Ol Suit.

I’ve been thinking. . .

It may sound cliché but it’s absolutely true that one cannot embrace with folded arms nor receive with a clenched fist. It requires open arms to embrace and open hands to receive.

Love is not love until love's Vulnerable. - Theodore Roethke

The desire to love and be loved always carries in it the potential for being hurt. Vulnerability. We hate the sound of the word. Still more, we fear what it implies; defenselessness, unmasked transparency, the decision to be open and unfiltered.

Our culture with a sneer refers to the vulnerable as “weak,” “bohemian” and “unsophisticated.” They are the people deemed to be “unworldly-wise.”

The Vulnerable Heart.

But wait a minute. . . which is more undesirable: to accept the risks inherent in loving another so completely and innocently that your very soul lies unguarded in their hands or to so protect oneself as never to give or receive love at soul-level?

Is it only the young who dare believe that “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”

Self-Protection is a Strait-jacket.

Self-protection is a straitjacket. The simple truth is that when we protect ourselves from all potential pain, we also exclude the possibility of the deepest levels of love. Love by definition is vulnerability. It trusts another so totally that we receive them deep within the castle of our inmost soul. The “lovesickness” that may then result is described in honest terms in the Song of Solomon 2:5: “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love.” And again, in Song of Solomon 5:8: “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am sick from love…simply sick to be with him.”

Risk is Inherent in Love.

So, then, love may wound and love may injure the lover. And love may be betrayed. The one you welcome to the secret place of your most private dreams and longings may cut like no other. A surrender to love opens the potential for pain. But such a supine openness to love, such willingness to risk for the sake of love, is the key to discovering the love for which you were born.

C. S. Lewis, Author & Christian Apologist

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” -C.S. Lewis

It is the same at a spiritual level. The things that make for the most potent love are likewise steps to spiritual fulfillment; things like a childlike trust, a willingness to risk, and a passion to love without conditions or exclusions. The Apostle Paul wrote: “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)

Jesus said it like this: “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17)

Love is Vulnerable.

Vulnerability is a force, a power, a divine energy that opens the door to all the things the longing heart most deeply desires. It, alone, places us on the path to our truest selves.