Vulnerability

vul-ner-a-ble
adjective
1. capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon: a vulnerable part of the body.
2. open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc: an argument vulnerable to refutation; He is vulnerable to bribery.
3. (of a place) open to assault; difficult to defend: a vulnerable bridge. 

Warning: Proceed with caution. This is loaded and long and now may be very truncated as it was too much of all of that...

Over time I've become more vulnerable and open with people, this blog being one example of that though the fact that I've told 5ish people about it (that was a burst of vulnerability right there), remain anonymous and have no link online connecting me to it anywhere else on the internet does not bespeak of great vulnerability. I'm okay with strangers whom I will never meet reading, but the thought of opening this up to my social sphere is definitely too personal. I want to maintain my freedom to let this blog be what it has become- a conglomeration of musings and a supplemental, less personal and detailed addition to my real pen and ink journal.

As a sub point, I was recently thinking about how truly heartbreaking circumstances and struggles help unearth the beautiful transformation that trials bring about. They birth depth that was often there all along in people, or recently grown, but now presses at the seams of a person, begging to come forth. I think this largely happens, because the one who has struggled knows that sharing with others not only helps to heal themselves, but gives a gift to those who hear. On the topic of pain, here is one of the most beautiful thing I have read lately: Letter to the Wounded #2 by Ann Voskamp 

[...]


All this takes vulnerability- stepping out and taking chances in spite of what the result will be, all the while knowing that often you won't experience what you wish for. It's learning how to balance intentionality and letting the flow of life, God's beautiful story, sweep you away. It's opening yourself up to being misunderstood, judged and betrayed, to loss and disappointment. On the flip side, it's dipping deep into the wells of grace, of truth and beauty. It's living community and doing life together. It's opening yourself up to personal growth and transformation. It's seeking after best instead of good or present comfort.  

And because I know just how vital vulnerability is to my life and the life of others around me, I have grown in this area, but I dance with it. Sometimes I take one step forward and two steps back. Finding better ways to assess when and to what extent to engage in this, and learning how to let go of the past instead of dancing backwards when I regret it, has been a journey that I've been on for years. Because being vulnerable is not always wise or good, or as put recently by a wise friend, "Just because something is genuine, doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean it's good". As humans we are attracted to the real or genuine. In that same vein, just because something is nice, doesn't mean it's good. But true relationship can't grow without it and so it must have a place somewhere in our lives.



There are some Tedx talks by Brene Brown circulating on the internet about vulnerability.
I love so much of what she has to say. Here are a few things that popped out to me, with a few personal comments in parentheses.

• Brene's definition of courage: "To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart- the courage to be imperfect."  
• What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. 
• The core of vulnerability is shame, fear and a search for worthiness AND the birthplace of love, joy and creativity. 
• Society numbs vulnerability more than ever through debt, obesity, distraction, addiction and medication, but you can't selectively numb emotions. If you don't embrace the bad- feel the pain, you cannot embrace the good. 
• Culture tells us that we are not good enough, certain enough, don't have enough (thank goodness for Jesus, my all and all)
• Still not convinced that you should be vulnerable? The cost of invulnerability is: Extremism, perfectionism, low grade disconnection from all that happens around you and living in dissappointment
• We try to make everything uncertain certain - stop trying.
• Somehow an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life. (Sometimes the simple life looks so appealing... Rich and healthy in ever respect.)
• Ordinary moments are often where we find the most joy, we miss the ordinary in our quest for the extraordinary. 

                                             The Power of Vulnerability: Brene Brown

The Price of Invulnerability: Brene Brown

So my advice, do dip deep in the well. Be honest with yourself and others. With discretion, share yourself and cherish what is shared with you. Don't be that person that doesn't listen when someone entrusts a piece of their heart to you. Don't be that person that never shares (this is actually a trait of an unsafe person, believe it or not). Don't be that person who says that you care- that you want to invest in relationship and then make no effort to follow up on your words and walk away when approached. Do press on.

