We wrote last time that kindness to ourselves and others in our everyday life is a key to physical and emotional well being, and is at the heart of all genuine spirituality. At the same time, it is also crucial to exercise some form of social responsibility in accordance with our gifts and the concrete context of our lives. Here we may speak of taking part in a struggle towards creating a world in which respect for the sacred worth of each person is recognized, honoured, and fostered. This approach means that, even when opposition is necessary, it is crucial not to deny or violated the basic human dignity of anyone.
As we noted last time, in their book, On Kindness, Barbara Taylor and Adam Phillips define kindness as the ability to bear our own and others vulnerability. Kindness implies an openness from within ourselves to another or others. In Oscar Wilde’s folk tale, The Selfish Giant, it is by breaking down the walls we have built around us, and letting in children–the the springs of new life–that we grow and develop. Otherwise, we remain in a stagnant winter of heart, hiding behind walls of defensiveness.
At the same time, openness from within allows the entry of both joy and sorrow, healing and wounding. It allows a vulnerable heart. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin vulnus which means wound. The word, vulnerability means, literally, able to be wounded, to be hurt. Yet there is a wider sense as well, as found in the Hebrew Song of Songs. A translation of one line reads, “You have wounded my heart; in Latin, vulnerasti cor meum. In this context, vulnerability does not mean an injury inflicted. Rather it indicates an openness that allows another to reach our core.
An article written many years ago in a Homemakers magazine by Carol Allen has resonated with me ever since. Her topic was joy, and she brought out how joy and sorrow are an inseparable part of life. In her words: “A heart frozen against pain can only stifle joy. … What joy requires is an open, undefended heart — a heart willing to accept the slings and arrows as no less intrinsic to life than the bouquets. … Those who have an aura of joyfulness in adult life are frequently those who have also suffered greatly.”
In this wider sense, vulnerability means an openness to the full experience of life. This attitude would include openness to the depth of our own being, to the entire variety of the feelings, yearnings, and thoughts that are part of who we are. And it is openness to our unique identity that flows from and through and beyond into all the corners of our life. It flows as well into everyone and everything that is bound up with our life. It is an openness that also allows others–at least in situations of trust–to enter our own personal sanctuary. It is finally an openness to the vast mystery of life, to the energy that flows within and through and beyond all that is. It is a recognition that this is a mystery beyond our grasp, literally a reality that we cannot seize or dominate or control, but a mystery of which we are part and which pervades and envelopes all that is.
An essential part of this recognition, a core element of this vulnerability, is that we do in fact have limitations, weaknesses, and errors in our life. Yet to do so is to recognize that this is a reality that we share with all other human beings. It is to recognize that our limits are not a denial of, but inseparable from our sacredness–that we are sacred even as and precisely as wounded beings. Leonard Cohen has perhaps most clearly expressed this truth in his song Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” These words vividly express that every life is woven with joy and sorrow, and that it is often in our experience of weakness and pain that the light of truth, compassion, and healing is able to enter. It is able to enter not only into our own awareness but into our awareness of and compassion for others, who share our human condition.
An early life experience brought this reality home to me at the age of six. Walking to my grandmother’s for lunch in grade one, I was struck by a truck and taken to the Toronto Sick Children’s hospital. After two weeks in hospital, I was allowed to return home A few days later, I was allowed to get up. I was delighted, but took two steps and fell. I could not walk. I still recall the vivid impression of utter surprise, total disbelief, and sheer terror.
Very soon, I was walking again as usual, but I have never forgotten how fragile and vulnerable life can be, and how utterly precious. The birth of my younger brother three years later with a chronic heart defect, and the subsequent heart surgery at the age 4½, that allowed him to live for 26 years, only reinforced that impression. In those early years were planted and took root the seeds of awareness that life cannot be taken for granted, that it is a precious and fragile gift to be cherished, appreciated and shared, and that one needs always have a concern for the most vulnerable in our midst.
May you become more and more comfortable with your own vulnerability. May you share it more fully with others, when trust is possible. And may the light of openness, friendship, compassion, and kindness radiate more and more from the crack of this vulnerability
Norman King, August 11, 2025
