Vulnerability, Privacy, and Advent

(The title image is Michele de Ruiter’s Flight to Egypt. See this and more at Michiele’s Etsy page, Luxuria Print Studio.)

The more mature we are, the more vulnerable we become. To be vulnerable literally means to be wound-able. (The Latin vulna means “wound.”) To be maturely vulnerable means a select few know us at our deepest level, and it becomes a secret strength to know that we are known. Like a lighthouse in a storm, trials assail us, but we remain unshaken where it matters: the flame of a good conscience guiding those tossed about within the same storm we endure.

But an inverse dynamic is also at work as we mature. Parallel to vulnerability is privacy. We cultivate a completely private world aligned with the vulnerable one, a secret garden¹ where we are truly ourselves—with all our weakness and uniqueness mixed in equal measure—before the original Gardener, the One who planted Eden. This is essential because we must take care to not lose our souls in a Black Friday world. We must guard against the primary currency of the age, a storyboard sequence of seduction, exposure, betrayal, and revenge.

This is why the Virgin Mary is a champion example to us. She led an intensely private life. Early tradition says her once-childless parents, Joachim and Anna, dedicated her to a life of prayer at the Temple as a child.² Then, as a betrothed teen weaving cloth for the Temple, she was at home immersed in the study of the Torah and the prophets when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her. ³

Nevertheless, her very private life also contained a calling to absolute vulnerability. As Simeon the elder had prophesied, a “sword pierced her heart”⁴ before a watching world as she beheld the agonizing destiny of the holy child she had borne after virtually all his friends had fled. We can see from her life that healthy privacy and absolute vulnerability—along with total surrender—go together. This is the model for us if we hope to mature into whatever we are designed to do and to be, as Mary did.⁵ There is no other way.

But there’s an additional cost. When you mature in both vulnerability and privacy, you are in great danger of losing friendship with your current culture and its trending values. Practically, this translates into a loss of reputation, a loss of relationships, and a loss of revenue. For no matter what the popular mantras are, they revolve around the same thing: the imaging of ourselves to preserve these three earthly essentials.

No one needs coaching in how to cloak themselves in an image acceptable to those who provide the Big Three. It is second nature to do so. And it’s not always wrong, but sometimes necessary if we are attempting to authentically communicate our nature and our values. Take, for example, the rebranding of the Wynn Las Vegas resort by owner Steve Wynn. In 2006, his team exercised a colossal degree of intentionality around a single photograph—it could only be taken during the eight- to twelve-minute window of time at dusk called blue hour—to show that the Wynn was a place of rich solitude, an oasis from the garish and lurid image Vegas can sometimes present. It worked. Luminous replaced flashy for the resort’s public image. People stay at the Wynn for its composure, not just its casinos.

But there are two other ways we image ourselves to others that are more subtle. Let’s explore those.

In our 21st-century hyper-social-media world, one way to image ourselves is through hyper-transparency. But it is not the sort of openheartedness that serves others; rather, it is a sort of baring of the soul, vulnerabilities included. Some do this unwittingly, taking their cues from what others do. But here’s where the image darkens: some present their wrongs and their destructive ways as if they were also vulnerabilities, mislabeling them in the name of honesty. This sort of transparency is not vulnerability at all, but a demand for validation bordering on manipulation. It is as if the barer of the soul is saying: “I dare you to not accept me; I dare you to disagree; I dare you to try to course-correct me. For if you do, then I can flip the script, play the victim, and brand you as wicked. Then all shall declare you a leper and shame you away from the place of influence. And my own image shall shine as the righteous one.” When we encounter such pretenses, we should flee them.

Another way to image ourselves is by enhancing our appearance through putting others down. Instead of humble vulnerability that puts heart in others, we cover ourselves with a self-made mantle of blaming others. And there is no one who makes a riper target for our blame than those who, with humility, walk openly in their incomplete and unperfected selves. The vulnerable ones are the woundable ones, and unless we jam our fallen circuits with self-giving love, we are wired to wound them. You need not look far in your own life—when others wounded you in your vulnerability—to know that this is true.

When you cease to ride the shame-and-blame carousel and operate out of your authentic, vulnerable self, you become (whether you want to or not) a prophetic sign. How? Your life declares that our culture’s quest to preserve the Big Three—reputation, relationships, and revenue—without some sort of servant’s heart is a hollow endeavor. For, as a general rule, we cannot stand the prophetic sign of the vulnerable, for we are deeply committed to the Big Three, no matter what inspirational or ideological words we may cloak them in. Therefore, we prefer to exploit the authenticity of others rather than risk being exposed ourselves.