A Never Ending Love Affair

Music. I began my relationship at 5 and now I'm almost 25. Actually, it probably started in the womb. My father graduated with a degree in vocal performance and my mom was an amateur violinist and flutist. It didn't take much for my parents to give in when my older brother begged to play the violin as after watching a fiddler on Sesame Street. Like most younger siblings, I quickly became jealous and not long after began myself. I tried to quit numerous times, but with sage parenting practice, my mom held her ground. I remember being so angry and frustrated at times that I would cry on my violin as I either sawed away angrily or surrendered to the torture of another practice session while I bitterly thought about how everyone else my age was having fun. Early on I made a goal- to catch up to my brother and it wasn't long before I succeeded. Then middle school hit. It was a particularly difficult time for me and violin was one of the few forms of expression I had. I started have success with some competitions and had my first solo debut with a professional orchestra. When you are 13, getting a phone call informing you that you've won a competition with a cash prize of $1,000 feels like winning the lottery. And so I carried on, throwing myself into this craft, because it was my voice, because I wanted/needed to become independent post high school and, because it was what I knew.

When I was 15, a music professional that had known me for years asked if I would like to teach and began referring students to me. That was the beginning of my teaching career. I also did some gigging with my semi- serious string quartet that had weekly coachings with a MN Orchestra cellist after school. My proceeds covered clothing, toiletries and miscellaneous things like school fees and supplies. During my junior year of high school I began studying with my most beloved teacher, Mary Drane West. Mary was a God send and many times when I have thought about quitting I remember my time with Mary- how she inspired me, how she believed in me and how she managed to have me produce sounds that I didn't know were possible. Without Mary I would not be where I am today. She prepared me for conservatory auditions in a few short months. I had never studied the repertoire necessary to be admitted to these top notch schools. I returned home the summer after my freshman year excited to come back and see her, take lessons and as I shared this, a friend told me that Mary had passed away. It had been very quick. At the age of 97 she was still doing everything she always did, wearing her bright red lipstick, playing ping pong, going to performances, and teaching 40 students weekly until two months before her death. She lived a full, beautiful life and in many ways she is a role model for me. I have a pact with my best friend that we will never retire from life- someday we'll build an airplane in our basement, but we will never sit in a retirement center talking about the weather and birds. Mary is my perfect role model for never retiring, never settling for what should be if it's not what could be.

Doors kept opening and at each juncture of the path I questioned myself about whether it was really deep down what I wanted, and what was right, but at each step of the way I could confidently say, "this is where God has placed me now" and each time it became more apparent in retrospect.

During my post audition talk with my current teacher, he told me that I was born to be a musician- to play the violin. Apparently, I am a duck and violin is my water. Maybe there is some truth to this. It does run in the blood on one side of my family. I learned over the holidays that two of my great grandfathers were fiddlers and I've known for quite some time that I have a distant relative who ironically used to also study with Mary, compete in the same competitions as me and graduated from a top tier conservatory. I've had many teachers tell me I'm so talented and that this is what I have to do, because I'm gifted. They see potential and push, often so hard that we have a turbulent start. All the while, I question if this is really what I want, but I know what I want. I want to do this and so much more. The problem is that this is already so incredibly encompassing that there isn't room for more. People talk about the high points and how that keeps them going. It's true- it really does help, but for every mountain top there are hundreds of valleys. It takes every ounce of your intellect, heart, creative spring, spirit, will power, focus, discipline, physical energy to keep going. You will have to face and conquer a host of psychological battles that threaten to take away the product of your years of blood, sweat and tears. You cannot think about yourself, you cannot be nervous- it isn't an option. You must have confidence in yourself, in your technical and communicative abilities, you must project authentic ease, calm and warmth to your audience. You must remain graceful and calm under pressure handling every curve ball that will inevitably come with poise and perseverance. The battles are daily, hourly and the mountain tops weekly to bi- yearly.

