The art of vulnerability

by Jo Cox-Darling.

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, Wounded Wisdom was held at Highgate House in May and was attended by around 25 people. The subtitle was Discovering Healing and Hope – Words and Wisdom for these days, and the content addressed how our minds and bodies try to cope with the sense of woundedness and vulnerability which are a familiar result of wrestling with all that the news and daily life throw at us. The speakers were Jo Cox-Darling and Brian Draper, who also prepared papers for the Spectrum annual study guide, which we also share through on Theology Everywhere. This is part one of six forthcoming articles.

The art of vulnerability

by Jo Cox-Darling.

“Wounded Wisdom” carries connotations of Henry Nouwen’s famous work The Wounded Healer.  Nouwen, and the now controversial Jean Vanier, have been responsible for a fundamental shift in pastoral theology, emphasising the importance of leadership being vulnerable and located amongst those who are marginalised for being different – rather than being the best of the best.

When military hierarchy are asked what sort of person succeeds in becoming a Navy Seal, the response is that there are groups of people who regularly don’t!

• Star college athletes who’ve never faced anything tough
• Tough guys wanting to prove that they are tough
• Leaders who constantly delegate their work to others

The people who get into the Navy Seals are those who, when they are exhausted, still dig deep inside themselves and find enough energy to help others. Research discovered that it is service, not strength and intelligence, which makes the best of the best.

Might our discipleship journey be similar? As a Church we constantly tell ourselves that we’re tired, ageing, declining, and dying, but what if that is only part of the story? What if our story is one of servant-hearted, wounded, wisdom deep within the Kingdom of God?

Dare we dig deep, and from the place of our pain, vulnerability – perhaps even fear and shame – find something of Spirit which enables us to serve the other… whomever that might be.

As Henri Nouwen writes in ‘The Wounded Healer’: “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish… Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

Elsewhere, Brene Brown, whose research has been grounded in places of genocide, division, racism, and abuse survival, argues that in order to be fully human, creative and courageous – people need to share their stories of vulnerability and shame.  She says,

‘shame happens between people and it heals people…shame loses power when its spoken…Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it… Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light… The willingness to tell our stories, feel the pain of others, and stay genuinely connected (…) is not something we can do half-heartedly.  To practice courage, compassion, and connection is to look at life and the people around us, and say I’m all in.’

To live in the power of wounded wisdom leads us to a place of vulnerability where we get to know some of our scars and traumas – not to poke or to fix – but to hold with tenderness, and the invitation to curating a shared space of wholeheartedness, together.  To provide to the world an antidote to disconnection and brokenness which leads us into a place of authenticity, intuition, creativity, play and rest.

Wounded wisdom is tender work, asking much of our selves and of each other.  It also asks much of the God we know, and risks losing sight of that altogether.  This journey can be experienced as much as God’s presence as it is in God’s absence. 

It is possible to be so wounded and broken that faith seems utterly pointless. But these moments of desolation and disillusion can also be the catalyst for a whole new discovery of God. Through the wounds, the breaks, the pain, God is present and can be discovered – and this wounded wisdom can mean that the world is never the same again.

Questions for reflection:

• What are your core values, and what is sacred for you?
• What woundedness are you bringing into the room?  Where do you find wisdom?  And how might they be interconnected?
• What does it mean for us to be ‘all in’ to our lives?