Courage Cropping Up Everywhere

Every hear of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? To be honest I had to look up what this event was called, but we have all experienced this.

In short, Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a frequency bias. You notice something new or adopt a new word like a word of a year. Maybe you have a conversation about a red car or just found out you were pregnant. Maybe you and your neighbor talk about a breed of dog, a particular style of house, or just about anything. Suddenly, you’re aware of that thing all over the place. Every place you look you see that item. There are red cars on every street!

In reality, there’s no increase in occurrence. It’s just that you’ve started to notice it.

My word of the year is courage and this word sure has been cropping up in all my readings and in podcasts and quotes and sermons and Bible passages… all over the place. I can’t get away from its lessons!!! That is the power in choosing a word of the year and being intentional on exploring and going deeper into its meaning for 12 months. You learn so much from many different resources.

As an Enneagram 3, I am not very good at naming my emotions (I like to set them aside and forget about them) and have been working on this weakness the past few years. In my prayers lately I shared with God my feelings of being numb and vulnerable. Then I remembered the Brene Brown has researched and written quite a bit about vulnerability so retrieved one of her books from my shelves. Here is one of the quotes I read:

“It takes a lot of courage to show up and be all in when we can’t control the outcome…vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

Wow. That is a new perspective for me in seeing the word courage and vulnerability. And yes, it does take courage to keep showing up, to keep moving forward when we do feel powerless. Each day. Show up. One step at a time.

I also remembered the book by poet David Whyte, Consolations (he has since written a second book too) where he takes a word and write a short essay. I wondered if he wrote about courage and vulnerability. He did!

“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future, to be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society or with an unknown that begs us on – and always has begged us on. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.”

You may need to reread that paragraph multiple times to absorb all of its wisdom. I sure did but it gave me hope, helped me feel more comfortable in resting in vulnerability and stirred up a curiosity about that “unknown that begs us on – and always has begged us on.”  Isn’t that intriguing? And to know to be courageous is to stay close to my true self – that sure feels right. Feels so right deep in my soul.

Seriously I found at least three more wonderful quotes this past week about courage that “just happened” to crop up.  Isn’t God amazing?  Maybe it is just Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but I believe it is the Holy Spirit surprising me, guiding me, showing me love, grace and kindness. And I am grateful.

What are you learning/noticing so far in 2025?