Quotes about Vulnerability

When we lift the cup of our life and share with one another our sufferings and joys in mutual vulnerability, the new covenant can become visible among us. The surprise of it all is that it is often the least among us who reveal to us that our cup is a cup of blessings.

I will see great things when I am willing to be seen. I will receive new eyes that see the mysteries of GOD's own life, but only when I allow God to see me, all of me, even those parts that I myself do not want to see.

When we dare to speak from the depth of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. When we truly believe that we have nothing to hide from God, we need to have people around us who represent God for us and to whom we can reveal ourselves with complete trust.

We resist getting near the suffering of another partly out of our unwillingness to suffer ourselves.

But once I am able to truly confess my most profound dependence on others and on God, I can come in touch with my true self and real community can develop.

Healing encounters and deep communion with others come about from persons who have experienced at least a taste of love offering love to another, without manipulation or subtle games.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realized.

Often I have the impression that priests and ministers are the least confessing people in the Christian community

Truth does not mean an idea, concept, or doctrine, but the true relationship.

But real openness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge. When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community. It is this inner mystery that attracts us to each other and allows us to establish friendship and develop lasting relationships of love.

All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country.

And still, I knew that I would never be able to live the great commandment to love without allowing myself to be loved without conditions or prerequisites. The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realized.