And yet, to walk in vulnerability—to practice an authentic life that aligns with who we really are even when others rush to find fault with it—is the only way we can possess any certainty that whatever we actually do have in the areas of reputation, relationships, and revenue is based on substance instead of illusion.

The world wages war to preserve its illusion by wounding those who are authentically themselves. That war is fought on a broad front, from dismissive mockery on one end to murderous hostility on the other. At times we duct-tape labels over accurate data. At times we fabricate narratives whole-cloth, unrolling great lengths of blame to cover shame. At times we destroy lives. But whatever the type of contest, the war to wound the vulnerable is the same.

This is why authentic vulnerability is, in the final analysis, an act of profound courage. Remember, the word literally means, “able to be wounded.” Therefore, the more probable the injury, the more profound the act of bravery.

Take, for example, the vulnerability of the political leader and the spiritual leader of the Greek island of Zakynthos (a.k.a. Zante). In 1943, Nazi military commander Alfred Lüth, who governed the occupied island, ordered Mayor Loukas Karrer to provide him with a list of all the Jews that he might deport them to a concentration camp, likely Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were about 275 Jews on Zakynthos. Lüth made the ultimatum clear: either comply or be executed.

Karrer consulted Dimitriou Chrysostomos, the spiritual head of Zakynthos, the western equivalent of an archbishop, which in Eastern Orthodoxy is called the metropolitan. Chrysostomos was respected by Christian and Jew alike as a man of authentic piety and wisdom. As for the mayor, he, like most Greeks, saw the Jews as fellow Greeks: neighbors they had lived among since ancient times. So did Chysostomos, whose name, when translated idiomatically, means “golden-tongued” in honor of the Church Father renowned for sermons so unflinching and convicting in their moral candor that the emperor banished him into exile, where he died.

The mayor and the metropolitan considered what to do. Night passed. They made a decision. The deadline arrived. They came to the commander.

“Here is the list of the Jews you seek,” Chysostomos said, and handed Lüth an envelope. He opened it.

There were two names: their own. The mayor’s and the metropolitan’s.

Chrysostomos looked Lüth in the eye. “If you deport them, you must take me as well. I share their fate.”

But the vulnerability of the mayor and the metropolitan did not stop there, for the priest handed the commander a letter addressed to Hitler himself, insisting that the Jews of his island were innocent and that deportation was flatly unacceptable.

Think about it. He spoke directly to the beast who had been given the power of death in that dread hour of world history. And yet he and the mayor chose to say what they really thought and act upon what they actually believed. They chose to be their authentic selves.

The commander abandoned the deportation order. Berlin did too. Every Jew of the island survived the Holocaust. Christians on farms and in mountain villages sheltered them outside of town until the horror had passed over.⁶

Brave vulnerability saved all.

Christ the Vulnerable One

The mayor and the metropolitan picked up the trail of Another who had gone before them, One who likewise presented himself in open vulnerability to a perilous world and identified with those doomed to perish: the Word Made Flesh, the One whom Athanasius called the God-Word. He came into his creation as a microscopic seed, an embryo in absolute vulnerability in the Virgin’s womb. He lived in such a way that even foxes and birds had a less vulnerable life than he did.⁷ He invited into his inner circle men who could abandon and betray him, and they did. He died in the most vulnerable way possible, bleeding, naked, and spread across two wooden beams like a Passover lamb in its slaughter.⁸

To be sure, he also led a confidently private life, going off to lonely places often to pray and wrestle against the darkness of this world out of his love for mankind. It was such an ingrained custom that at times his followers (no doubt with some annoyance) had to search for him, saying in exasperation, “Everyone is looking for you!”⁹ The depth of his public life was such that his followers knew that the secret of it must have something to do with his private life, leading them to request of him, “Teach us to pray.”¹⁰ And when his three closest friends caught a glimpse of the brilliant purity of his privacy on Mt. Tabor, bathed as it was in uncreated light and living communication, they simply did not know what to do other than fall on their faces and default to tropes: “Let’s set up three tents here!”¹¹ What is more, in the pressurized hour of Gethsemane, we find that his privacy led to a vulnerability shattering our personal illusions and revealing our desperate need.¹²

In the face of such vulnerability, it is our first impulse to hide. For his vulnerability testifies of our own lack thereof. We prefer to get lost among the Christmas trees, the Hanukkah lights, the Kwanzaa colors, the stock market’s Santa Claus Rally, and gingerbread in the break room. It is our first impulse to be busy rather than vulnerable. And if we fail at hiding, other impulses take over like those we have explored. It turns out that our inner world is full of barbed wire. But the Vulnerable One keeps pursuing us. Our offense at such self-giving love is the sign that our undoing is at hand. No illusion we barricade ourselves behind can prevent it. We are left with two choices: to pretend until we die, or, in the words of C.S. Lewis, to “die before we die.”¹³ Accept his terms of surrender or perish in our pretenses.

