Precarity

 

I learned a new word this week or should I say I let a word which I had heard before, but to which I had never paid attention, into my consciousness. The word is “precarity”!

By now, you may have come to expect that I love to riff on words which have surfaced or even erupted in my life. This feels a little different. 

Precarity seems to be a word to which I am called to pay attention because it is part of a surrender of false self, a process to which I am deeply committed.

Precarity is defined as the state of uncertainty or precariousness. It seems to feed doubt and despair. However, it speaks to a certain fragility which we so often avoid.

Precarity calls us to the vulnerability and powerlessness which comes right before conversion and redemption. Precarity is not separate from resurrection; it is essential to it.

So much of my life has been spent denying any weakness and, in turn, shoving precarity down. I am realizing there is a lot of precarity residing in my dark wells of being. 

As we approach Lent and hence the cross I am wondering if I am called to lean into the precarity, to hold tenderly the doubts in the darkness. Eastering might just be the compassion for precarity which dawns on our darkness and lends us mercy.