Quotes About Vulnerability

My life was in her hands .

Ich bin auf Erfahrungen angewiesen, die ich nicht begrifflich fassen kann, die mich hilflos machen und von daher narrativ.

on the one hand she had boundless trust in me, merely because I was thirty years older, a childish trust, and on the other hand no respect at all. I was vexed to find I expected respect.

We know Satan will attack weak spots first. Forty days of fasting left Jesus famished, so Satan began with the topic of bread. Jesus' stomach was empty, so to the stomach Satan turned. Where are you empty? Are you hungry for attention, craving success, longing for intimacy? Be aware of your weaknesses. Bring them to God before Satan brings them to you. Satan will tell you to turn stones into bread (Matt 4:3). In other words, meet your own needs, take matters into your own hands.

Better to pray awkwardly than not at all.

The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The Creator of life being created.

As they walked back to the laundry, Brave Orchid showed her sister where to buy the various groceries and how to avoid Skid Row. On days when you are not feeling safe, walk around it. But you can walk through it unharmed on your strong days. On weak days you notice bodies on the sidewalk, and you are visible to Panhandler Ghosts and Mugger Ghosts.

Probably all babies, having recently been nothing, have a tenuous hold on life.

The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.

It is alarming to feel the soul Leap to the surface and find no sheltering wall.

When we speak of being vulnerable, it suggests being especially vulnerable to pain. People for whom personal dignity and self-sufficiency are everything, do all they can to shut it out. Noli mi tangere. They are well aware that any intimate relationship has pain in it, forces a special kind of awareness, is costly, and so they try to keep themselves unencumbered by shutting pain out as far as it is possible to do so.

If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.

I had found one of the places on earth where any sensitive being feels exposed to powerful invisible forces and himself suddenly naked and attacked on every side by air, light, space - all that brings the soul close to the surface. There the poems flowed out.

one of the privileges of old age was that no holds were barred. You were permitted to be absolutely honest.

the thread of communion when two human beings, whatever their age or sex may be, give themselves away. It does not happen often; it never happens lightly, and when it has happened, there is a bond between the two that nothing can never wholly destory.

She had not imagined that she would be so fertilized by a human being again.

A teacher cannot become too human or too vulnerable, or he ceases to be the rock every young person needs.

if people know nothing about love they will always make it into a sexual matter. The limit of what I longed for with X was simply to lie down somewhere beside her and to hold her hand - Why that? Because words were not a possible means of deep exchange between us, because I longed so to rest in her, to believe too that she might rest in me.

Love opens the doors into everything.. including, and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.

Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.