Tonight as I listened to a colleague playing Bach's famous twenty minute Ciaconne, I asked myself if my someday plan of pursuing other professional skills and careers was another outworking of my common struggle with devaluation. My reasoning went like this- if my career struggles too much or I find that I can no longer endure this lifestyle and mountain top to valley ratio, or I become injured then I can always go back to school for these other things. Devaluation- yes, but I do truly want to do these things. I sometimes wonder where I would be today and where other natural inclinations and abilities would have taken me had I not be nurtured in a musical home from the cradle. Sometimes I just want to be normal- whatever that means, but really- be able to come home from work and have whole evenings to cook and relax -to not have this constant feeling of I- should- be- practicing- right- now and to not always be known as the girl who plays the violin. I want to have the time to explore other things I enjoy and can contribute to.  It's a terrifying profession, especially for someone who struggles with being confident in her abilities, battles nervousness and seeks security. It's hard to find work, hard to keep it and financially very unstable. Being judged and criticized all the time, is just part of the job description and hard to stomach especially when just as much judging happens off the stage. To be successful or even survive one must learn how to navigate the political arena and constantly initiate. Sometimes I ask myself if all the good things are enough.  I wonder if I can be satisfied feeding souls, inspiring people, bringing joy and healing others in a way that is often not readily apparent. I want to see the effects of what I do. I know deep down that God blesses us with gifts, that we are to be good stewards and use them, but this shouldn't be the defining factor in what a person chooses to do with their life.  

As I drove home, my mind was busy, rolling with thoughts like a marble painting a page. (Writing this is my way of organizing those tangled roll patterns.) I parked my car I sat listening to the simple fiddle tune that was playing- I just had to hear the rest. I looked out my window and saw a beautiful sinuous tree with it's strong, but elegant branches, fanned out like veins and then I saw it as a large paint brush- silhouetted against a dark, silver gray sky and chimneys of a century gone by. It was so beautiful- all of it, the tree, the music, but mostly the music and really it was the music that caused me to see the tree this way. It was the music that caused me to see beyond the obvious. As I listened, I had this realization that music and I are now so tightly bound that I will always have a magical connection to it. It will always be more than just a large part of who I am. I love the expression, the communication and the nuance of sound. I love that it's my voice- at least one of them. I do love that the violin is the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. I love the color palette. I love that it can invoke so many emotions.  I love that it comforts, inspires, educates and rejuvenates. I love that it's ambiguous, yet concrete. I love that it's like an adventure book- you can go anywhere. I love that it challenges every part of who you are personally and as a human. I love that it's spiritually significant and in so many more ways that we can only conjecture about. It's my song without words.

Josef Gingold (my musical grandfather) playing Song Without Words 

Because 

this

is

what 

is waiting 

for me...

 

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT
by: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

N the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

 

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

 

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

 

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

Wisdom from Africa

I'm taking a course on African American Music, which I honestly wasn't too enthused about until lectures started. It's proving to be a very interesting way to spend my time and I thought I would share a few things that have stood out to me thus far. As a disclaimer, let me say that this does not mean that I think one form of music is better than the other, only that there is much to learn from differing styles and perspectives.

1. African music is a marriage of music, dance and poetry. 
Here are three beautiful art forms happening simultaneously. We have auditory, visual, intellectual (not that the other two aren't intellectual - believe me, I know just how intellectual music performance can be) expression all intertwined, touching all the senses. Music is a physical and intellectual practice and the way that western society has separated these things into neat little categories puzzles me. It seems these things were not separated in scripture.

As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing an dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. 1 Samuel 18:6

2.  Horrendous things, like slavery, happen slowly, one step at a time.
Contrary to what I remember being taught, African slaves were not just brought to the U.S. from West Africa. In fact, they lived for many years as indentured servants or as free land holding members of early American society. When two white and one black indentured servant ran away before they had served their full, agreed upon time, a court ruled that the white men would serve an additional few years and the black man for the rest of his life. This was the beginning of slavery in the United States. Small scale injustice or treachery can creep in quietly and before long you have something as widespread and insidious as slavery across a country, which also later contributed to something known as the Civil War. (I say contributed, because the Civil War was not primarily about slavery, but we'll save that for another time.) Be judicious in saying something will or can never happen, to do so is usually ignorant and foolish.

3. African music contributes to community in larger, more tangible ways than most western music. 
Much of West African music involves call and response, where the one calling is responsible for leading the rest of the group and constructing the lyrics and dance moves. This alternation between people creates a sense of community- they are not alone in their endeavors, but are part of a collective group with the same aim.

