I was listening to a yoga teacher talk about “center” recently. This person has a young child, just learning to balance on human feet. The teacher began to contemplate: What are we aligning with when we balance or center ourselves?
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich
Maybe we think we are finding our center. We even describe it that way sometimes. As if we are isolated bodies, balancing in some abstract sense. But this yoga teacher concluded that when we center or balance ourselves, we’re aligning with the center of the earth. We exist in relationship to something—a gravitational pull that provides a context toward the center of the planet we inhabit.
And the planet we inhabit is in relationship, too. Earth doesn’t just drift in space. It aligns itself in an orbit around the sun. That relationship means that Earth operates within a set of boundaries.
Authenticity out of context doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s like imagining Earth just drifting without any pull or relationship to any other bodies. Or like imagining that we are centering ourselves with ourselves, oblivious to the many other bodies that influence us in interdependent relationships. Authenticity might need a sense of orbit. We might benefit from know what center of gravity offers a context for our authentic being.
When we claim some kind of radical individual freedom that ignores all of our interconnectedness with other beings, we aren’t being honest, much less “authentic.” The kind of authenticity that serves a vision of wholeness takes into consideration that we don’t experience wholeness as isolated beings. Shalom is about the quality of our connection. Liberating love is relational.
So, if what we’re calling “authenticity” feels defiant or confrontational, we might need another word for it. As Rev. Howard Thurman suggests, the kind of authenticity that can help us journey from current reality toward a vision of wholeness is both vulnerable and connected. Actually, Thurman’s words are, “completely exposed and absolutely secure.”
Obviously, that isn’t likely to be an everywhere all the time experience. We need spaces where we cultivate that level of vulnerability and trust. Maybe you co-create that with your family. Or a few close friends. Or a small group in our congregation. A way of expressing mutual care.
What might you do to offer safe enough space for others to feel absolutely secure in their vulnerable authenticity? And where might you soften into a sort of authenticity that clearly orbits your life-affirming values as a center of gravity?
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