Dance Like No One's Watching

In my last post, I talked about the work of Brene Brown on shame and vulnerability.  As I said there, Brown's work is exciting, funny, and very challenging.  One way that I would summarize some of her work is that we have a choice in our lives: we can allow our shame and embarrassment to keep us from living wholehearted lives, or we can live wholeheartedly in the face of our shame and fear and vulnerability.

When I was a child, I looked around at all of the grown-ups in my life and I thought, 'These folks have it all together.  I can't wait until I'm like that."

What I now realize is that grown-ups sometimes do a good job of pretending to have it all together.  But shame, embarrassment, and the desire to 'fit in' and 'be cool' are enormously powerful influences in the lives of grown-ups, too.  Adults can be just as afraid of being called a "loser" or a "moron" or a "dork" as any teenager.

The last section of her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, is entitled, "Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and 'Always in Control.'"  Brown observes that, for many of us, dancing in public can raise HUGE anxiety.  If we do get out on the dance floor, we may be inhibited and stiff, or we may concentrate really, really hard on trying to impress other people with our moves.  What we may have a really hard time being, is free on the dance floor.  Free, in the way that young children are free when they dance, at least until the older people in their lives convince them to try to 'be cool.'

Brown writes, "For many of us, there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing.  It's literally full-body vulnerability.  The only other full-body vulnerability that I can think of is being naked, and I don't have to tell you how vulnerable that makes most of us feel" (Gifts of Imperfection, 119).

Too often, we can hold ourselves back, out of fear of being exposed.  We may sit on the sidelines, rather than stepping out onto the dance floor.  We may say, "I'm just going to enjoy watching everyone else dance," when what we mean is, "I am scared to death of dancing in front of other people."  We can withhold ourselves from others and we deprive the world of the gift of who we are, all because we are worried that our dance moves aren't ready for prime-time, and afraid that the 'haters' will make fun of us.  We give the haters way too much influence over our lives.

Brene Brown says that the Hopi Indians say, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak."  If this is the case - and it seems intuitively true to me -- then I hope that you'll step out onto the dance floor the next time you have a chance.  Dance like no one is watching.  The 'haters' in the world may try to make fun of us.  But the world will be better for it.

Worthy and Beloved

Brene Brown (http://brenebrown.com/) is one of the most exciting writers working today.  If you don't already know her books -- Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection -- or her TED Talk on "The Power of Vulnerability," then you should really check them out.

Brown is a "shame-researcher."  She researches shame.  For a living.

When I first learned about this, I thought, "Hmmm.  That's a strange thing to research.  Why would someone want to research shame?  Wouldn't that be, I don't know, depressing?"

What Brown has discovered in her research is that shame gets in the way of  living an abundant, wholehearted, free life.  So if you're interested in living an abundant, wholehearted, free life, then it makes an awful lot of sense to get to know what will get in your way.  And Brown says that shame is One-of-the-Biggies that gets in the way.

According to Brown, shame is "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging" (The Gifts of Imperfection, 39, my italics).  Shame comes at us from all over our culture.  From media messages that tell us we're not good enough, that tell us what our bodies need to look like, to religious messages that tell people that God is against them rather than being for them, to peer pressure that makes us do things we know aren't good for us, and on and on and on.

All around us are messages that we are not worthy of belonging or of being loved.  We might be able to make ourselves worthy someday, but right now, we are not worthy of being loved.  We will only be worthy IF.  We'll be worthy IF other people say so ... IF we can get a good grade ... IF we can win the conference title ... IF we can impress the boss ... IF we buy that new pair of shoes ... IF ... IF ...

But Brown says that if "we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging" (Gifts of Imperfection, 23).  Right now.  Just as we are.  With all of our imperfections and flaws.  Right now.  We are worthy.  You are worthy of love and belonging.  Right now.

Brown's claim makes deep, intuitive sense to me.  It also resonates with the deepest truths of the Christian faith.  "You are my Beloved."  "Do not fear, I am with you."  "Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us."  That last one (from Romans 5:8) is particularly telling, I think.  Even though we were still sinners, Christ found us to be worth dying for.  Even though we were sinners, even though we were imperfect, even though we hadn't yet figured it all out, we were worthy of God's love.  God loves us that much.

But it can be difficult to accept this, to really believe this.  After many years in the church, it can be tempting to only hear the rather loud religious voices crying out, "Oh no, we are NOT worthy.  We have fallen short of the glory of God.  Like Psalm 22:6 says, We are all worms.  Do not believe this business about being worthy.  We are NOT worthy."

While these voices may be pointing to the truth that we are -- all of us -- sinners and imperfect creatures, they too often distort themselves into shaming voices that can make us doubt our belovedness.  They can become so very loud that we can no longer hear God's still and small voice telling us, "I love you as you are, right now.  I'm not waiting to love you some day in the future.  I love you right now.  Even though you are imperfect, even though you are sinful, you are worthy of my love just as you are, right now.  You do not have to do anything to make me love you.  I love you just as you are, and you belong to me.  No matter what anyone else tells you."

There are two truths at work here.  At the same time, (1) we are worthy of God's love and (2) we are sinful and imperfect and broken.  Both truths are fundamental.  If we only hold onto one of them, we will have a distorted view of ourselves.  But sometimes, it seems that the world can call such loud attention to our sinfulness, that our belovedness can be overlooked or pushed to the side.

Never let that happen. You are beloved.  Right now.  Just as you are.  You are worthy of being loved.