Finding Faith in the Faithful One

Journal Entry
10/31/12

"[ ...] Held in the arms of love... This was the image and words that God gave me as assurance that he had and would continue to sustain me while I was praying and listening to Great Is Thy Faithfulness on the eve of Friday. He did - sustain me. And now as I sit in shock with a heavy heart, the words "strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow" seem even more applicable. I just learned that Greg is about to enter hospice care and has been told he has weeks to live. Somehow I naively thought, or rather hoped, that this 5th battle would be no different than the others, that he would emerge alive, a stronger, more faith filled man of God, overflowing with zest for life. I want to have faith that moves mountains like the woman who touched Jesus's garment and was healed through her faith in God's love and inconceivable power. Instead, I find myself pondering questions and crying out for God's mercy all the while believing that science and human logic will prevail. Is praying "thy will be done" a halfhearted faithless act? Is it resigning myself to sit and watch rather than railing at the gates of heaven for change? Where is my faith? Oh God, that you would grant me a mustard seed."

 I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to here' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. -  Matthew 17:20 

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

The Priceless Mark

I recently found myself spending a large amount of time over the course of a few days with a few individuals, which left me emotionally depleted. It wasn't so much that I'm an introvert and was unable to have my alone time to re-charge, but rather the content of that time. Don't get me wrong, I like these people and could easily list off their positive characteristics, but the effect of our time together warrants reflection. The conversation that occurred with these said people did two things. It caused exhaustion due to it's superficial and circular nature and caused me to start feeling like I was somehow very, very different than the bulk of my peers and thus somewhat isolated. I was reminded of what is "normal" for people my age, American society as a whole and realized how unaccustomed to it I have become through the distance that has grown as I've buried myself in my school work, keeping up with  my boyfriend, friends and the day to day necessities of life. What I was immersed in over the course of those days was nothing new, but it struck me in a  fresh way. My distance from it all had caused the polarity to become more vibrant and visible.

Then, what inevitably seems to happen to many people happened to me. There was a sense of weariness and a bit of questioning about the path I am on and just how straight and narrow the path must be. It wasn't as if the wider path with lollipops and cotton candy was more attractive compared to the path with fresh lilacs and crisp, clean air. It was the quiet rumblings of questions as they called forth thoughts about intentionality and just how important it was to not waver to the left or right for even a minute. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to not just live your life and aimlessly wander off the path.

What followed next was the realization that I am very glad I am an abberant person. As I listened and reflected, I realized just how lonely and empty these people were-how they were grasping, searching for the intangible through the tangible and how time after time they failed, left with scars. And then sympathy seeped in. How do you entreat someone to join you on  the hard, but beautiful path when you know their eyes have been blinded, their minds confused and you will only be rebuffed?

Fast forward a few hours and I am sitting in church listening to a sermon in which my pastor makes a very applicable point. Rev. 13 contains the famous passage about the number 666 or mark of the beast, but what follows immediately in Revelation 14 is information about the juxtaposing mark - the mark of God on his people. We were challenged to live as one marked by God on our hand and forehead- by our deeds and thoughts. The path before me is good and I praise God that I am marked with the priceless mark for eternity.

Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.
(Revelation 14:1-5 ESV)

Because the Beatles are fantastic...

Eleanor Rigby is about as serious and direct as the Beatles get with their work. You can hear the hopelessness and questioning, yet there are no answers given. The song ends abruptly with no no conclusion.

                                       All the lonely people... Where do they all come from?

Stating the Obvious

Stating the obvious never makes sense to me, unless of course it is what you need to do for clarification or legal documentation purposes. It seems so devoid of thought- of the intellectual ability that God gave us when he created our minds. So often conversation with others seems to revolve around what is immediately observable and well, obvious without need for verbal comment. Perhaps it's a manifestation of great amounts of sensing being used. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but personally, I eventually find the lack of something more to be boring and limiting. Why stop at step one when there is so much more?

In my room, which was formerly a theological library and is now a fine art and personal affects storage site, there is a stack of journals from various family members. In these journals, daily happenings are described in the most straightforward, concise way possible. Content includes who came to visit and when, what the weather was like, what birds were sighted that day, who had their birthday, etc. The authors were not elderly when writing, I assure you.

When conversation stalls and people don't know what to talk about it, why not take a leap sometime and instead of talking about the weather, the decor or what you are going to do that week it might be time to take a leap into the unknown and go deeper, to ask what their opinion is on a current happening, why they like something, how something has changed them, what advice they could give on a certain topic etc.  Or maybe just silence could happen? A time for silence, when all fruitful and aimless chatter ceases...

" Silence does not mean dumbness, as speech does not mean chatter. Dumbness does not create solitude and chatter does not create fellowship."  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer