On Weakness

"The question is crucial, for I don’t think we have any business working with those who cannot hide their weakness until we have come to know our own. We will be arrogant people in the midst of our service if we live behind lies of upward mobility: the higher up our status or salary or even spirituality, the more we have means to deny the weakness “proper to the human condition” (as Brennan Manning once said). Many of us, at our fingertips, have the choice to package our insecurity in power, our shame in defenses, our emptiness in addictions. And we do it all while upholding our middle-class, respectable image."