Tomorrow? Our March 2011 kit, INSPIRATION!
February 2011 Inspiration - Vulnerability
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Journaling Prompts
Strength and Weakness: What have you thought of as a vulnerability that turned out to be a strength? Are there areas of your personality that you thought made you strong, but tuned out to be liabilities in certain situations? When others' vulnerabilities come to light, do they remind you of your own? Do you feel compassion and a kinship with someone who shares your weaknesses, or would you rather ignore that truth?
Your Body: Do physical limitations or infirmities impact your life? What parts of your body have been subject to injury? Does your mental or emotional state affect your physical well being? Are certain areas prone to weakness? How do those areas connect with your state of mind - does pain in certain part of your body reference your emotional pain? Do you consider yourself a robust and strong person?
On the Edge: What feels precarious about your future? Does the transient nature of life frighten you, or are you at peace with it? Are there specific areas where you feel that instability more heavily - in your intimate relationships or your work? How do you manage uncertainty or fragility? Are you able to experience life with fluidity, or do you attempt to control the outcome of certain things?
Exposure: Are you able to be open and honest in your life? Does your answer differ in different relationships? What allows you the freedom to be open about your thoughts, feelings and beliefs? If you're not as open as you would like, what would you need to know to allow yourself that freedom to be vulnerable?
Dependence: Whom and what do you depend on to create a sense of security? Are you good at providing that for yourself, or are you more free to allow others to care for you. If different people have allowed you to be safely vulnerable at different times, why were they the right person for the right time?
Music
Quotes on VULNERABILITY
In the beginning, people think vulnerability will make you weak, but it does the opposite. It shows you're strong enough to care. Victoria Pratt
There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community. M. Scott Peck
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
No one ever kills himself for the love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness. Cesare Pavese
It's so sad how we can go through life hating people, thinking that they are so different from us. It is only when we see them at their weakest point, seeing their vulnerability, that we start to realize how similar we all actually are to one another. Unknown
It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second. John Steinbeck
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. Carl Sagan
We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. Walter Anderson
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round 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. C.S. Lewis
Love is not love until love's vulnerable. Theodore Roethke
He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points. Ayn Rand
If you will discipline yourself to make your mind self-sufficient you will thereby be least vulnerable to injury from the outside. Critias of Athens
With each passage of human growth we must shed a protective structure [like a hardy crustacean]. We are left exposed and vulnerable - but also yeasty and embryonic again, capable of stretching in ways we hadn't known before. Gail Sheehy
We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked... not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable. Liv Ullmann
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. Helen Keller
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Joseph Addison
Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others. François de la Rochefoucauld
Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable. Joyce Brothers
What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it. Starhawk
As earthly creatures continually subject to relative disappointment, pain, and loss, we cannot avoid feeling vulnerable. Yet as an open channel through which great love enters this world, the human heart remains invincible. Being wholly and genuinely human means standing firmly planted in both dimensions, celebrating that we are both vulnerable and indestructible at the same time. Here at this crossroads where yes and no, limitless love and human limitation, intersect, we discover the essential human calling: progressively unveiling the sun in our heart, that it may embrace the whole of ourselves and the whole of creation within the sphere of its radiant warmth. John Welwood
You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death. Dan Millman
If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place! Thomas Hardy
Armed I am with love. Disarmed I am. Manuel Alegre
I honestly do not know if love vanquishes death as our traditional faiths teach but I do know that our vulnerabilities trump our ideologies and that love leavens the purity and logic of our beliefs propelling us to connect as the fiercely gracious human beings we are. Irwin Kula
Love is not love until love's vulnerable. Theodore Roethke
Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our "beauty" so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air. Naomi Wolf
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed. Nathaniel Parker Willis
People who know me know I'm strong, but I'm vulnerable. Catherine Deneuve
For the current of our spiritual life creeds, rituals and channels that may thwart or help, according to their fixity or openness. When a symbol or spiritual idea becomes rigidly elaborate in its construction, it supplants the idea which it should support. Rabindranath Tagore
As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery… we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness. Dalai Lama
The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are. Dr. Paul Tournier
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on it's vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to it's security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. Adlai Stevenson
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