Vulnerable God, Vulnerable Church
Jan15

Vulnerable God, Vulnerable Church

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Vulnerability is a big theme with me – in life, in relationships, in theology. It’s one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of Brené Brown. In her TED Talks on vulnerability and shame, and in books like Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection, she writes candidly and movingly about the importance of being vulnerable and the challenges to doing so. It’s a key theological category for me because I think it’s what we see so vividly in the person and ministry of Jesus. Not only there, of course, as the God who commits to creation, gives over free will, offers laws and guidance, pleads for people to treat each other well, gets angry...

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Daring Greatly
Nov03

Daring Greatly

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Today’s poem is, well, not a poem. Rather, it is a portion of a speech given by Teddy Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in 1910. I was introduced to it by reading Brene Brown’s recent book, Daring Greatly, which is not only a fantastic read but whose title is inspired by Roosevelt’s...

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Love Weeps
Oct09

Love Weeps

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Is there a bad reason for going back to church? I was struck by Brene Brown’s confession that she went back to church for the wrong reasons. Actually, I know what she means. She went back to church to try to escape pain and instead found a community to help her endure pain, live with and...

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Petit Fours on 9/11
Sep13

Petit Fours on 9/11

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I haven’t written about 9/11 this week. I’d thought about finding an appropriate prayer or something like that to mark the day, but didn’t. I think that’s for two reasons. First, so much is out there you wonder what you can contribute amid the flood of material. Second, I still...

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Listening to Shame
May16

Listening to Shame

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Another video by Brene Brown, this time the follow-up to her earlier TEDTalk on vulnerability. After talking briefly about the personal repercussions of her previous Talk, she shares more of her research on shame. Shame is a powerful category in our lives and world that is, as she shows,...

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Real Community
Apr24

Real Community

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One more thing from Brene Brown. This time, not a video, but two recent posts from her blog. In the first she describes a recent experience she had writing for USA Today and the affect of unfiltered comments, some of which were incredibly insulting. As she writes: Ironically, the essay is...

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The Power of Vulnerability
Apr18

The Power of Vulnerability

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Most of life, I think, is a dance between our desire to be loved and accepted, on the one hand, and a desire to protect ourselves from being rejected and hurt on the other. The trouble is, these two desires are most often at odds. That is, the only way you can believe you are really loved and accepted is if you allow yourself to be really known. That is, you stop pretending to be someone else; otherwise, you can never know for sure if they love you or the person you’re pretending to be. But to allow yourself to be known is a risk. The person to whom you reveal yourself may not like you, or may reject you, or may run away from you....

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Grace Isn’t Pretty
Apr17

Grace Isn’t Pr...

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I’ve often thought that before the good news is good news, it’s bad news. Why? Because it’s so totally what we don’t expect. We expect fair, and we get generous. We expect justice, and we get mercy. We expect “getting what you deserve,” and we get grace. All those words –...

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