Powerlessness is Our Super-Power
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
Our hearts, comrades, like faith, get forged in the fire of powerlessness, and strengthened in the deep well vulnerability. This is a lesson that was hard won by me when I found myself many years ago at rock bottom, devoid of self-sufficiency, in the full grip of alcoholism and depression.
Countless hours have I spent since then on rickety chairs in windblown halls, near the back of beyond, with shabby shoe wearing, language of the heart speaking, misfit mystic God seekers.
To these shrines of powerlessness and vulnerability, we sober booze hounds flock to find a connection with the sacred through connection with each other. For when I see sacred in the other, blessing peace breaks out, deep within, and I get up close and personal with the living Spirit who and gives love and life to every living thing.
The modern mystic Thomas Merton said:
We are all people walking around shining like the sun.1
Naked indeed do I stand, before the mystery that the spirit of love shines brightest within myself, only when we see the sacred shining like the sun in the other.
This is a vision splendid connection thing, where vulnerability is the key, and powerlessness is king. To see the living God in the other, I must shed my skin of ego-centric self-sufficiency, grasp my trembling vulnerability by the hand and fully embrace my powerlessness
It’s all about the other, and nothing makes me more open and approachable for the other than hard won humble-hearted marks of vulnerability and powerlessness.
Sacred light attracts sacred light, comrades, to see the light in the other, they must be able to glimpse it in my unmasked self. I must enter the vulnerability and powerlessness space where no masks are allowed so that they feel confident to approach, revealing their own sacred light in the process.
Albert Einstein said:
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe…Our task must be to free ourselves from self-centredness by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The ship of powerlessness and the train of vulnerability are ever widening compassion vessels that lead the willing to the land of the humble-hearted where the embrace of all living creatures is the main game and only aim.
Or to put it another way, vulnerability and powerlessness are spiritual tools that make the journey to the other possible. The destination is the land of plenty where, with vision splendid, peace breaks out and I see the sacred shining like the sun in the other, every other.
“There is no community without vulnerability, and there is on vulnerability without risk.” Some risks in the crazy life, comrades, I just must take, and this is the ultimate risk worth taking. I must shed my skin and ditch my masks.
Vulnerability is our greatest strength, and powerlessness is our superpower. May the light shine in you!
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart
- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 140-142. [↩]