Holly Moore

Open the Eyes of Your Heart

by HOLLY MOORE, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Identity Studies OCTOBER 12, 2022

Iwant to share with you today the story of how I came to understand the connection between vulnerability and spirituality. I came to Luther College an avowed atheist. My atheism was philosophical in nature, tied to my commitment to the existential and Socratic call to examine life and make it one’s own, allowing no other to take responsibility for one’s integrity. This was a kind of faith, in so far as it was a belief that shaped my worldview, and it was one I thought I needed in order to protect myself from both deception and credulity. When I was offered the job at Luther, I was glad to hear that “the life of faith and learning” was expansive enough to include even someone like me, who had no religious faith but recognized the value of faith in others’ lives. The eyes of my heart were first opened when I started attending chapel somewhat regularly early on in my time at Luther. I was in principle averse to the religious nature of the event, but I tried to stay open minded and was encouraged to attend by several of my colleagues, one of whom is a particularly persuasive interlocutor and a powerful chapel speaker himself. I was persuaded that this was an important way of getting to know what it meant to be at a place like Luther and that it would introduce me to a different way of connecting with the community here. I was surprised by how many aspects of the practice were both comforting and emotionally charged for me. I found myself regularly holding back tears and unsettled by how deeply the feeling of connectedness called to me in this space. I came to really appreciate the ways this practice helped me to get in touch with parts of myself I’d long held in check, a legacy of my training as a philosopher and “rational agent.” To explain why I held this identity so strongly at the time requires a little bit of background. I was a “very sensitive child.” I cried easily, especially when I thought I was being judged and found lacking. And when I did cry, it would induce a spasmodic breathing reaction, making me scared it would never stop because I couldn’t catch my breath. I remembered hating this about myself, and I remember doing everything I could to try to make it stop. I got better over time at stifling my tears in public, but they seemed to store up for even bigger, longer, uglier cries later. Over time, I “got control of myself,” however, and although I still cried more easily than most, I could swallow most of my reaction down and not lose my grip. So, when I started to experience a need (and a deep desire, to be honest) to cry, particularly when I was among others, this was a real shock. Something had clearly shifted in me. And this desire to cry came not from feeling judged or lesser than others; it came from feeling a part of something bigger than me, and from a fear of the vulnerability that exposed me to. This made the whole thing feel different. While I was still terrified, there was a curiosity embedded in my fear now. Around this same time, I also encountered Jane Hawley’s teaching with contact improvisation and had the opportunity to experience the power of experiencing thinking and knowing through a genuinely embodied practice. I found in my interaction with that artform a path to vulnerability that opened my heart in ways not unlike what I’d found by attending chapel. I was again, unsettled—moved from my position of perceived safety and comfort into a world of connection and a deeper sense of wholeness with this place and its people. I remain deeply indebted to Jane for this pivotal experience. I was, nevertheless, genuinely terrified of this vulnerability and tried to keep it at arm’s length. But time after time, in various ways and places, I’d find myself exposed to this same feeling of awe and openness. I came to understand that something important was calling me, and I slowly (sometimes haltingly) began to heed that call. Gradually, I admitted to myself and to others that I was on a spiritual journey. It was during this same time period that I came to more actively and openly identify myself publicly as bisexual and queer, and each step on that path brought me to a larger sense of wholeness and connection with the communities of which I’m a part. Over time, it transformed my sense of myself, my purpose and allowed me to make big changes in my life. These transformations were neither easy nor quick, but each step I took toward more openness and more honesty gave me a sense of rootedness in my own life.

Holly Moore

By opening my heart to the sense of wonder already present within me, I not only found connection with the world around me and a deeper sense of who I really was, I also developed a much stronger form of empathy and compassion. Instead of suppressing the anguish I would experience at seeing an animal dead on the road, I began to follow the tug on my heart to respect that life. Perhaps I seem odd, parking on the side of the road to move a dead squirrel out of the path of oncoming traffic, but it seems important not to trivialize any death. After all, if we harden ourselves to the pain of others, we become less willing to acknowledge our own. The ancient Chinese philosopher Mengzi held that compassion is innate, and I have come to understand the truth of this. No one can give you a sense of compassion—you need only tap into your given connectedness to the world around you to find it there, buried in its own fertile ground. The ultimate gift of such compassion, of course, is that it must eventually fall back to yourself. By stretching out to others with love, and not just those whom it is easy to love but those whom it is difficult to love, we expand our capacity to love enough that we cannot help but also love ourselves. And those who can love themselves cannot willfully harm others. I am by no means a master of compassion, especially when it comes to myself, but I am encouraged that my capacity seems to be growing, especially now that I’m not so assiduously evading my own vulnerability. If you had told me before I came to Iowa that I was going to move there and find out how to love myself through a spiritual journey lasting a dozen years, I would have laughed in your face. This alone is enough reason for me to have compassion for everyone I encounter, for we know not where our journeys will take us.