started attending sporadically at first. I think the first dozen times I attended, I mostly just sat in the back and cried. I needed to feel that pain in a place, a community, that could help hold it.
The truth is that none of can sit with pain alone.
Whether we are in the company of God, Goddess, Love, the ground of Being, a friend, a community…we need that accompaniment.
And so for some, coming to church can itself be a spiritual practice – of sitting with one another as we bring both our individual and interconnected joys and sorrows, our searching and discovery.
In beloved community, these can all be held.
May it be so.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