This is the great scandal of the advent of the God-Word into our world. He does not invade our Cyber Monday only; He arrives again and again, countless times, as many times as each mouth grinds down on his flesh and blood as he gives himself away in Eucharistic grace. Yes, he gladly accepts the state of being vulnerably assimilated into our fallen, frail, and fickle lives, knowing it is the only way whereby we will experience the healing, repentance, and joy-giving sorrow we need as a foundation for the new creation he has destined us to become. 

And so we discover in the end that vulnerability and healing are, through the Son of God, made one. Vulnerability, combined with a deeply rooted private life, turns out to be the key to everything we hoped for, not only in this temporary life, but in the one to come, where earthly good foreshadows an eternal one. He makes all things new.

© Kurt Mähler

To explore more about the practice of vulnerability, read Kurt’s essay, What We Learn from Elijah’s Ravens.

---

Ready to begin again? Subscribe now to Kurt’s monthly newsletter, Courage for Your Calling, and receive your free discovery tool, Recollect Watermark Moments—a reflective guide designed to help you identify the voice of your life experience that moves you from
disillusionment to decisive action.

• exclusive training videos
• firsthand stories
• book sneak-peaks

Begin again. Subscribe today.

---

Footnotes

1. See the beautiful tale of friendship, healing, and renewal, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Published in 1911. ↩︎
2. The tradition of women’s practical service, devotion, and organized attendance at the place of worship goes clear back to Exodus 38:8 where Moses mentions women performing these duties at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. ↩︎
3. One tradition says she was reading Isaiah’s prophecy in 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive…”(This version of that Hebrew line is preserved in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. The Masoretic Hebrew textual tradition, formed some 1,700 years after Isaiah during the Christian era, emends this to “young woman” instead of “virgin.”)
   For an exploration of the stories the early generations of believers shared with one another regarding the life of Mary, see The Lost Gospel of Mary: the Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts by Frederica Mathewes-Green. Early Protestant reformers highly regarded these oral traditions. Later Protestantism, combined with the momentum of the Modern Project, tossed these traditions overboard in their effort to reduce the Faith to the most streamlined construct possible. One might say that one of the first trophies of the Modern Project—that unintended fruit of the Reformation—was the rejection of Mary as the model believer. Later, the Modern Project also rejected her as the paragon of virtuous womanhood. ↩︎
4. The prophecy of Simeon the Elder to Mary as she and Joseph presented the infant Jesus in the Temple, Luke 2:35 ↩︎
5. Mary’s maturity and her unique chosenness were such that ancient believers gave her the title Theotokos: the “God-Bearer” or “Mother of God.” Spiritual leaders at the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) affirmed this to be true. Reformers Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all wholeheartedly honored her, albeit the latter with his characteristic economy of words. ↩︎
6. Karrer and Chrysostomos are among the 355 Greeks honored for their courage in the hall of the Righteous among the Nations at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. For every meter of rubble you walk through in Gaza, you must walk through a meter of this memorial, that your anger would be perfected into agonized prayer for both. ↩︎
7. In response to someone who said, “I will follow you wherever you go!” Jesus replied, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Matthew 8:20. See also Luke 9:58. Eastern Greek Orthodox New Testament (EOB), based on the Patriarchal Text of 1904. The EOB is also referenced in the Bible citations below. ↩︎
8. Passover lambs at that time of the Second Temple were traditionally roasted upright with their forelegs spread open, tied to a wooden skewer, while another skewer ran vertically through the body of the lamb. Thus the two skewers formed the shape of a cross upon which the lamb “stood as if slain.” (Rev. 5:6) See Dr. Eugenia (“Jeannie”) Constantinou’s description thereof in The Crucifixion of the King of Glory: The Amazing History and Sublime Mystery of the Passion. Ch. 28, “Christ, the Slaughtered Passover Lamb.” ↩︎
9. Mark 1:37. See also John 6:24–26 ↩︎
10. Luke 11:1 ↩︎
11. Mark 9:5-6 & Luke 9:33 ↩︎
12. Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42 ↩︎
13. Spoken by the sage tutoring the main character in C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, his last novel, which Lewis considered his crowning creative work, in which the protagonist battles an army of questions, cravings, and offenses until surrendering to the inexorable love of the One who created her. Set in a fictional pagan, barbaric kingdom in the ancient world. ↩︎