“Stay Open. Ask What Wants to be Born.”—with Elizabeth Lesser

“We need to value and validate, lionize and call heroes, people who know how to tend and befriend.”

Dear Friends,

This morning, while revisiting my myriad of stickies in Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open, I was struck, once again, by the Rumi quote she named it after…

“Dance when you’re broken open.”

In our conversation three years ago, I asked her to illustrate how we might embody it. Her response, inspired by her time as a midwife, is the mantra I repeat every time I feel challenged or uncertain.

“ When something difficult comes your way—whether it's an illness, loss, our country fraying—what is trying to be born? Something new is trying to be born, whether it's in your life, a relationship, or in our country.

If you resist the change and pain, you're going to make the transition into birth harder and longer. You could even stop the birth completely and you'll never learn.

So, when things get hard in my life, I say to myself: Open, open, open. Stay open. Ask what wants to be born.”

Openness requires courage. Elizabeth illuminates a new path into it, from one of her first teachers, Chögyam Trungpa, who was chosen by the Dalai Lama to bring Buddhism to the West.

“He described fearlessness and courage, not as fighting, but as being tender. This coming from a man, who in his early twenties, led people away from an enemy over the Himalayas and almost died. I took note of that: This guy really is a warrior and he is saying that the most difficult thing to do is to have a soft and open heart—to be open to the other person, to be open to your own faults and humanness, to be open to our broken world.

Today, just to live and read the news requires great tenderness to the human condition, because it's not in a very pleasant state. You can either get pissed, mean, and want to fight that other group of people. Or, you can keep your heart soft and vulnerable and say: ‘Ah, this is what life is like. This is what us humans are like—All of us scared, striving, lost people. I want to be with everyone. I don't want to be against others. That’s what tenderness is, and we have not valued tenderness.”

Our fight or flight responses get activated when our brains perceive threat. Still, Elizabeth highlights a third option, discovered by Dr.Shelley Taylor at UCLA: To tend and befriend. This is a glimpse of Elizabeth’s own journey embracing tenderness…

“Some of it is spiritual practice, but some of it is political for me. It's like: God damn it. This is a way to be. Who I am—my softness, my instinct for tending—the world needs that now. We have had enough instincts of conquering. Now, we have to tend to this mess we've made. There's nothing wrong with the conquering spirit. Humans have made enormous progress in many ways because of our fight and flight instincts, but we've done enough of that. We need to value and validate, lionize and call heroes, people who know how to tend and befriend.”

As always, Elizabeth’s wisdom is a salve. Her invitation evokes a second Rumi quote: “If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”

As you absorb Elizabeth’s words, reflect on someone in your life whose tending and befriending brings peace to you and others. Consider sending them a note acknowledging their impact on you.

With love,

Jenna