Take Heart

  The graphic is a quote from Brene Brown's 2021 book, Atlas of the Heart : "Courage requires the a willingness to lean into uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure."  This is a follow-up to my original post ( Part 1 ) because it's related to vulnerability, but a different topic. Part 1 was about the way I use the world vulnerable in prayers, and how Brene Brown's definition of vulnerability made me think my own definition. At the same time, I also reacted to her writing about vulnerability in her new book by thinking, It's time for the church -- in my personal context, the United Church of Canada -- to get vulnerable.  Churches are closing but people remain hungry for spirit, searching for community, committed to faith. The church, so entrenched as an institution, so mired in its own archaic structures, so committed to dogma and liturgy that isn't evolving, needs to see vulnerability not as a place of weakness but a place of potential.  It needs to see