A courageous address from Brene Brown at last year’s TED summit in Houston, jam-packed with insight and premised on a concept of ‘enoughness’ which has more than a little in common with what we talk about on here so frequently. It’s, um, enough to make one wonder where Brown, the social worker responsible for that fantastic article on Perfectionism a few months back, is coming from. That is, it seems positively soaked in Christian understandings, endorsing in roundabout ways the healing power of repentance, our enslavement to self-justification and inherent obsession with righteousness, the entire idea of strength in weakness, she even touches on grace in parenting. And minus a grounding in something a bit more realistic/Eternal, her notion of ‘whole-heartedness’ is almost a direct borrow from the church, going so far as to co-opt religious language.

Of course, there are plenty of bones to pick – this is not a theological talk – but the congruence is remarkable. And her wonderful delivery is a case in point re: the power of vulnerability. Has she listened to Breaking The Fourth Wall? You be the judge, ht CC: