Bare: Finding The Beauty in Our Core

How Mabel, this beautiful bare tree in her vulnerable state, taught me about the power and potential that resides within me - and helped me discover my core parts.

I’ve been working really hard lately to be more attentive.

To notice what’s around me.

Taking walks.

Slowing down.

Allowing my spirit to root and connect with the radiant life all around me.

I’m finding this practice, this intentionality, to be so beautiful. So fruitful. Allowing me to access the imagination, connection and energy that surrounds me. It’s allowing me to continue finding myself, and helping me work through the complex emotions and traumas I’m sifting through in this season of life.

It’s becoming essential to my health and wellbeing. 

I hope you’ll join me in this sort of practice!

I’ve made another new friend recently.

We’ll call her Mabel. (Yes, Mabel is in my brain because Only Murders… I’m obsessed… Sorry, not sorry.)

Mabel lives in the parking lot outside my therapist’s office. Isn’t she gorgeous?

After my sessions, I am often sitting in this exact location. On the curb. Processing the work my therapist and I have just done. Facing toward Mabel. 

She’s always there, looking lovely. Calm. Peaceful. Steady.

I noticed today she’s now bare.

Like others of her species, she gets naked once a year.

Releases all her leaves - all her little parts - back to the soil. Takes time to rest. Recharge. 

There’s SO much wisdom there.

I appreciate her vulnerability. 

As I continue to heal, I’m learning more and more that it is when we are at our most vulnerable, when we are bare, that we are able to truly see our core.

For much of the year, Mabel’s core remains out of view. She’s busy hosting all that gorgeous foliage! Managing her thousands of beautiful little parts. The life she contains and is capable of radiating outward into the world is quite marvelous!

But she is only able to be all that she is because of her core.

This gorgeous structure at her center that supports all her beauty. 

What a gift it is that, if we are paying attention to Mabel or those like her, we are given insight into that core once per year. What a wealth of wisdom she holds and offers us in her vulnerability. 

The first thing I received from Mabel today was an appreciation for how much she’d grown.

I wasn’t around to witness Mabel as a seed or sapling. 

But I can imagine it. 

That she has come through life, and grown into this earthy queen, emerging from the soil into this truly lovely and intricate system of limbs and branches, beautifully intertwined and reaching upward toward the sky, is quite a thing to behold. 

What struck me about this is her potential.

Mabel has always had this grandeur in her.

From the moment she emerged from the soil, this future, this beauty, this potential has always been contained within her core.

And she is helping me see this is true of me as well.

I am becoming something uniquely beautiful in the world.

All that I am becoming has always been in me!

AND, what’s more: All that I will be is already in me.

Do you ever think like that about yourself?

I have a hard time embracing that profound potential that resides in my core.

I am already, right now, everything I will be.

I don’t have to earn it.

All I have to do is EMBRACE it.

Claim it.

Live out of it. 

Draw from it.

I don’t have to wait!

I am all that I need to be right now!

THAT is profound to me.

I don’t think like that about myself enough.

I don’t live with that kind of boldness.

That kind of power and assurance.

But Mabel is helping me see everything is already there. I can trust that. Embrace it. Know that I am enough. 

That I am not incomplete.

I am just unfolding. 

I am emerging, over time.

But it’s all there. I’m all here. It’s all in me. I just have to trust and hold on to that power and beauty and future that resides in my deepest core.

And I need to remember it’s when I get vulnerable, when I am laid bare, that I can see this more plainly. I need rhythm in my life that regularly brings me back to vulnerability. Rhythm that allows me to let go of all my beautiful parts, to let my leaves fall to the ground for a minute, so that I can see my beautiful core, and be reminded of all that I am - and all that I ever will be.

Damn, Mabel!

And… that’s not even all she had to offer me today!

As I stuck around a bit longer, what I found myself drawn into next was the structure of Mabel’s core:

Four large limbs that have emerged from her trunk, upon which the rest of her spindly branches sit - and receive their unique shape, and strength.

She’s profound!

She’s strong.

She’s beautiful.

Mabel’s lovely framework got me thinking about the parts at my own core.

