March 22, 2015, Fifth Sunday in Lent: John 12:20-33
Brené Brown’s essay “The Power of Vulnerability” has remained with me since it aired as a TED talk in 2010—probably because power and vulnerability do not seem to belong in the same sentence unless it also contains the word versus. We associate vulnerability with those who suffer without power: children in poverty, refugees in crowded camps, civilians in war zones. These are the vulnerable—directly in harm’s way. We often feel the need to push vulnerability away from ourselves and onto those who are profoundly endangered.
Yet we all are vulnerable. Vulnerability is about our weak places, the soft points where we are least protected and can most easily be hurt. When I was in school for social work, I learned that one way of describing how the tragedy of incest can take hold is that some families have more points of vulnerability than others—perfect storms of tenuous employment, untreated addiction, weak marital connections, and histories of abuse. These are soft places where sickness and evil can get inside. A vulnerability is an opening.
Brown, a researcher and storyteller with a Ph.D. in social work, focuses on human connection—that thing which most fundamentally determines a person’s ability to thrive. As the research has long since concluded, we need connection. Brown adds the scientifically crazy assertion that the key to successful connection is the very thing most of us try to avoid: vulnerability.
