The Practice of Self-Vulnerability

This month is National Blog Posting Month (colloquially referred to as NaBloPoMo) which is a community sustained challenge for professional and personal bloggers to publish one post every day of the month. I've committed to NaBloPoMo on my personal blog for the second year in a row in hopes of tapping into a new level of writing inspiration and motivation. Less than a week into the challenge, I feel like I have instead tapped into new levels of incredulity because I have subjected myself to this challenge again despite the struggles I had last year.

When I first attempted the challenge last year, I assumed that the hardest part would be carving out time every day to devote to writing a blog that I felt was worthy of publishing. While that has certainly been part of my struggle, this year I'm realizing that the actual hardest part is listening. In order to blog successfully and authentically every day, I have to more deliberately listen to what I'm thinking, feeling, and experiencing throughout the day which requires a level of self-vulnerability I didn't anticipate when I decided to take on this challenge.

This unexpected experience is much like what I went through during the Enneagram sessions that Wellspring offered the past two weeks. While I recognized that a certain level of self-work would be necessary to discuss personality types, I didn't expect to have to look that deeply at what motivates some of my most deeply entrenched ways of being. I had mentally prepared myself to be extra attentive to the presenter and to other people in the session but not to myself.

The strange thing that I am learning from the NaBloPoMo challenge along with the Enneagram sessions is that in order to be attentive and even vulnerable with other people I have to be willing to be vulnerable with and attentive to myself. In order to be honest and present with others, I have to practice being fully present with myself.

For me, that means giving myself time to breathe and center myself. It means quietly acknowledging feelings when they arise, even if I’d rather gloss over them. It means praying daily for the patience to be still and listen.

What about you? What does it look like for you to be present with yourself? How do you practice self-vulnerability?

- Angelique Gravely

Rethinking Communion

For as long as I have seriously thought about Holy Communion, I have thought about it as a mostly personal portion of the service. The time leading up to Communion is probably the point in church when my focus is most drawn within myself. I spend that time reevaluating my relationship with God, recognizing how more often than not I have fallen short in many ways, and remembering that through Christ and his loving sacrifice on the cross I am offered forgiveness, hope, and a way to do better. Then, as I partake of Communion, I marvel at so much love, grace, and mercy being offered by someone so holy to someone as unholy as me.

That was the sum of my thoughts during Communion until two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I went away to the Franciscan Spiritual Center for three days to dialogue with a small group of Christians from various theological and geographical places about sexual diversity in the church. After hours of sharing stories, thoughts, laughter, and tears with each other, we ended our last session with Communion.

As our facilitator held the bread and the cup to pass around our seated circle, she explained that before we passed the elements to the next person we were to say a blessing we wished for them to receive when they returned to everyday life. That one unfamiliar act she asked of us—to bless each other as we passed the body and blood of Christ—opened my eyes to a side of Communion I had never seen. Suddenly, Communion wasn’t simply about my relationship with God, it was also about my relationships within the body of Christ. Communion wasn’t simply a moment to consider how I could better reflect Christ, it was also a moment to consider how I had seen Christ reflected in the people around me.

As each person provided an intimate, unique blessing over their neighbor, I felt a sense of deep connection like I had never experienced during Communion. Here were thirteen people from different theological stances and approaches putting those differences temporarily aside in order to love each other, to love God together, and to jointly reconnect to that ultimate love evidenced by Christ on the cross. Here were thirteen people recognizing God at work in the people around them and praying that God would continue to pour into them and fill their needs. Here were thirteen people truly reflecting the body of Christ.

For the first time in my life, taking Communion was both deeply personal and deeply communal, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that is how Communion was meant to be. Personal, communal, and utterly sacred.

- Angelique Gravely

Let the Chair Hold You

Right around the time I moved to Philadelphia, I got struck by a memory from my brief time studying in Oregon—a memory I haven’t been able to shake. We were just starting a contemplative body exercise, and the spiritual director urged us to let our chairs hold us. Fidgeting in my seat, I wondered how I was supposed to “be held” by the chair anymore than I already was. By sitting down in the chair, wasn’t I already letting it hold me?

As if sensing my confusion, the spiritual director added that too often when we sit in our chairs we hold up our own weight rather than letting the chairs fully support us. We let our bodies take on more work than necessary, because consciously or unconsciously we feel like they should. One of the major lessons of the exercise was to remind us to accept support for our bodies when it is given. 

Over the past couple of months, I have been learning that the lesson from that exercise applies to far more than simply how I sit in my chair. Just as I have a tendency to hold my own weight even when a chair is provided, I also have a tendency to try to completely support myself even when help is all around me. I struggle to accept support from other people, because I feel like I shouldn’t need help from anyone or else I will become a burden. But just as people have provided chairs in order that my body might be supported, God has provided me with a multitude of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in order that the rest of me might be supported as well. And as I have repeatedly found myself in situations during my post-college transition in which I need support, it is has been a helpful lesson to learn to be more accepting of the support offered to me.

It has been valuable to be reminded at work, at home, and in the community that it is okay to need to lean on someone else. It is okay to have to ask for help. It is okay to let yourself be held up by your chair and by those around you.

- Angelique Gravely