What are my four limbs?

What foundations do all the rest of my parts emerge from?

What are those most essential attributes that make up Jonathan?

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Kindness.

Nurturing.

Artist.

Prophet.

Upon these four limbs, which emerge from my core, my deepest self, lies the rest of my parts.

With every fiber of my being, I am kind. 

Radical kindness animates me. 

It’s my Mr. Rogers-ness. I see people. I empathize. And I radiate kindness. 

I value it above all things. It’s the only way I know to be. And the only way I believe the world has a chance to become a safe place for everyone. (Also, don’t get it twisted with niceness… niceness is toxic and oppressive. But that’s a whole other post for a whole other moment.)

Wired closely alongside kindness in my bones is my innate passion to nurture, or care for others. 

My arms welcome, and embrace. 

I believe we learn and become our fullest selves in trusting relationship. I listen deeply. I am fiercely committed to being a safe place. 

I’m confident we can do this. 

I will sit in the shit with you. 

I will walk alongside. I will process the fuck out of all the things with you. Because everything in me is committed to offering comfort and company along life’s journey. Wrestling with the questions. Holding others closely. Making sure the feelings of those in my sphere are heard and cared for. (This is why I was one hell-of-a pastor.)

I’m also an artist. 

A creator. 

A communicator. 

A dreamer of dreams.  

I am drawn to wonder and beauty. And without a creative outlet to channel my energy into, I become lost. The Creator spirit, calling things forth into existence that didn’t exist prior to the work of my hands and imagination, is what makes me tick. 

I have only recently begun trusting myself to fully live out of this, committing to creating my own original work, trusting that I do indeed have a voice and imagination that is really important to share with the world (it’s still hard for me to claim it out loud.). 

I am just now, at 40, Finding Jonathan as an artist, and writer. But no work I’ve ever done has ever felt so rooted in my core as the work I’m putting into the world now. So I’m committed to keep leaning into myself, trusting myself, and unfolding into the world as the artist that I am.

By far, however, the core part that scares me (and has been suppressed and oppressed) the most is my prophet heart. 

In the deepest fiber of my being, I do not accept the world as it is. 

I am a disruptor. 

But, at the same time, I am an unabashed purveyor of hope. 

Tied closely into my artist heart, as a dreamer of dreams, I see things that could be - and ask why they’re not. 

I see what’s possible. 

But I also see systems, I hear the cries of the oppressed, and my heart cannot rest. I reside in the space between the now and not yet. 

I have come up in systems that want me to leave well enough alone; that demand of me to maintain the order of things, to keep a false peace (don’t ruffle any feathers.) 

In these environments, because I am also kind to my core, the prophetic unrest residing in my bones has often felt like torture. And, in all truthfulness, for most of my life, I have denied my prophetic heart and voice - to the detriment of myself, and most certainly to the detriment others. (Also, to even have the option for this sort of denial has only been possible for me because of the substantial amount of privilege I’ve held as a white, able bodied, cis-gender male. More on that another time as well…) 

But as I’m learning to embrace my deepest parts, my foundations, I have come to know that I cannot live this way. 

It’s an injustice to me, and especially an injustice to others. 

The cognitive dissonance that suppressing this core part of me creates is unbearable. 

Perhaps the most important part of Finding Jonathan is to become more brave this way. To say the words and to step up in the moments (and on the issues) I am called into. 

But what I’m seeing here today is that it’s all in me to do just that.

It always has been.

I just need to embrace it.

Lean into it. 

Welcome it.

To hold fast to the truth that everything I am and ever will be already resides in my core.

That’s what this moment is about for me.

A reckoning.

A reclamation.

A receiving of the beauty and power that resides within my bones.

Mabel has given me eyes to see it.

And as she continues to unfold from her core, as a steady, gorgeous and powerful witness, may each of us learn from her story and beauty!

May we find the courage to continue emerging and claiming the power of all we are - and all we ever will be.

Our future is in us now.

___________

Have you ever considered what your core parts are?! I’d love to hear about your foundational limbs, what all of your beauty rests upon. Let me know in the comments!