This took me, quite frankly, by surprise. Whenever you go to the “Dashboard” of the WordPress template I use to operate this blog, it displays the number of posts, comments, and all the rest. I rarely look at the numbers, as I’m usually in a hurry to set up a new post, find...
Empathy…Illustrated!
posted by DJL
Anyone who has read this blog for long knows that I’m a huge fan of Brené Brown. I love her work on the centrality of vulnerability to authentic living. So I was delighted to see on her blog that the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA for short) recently hosted Brené for a presentation and then illustrated a portion of her talk. RSA Animated Shorts are a delightful way to bring a concept or idea to life and invite us to see it differently. The portion illustrated below is about empathy. One of her key findings is that empathy – the willingness to go where someone else is living...
Vulnerable God, Vulnerable Church
posted by DJL
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...
Daring Greatly
posted by DJL
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...
The Vulnerable God
posted by DJL
How do you picture God? I know that might sound like an odd question, but I have this hunch we all carry around a picture of God inside of us. On most days we might not even notice it’s there, but what that picture looks like greatly shapes not just our faith but also our outlook on life,...