“Where your fear is there is your task” – Carl Jung So this, can be the equation, if you will, for vulnerability. Where you experience fear around leaning into the moment at hand = a potential opportunity for vulnerability. Therefore, in a sense, not one of us is ‘good’ at vulnerability – because vulnerability only shows up when we’re positioned in a way that we would deem to be uncomfortable – when we’re positioned in […]
One of the many ways we can feel better about ourselves is to become mindful of our thoughts. If we are unaware of what we are thinking, we’ll be unaware of the types of thoughts that are animating our lives. I like to think of thoughts as words that animate our lives because it helps us to think a little deeper about how, as the cognitive behavioural model of therapy would say, the types of […]
“Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, gives us access to the Creator to reveal hidden things and invites us to seek out our sacred responsibility to perceive God’s unscripted presence here and now,” – Peter Enns. The reality of Jesus offers to us not only an ancient story about the past, but, among other things, it reveals to us what relationship with the unseen Creator-God can look like in the present, as well. As well as […]
“We habitually stand in ournow and look back by faith to see the past filled with God.We look forward and see Him inhabiting ourfuture;but ournow is uninhabitedexcept for ourselves.Thus we are guilty of a kind of temporary atheismwhich leaves us alone in the universe while,for the time,God is not.”– A.W Tozer Here I like how Tozer draws attention to how we might be affected by living in our present world (and all of the difficulty […]
“I believe God is a fan of people connecting and I think the enemy of God is a fan of people breaking off into paranoid tribes. And I think all the clanging pots and pans in the kitchen to scare people from the territory we feel compelled to defend is playing into the hands of dark forces. I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people […]
Jesus to his disciples ahead of his crucifixion: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18 I’ve been thinking about Easter Sunday. And how like, I want to make sure I don’t lose sight of the warmth of the Easter-Sunday, Jesus-qualified hope of not being left alone. I want to make sure that in the aftermath of the Good-Friday death of the King – the King I’ve come to […]
What if, in our relationships with others, instead of being driven by a need to be ‘authentic’ we instead tuned our senses to moments of vulnerability? Sometimes I wonder if we are more concerned about striving to be authentic in the presence of others than we are about allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in the presence of others. And I wonder if we forget there is a difference between the two – that they aren’t […]
“If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.” – Brené Brown It’s pretty easy to absorb as true whatever are the social norms we are surrounded by. But when we do that thoughtlessly, we run the risk of discarding any experience or knowledge we feel and/or hold that lands outside of said social norms. What we want, though, in the communities of which we are […]
“Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough.You will always find it (the evidence)because you’ve made that your goal.” -Brené Brown And to build on this, I would further mention the sort of evidence you use to qualify the degree to which you belong any such place could also be the same information that has you isolated from a sense of belonging anywhere. Over the time I have spent as a counsellor, and […]
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” Matt 5:5 MSG I was thinking about how readily we absorb as our own whatever are the social norms that we are surrounded by, and how if we don’t do that mindfully, we run the risk of completely discounting any experience we feel that lands outside. Why does […]
anne-marie elizabeth 