How to resist your vulnerabilities

The way Superman beats Kryptonite Man is in a Kryptonite resistant suit. Evidently. I don’t really know, but google says so (Note from the nerdy editor: He also recharges by getting exposure to the sun- there’s probably a good metaphor in there somewhere as well).

How do we beat our vulnerabilities? How do we live out of our virtue and not our fears, frustrations and freak outs?

Well, now, that’s a long story.

But the same experts who teach us about our virtue and the assaults on our virtue that result in us justifying the unjustifiable and living in anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust and sloth suggest that it has to do with practicing spiritual disciplines that have the unique capacity to protect us from our particular form of kryptonite.

So maybe...we too need to acquire a suit that is resistant to our vulnerabilities.

10-12 And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. 13-18 Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.

~ Ephesians 6:10-18 MSG

Learn how to apply them. This seems important.

To be continued...

Sometimes we lose touch with our virtue

Superman was the embodiment of the image of God. He stood for truth, justice and the American way. He played roles in cartoons, television and film (so very successful - our icon of a Super Power!). Superman had extraordinary gifts - great strength, the ability to fly and other super powers. In my research I found this statement describing him: “the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, as described by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Spake Zarathustra (1883-5).” Who knew?

But Superman was not all “virtue” - he had his vulnerability. His was kryptonite. Kryptonite is a green crystal whose strange emission of radiation renders Superman weak and sick. Harmless in small doses to mere mortals, it was toxic to Superman.

If it is true that each of us is born with a particular virtue, than those that believe this also purport that we have our own unique kryptonite. When we lose touch with our virtue we freak out. Because we are created to live with the capacity for expressing this particular virtue that represents the character of God, when we lose touch with this “image of God bearing” self, we are in a state of discomfort. Our dis-ease forces us to try to soothe ourselves; we justify why we can let go of our divine call to show up and represent God; we choose instead to grab for something that makes us feel more comfortable and less vulnerable. This is the way kryptonite works on us - but in very particular ways. Our vulnerability is directly related to our particular virtue.

The way we justify? Through resentment, flattery, vanity, melancholy, stinginess, cowardice, planning, vengeance and indolence.

How these justifications manifest themselves? Through anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust and sloth.

To fully understand these vulnerabilities we would need to unpack them in detail. As best as you can tell from this inadequate description, what is your kryptonite?

What is your kryptonite?

Venture further with me into my imagination and what you might notice is the way I am thinking about how each of us shows up in our respective communities in this one particular “way” (virtue) AND when we all keep showing up, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Could this be true? I hope so.

It takes a bit of the weight off, right? When I am faced with the potential to “bear God’s image” - that is pretty overwhelming. But created to hold and carry and share one particular part of the image of God? That sounds awesome.

Additionally, it allows for the need for all of us to show up for community, which I happen to believe with all my heart. But do we have to show up and be all the parts of God? No way! That’s codependency run amok!

Again, I can breathe. Because it occurs to me that if I was created to bear one particular part of the overall image of God, maybe I am uniquely created to thrive in the bringing of this one true thing. But I am NOT responsible for bringing all things. Just one.

For example, I can bring the courage, but courage isn’t the only characteristic of God needed for any and every situation. Our community gathers once a month for a potluck dinner. We have stopped trying to keep lists and control the outcome. Some months we have mostly desserts (my favorite months), other times we make all the carnivores among us extremely happy as we have loads of meat but few veggies. Once a month a potluck is a fun adventure. But on a daily basis, I strive for more balance.

Daring to believe that we all have one primary virtue (don’t drag out the analogy too far, we can at various times be virtuous in other ways too) that our tribe desperately needs us to bring to the table helps me wake up to both my potential and my problems.

In a truly paradoxically and balanced fashion, it turns out that for every virtue, there is an equal and opposite temptation to be lacking in virtue. If my virtue is courage, then I am more prone than others to be plagued by cowardice. See how that works?

This self-awareness can be a huge motivator for further exploration. But for today - think about this: what is your virtue? What is your kryptonite?

You DO have a virtue

Lately I’ve been wrestling with what it means, really means, to be created in the image of God (and our propensity to forget this truth). I’ve known this truth for many decades, but what exactly does it MEAN? When the scriptures tell us that the earth is God’s footstool, does that mean that we can be larger-than-life figures who can also rest our feet on earth like it’s a trendy pouf (those little round footstools in cool fabrics)? No. That cannot be right.

Do you know anything about the enneagram? If not, here’s a piece of it that pertains to this discussion. According to the enneagram, there are 9 “types” that represent each of our driving motivations. One aspect of this tool is a description of how each number has a particular “virtue.” Here are the nine virtues: serenity, humility, authenticity, equanimity, non-attachment, courage, sobriety, innocence and action. In this system, a holy virtue is the type-specific gift that each “type” has the capacity to contribute to the world.

This concept has caught my imagination. It has made me return again and again to this biblical notion that mankind is made “in the image of God” and I wonder - do each of us have the capacity to bear the image of God in a very specific, particular way?

I do love this idea; I hope it is true. I am intrigued to imagine that my baby body came pre-wired with the capacity to hold one particular characteristic of God.

For the next few days, we will wrestle with what this might mean for each of us. In the meantime, I wonder: do you have a sense of which virtue you are most capable of bringing to the world?

Forgetting to Remember

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler co-starred in a movie way back in 2004 called “50 First Dates”. The premise was sad and cute. Drew is in an accident that leaves her incapable of remembering anything. Each morning she wakes up and hasn’t got a clue what’s up. Adam Sandler loves Barrymore’s character but he cannot woo her a little bit at a time. He has to woo her every single solitary day. Lots of madness and mayhem add to the comedic effect but cannot fully disguise the tragedy of being a person who cannot remember the love of their life once they fall asleep each night. Drew and Adam figure it out; they learn how to work with the disability.

We have a similar disability. We forget, resist remembering, however we want to frame it - knowing and living out the most important realities of life as a faithful people.

Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them...God looked at all of this creation and proclaimed that this was good - very good.

~ Genesis 1:27, 31

My friend with the abusive husbands? She will tell you and anyone who listens that she is only “good” when she is dangling from the arm of a man who gives her expensive stuff. The young man who caused our car accident cannot seem to remember that all his driving mishaps were HIS FAULT!

My grandson, at only two years of age is developing amnesia too. It is developmentally appropriate amnesia, but it is amnesia. Prior to the age of two, it didn’t occur to my grandson that people he loves might leave. I’m not talking abandonment! He’s at that age when he doesn’t like us to leave the room we’re playing in. No potty breaks for Meme! No grabbing a cup of coffee from the kitchen without Christian looking up from his play and saying, “Meme. No leave Christian Tommy. Sit.” It is all very endearing. Never in his life has anyone left him...and not returned. But he’s getting old enough to wonder if someday that might happen.

My seven month old granddaughter has none of these issues. She is confident, as he was at that age, that the world revolves around her. Her people do NOT leave.

I am fascinated by this process of remembering and forgetting. I am extremely concerned to realize that we can forget things that are true - even without obvious reason to become forgetful.

We need to figure this out. What do we do? How do we change this propensity to forget? We’ll talk more about this in future days.