Courage

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made."  David Whyte

Warriorship

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle.

You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin.

You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone, and marrow to the world.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

Obuntubotho

The essence of being human.  You know when it is threatened when it is there and when it is absent.  It speaks about humanness, gentleness, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable.  It embraces compassion and toughness.  It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. 

Leadership

"I learned that leadership was not about the warrior journey only, but about showing vulnerability as well.  Only when I stepped forward and showed my vulnerability, I cannot tell you how many women came and told me their own story and broke their silence.  It's ok to show vulnerability because we are not perfect and actually our imperfection is the beautiful thing about us; our struggle; it's not necessarily an easy dance.  It's a wobbly dance sometimes

It's like a black stone (she points to her chest) that dissolved from me and became a crystal.  That's the physical feeling that I literally feel.  I can tell you all of this and not cry.  It is out of my system.  My demon is out of me, but it took me years.  It was quite a painful journey and it took quite another kind of courage.  The courage to speak our inner truth, the courage to break our inner silence, the courage to show our vulnerability, the courage to say something as simple as 'I'm not happy' .  Courage is not planned.  Sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and just do it."  Zalnab Salbi

Vulnerability of Love

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your 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." CS Lewis

Prayer

"At it's deepest, prayer is a statement about causality.   Turning toward prayer is a release from the arrogance and vulnerability of an isolated and individual causality.   When we pray; we stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life.   It is an opportunity to experience humility and recognize grace."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Real Love

Subtle Degrees
Rumi

subtle degrees
of domination and servitude
are what you know as love

but love is different
it arrives complete
just there
like the moon in the window

like the sun
of neither east nor west
nor of anyplace

when that sun arrives
east and west arrive

desire only that
of which you have no hope
seek only that
of which you have no clue

love is the sea of not-being
and there intellect drowns

this is not the Oxus River
or some little creek
this is the shoreless sea;
here swimming ends
always in drowning

a journey to the sea
is horses and fodder
and contrivance
but at land’s end
the footsteps vanish

you lift up your robe
so as not to wet the hem;
come! drown in this sea
a thousand times

the moon passes over the
ocean of non-being

droplets of spray tear loose
and fall back
on the cresting waves

a million galaxies
are a little scum
on that shoreless sea

Honesty with Self

"Admitting who we are and what we want, recognizing our dependence and gratitude, puts us in a vulnerable position.   We learn that human strengths and abilities are always limited by weakness, tiredness, forgetfulness, bad habits and other imperfections.   These innate limitations awaken us to the ways we need others and compels us to appreciate how we are helped and sustained by our relationships.   Hiding from the truth leads only to the opposite; anxious self-protectiveness, isolation, fear and shame."  Polly Young-Eisendrath

Creating your own prayer

Creating your own prayer:

• Listen to the voices of longing in your soul
• Listen to your hungers
• Make a prayer that is: Big enough for your wild soul
• Tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability
• Has enough healing to gain the divine ointment of forgiveness for your wounds
• Enough vigor to challenge your blindness and complacency
• Enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty
• Worthy of your destiny to which you are called

John O' Donahue

Open

"There is no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different."  John O'Donahue