I read a lot to start my day, daily scripture readings, various online sites, various spiritual sources. And I often find that I see something in the array of readings that I don’t see if I only read one.
I usually start with the emails that I’ve signed up for. Today, I started with Pope Francis’ Missio. I always feel love and encouragement from his words.
The portion that stayed with me today:
“Whatever experience may touch us on our journey, God’s love can turn it into good.” Pope Francis
His words were followed by today’s Psalm, Psalm 51, reminding me that God does not spurn a contrite heart.
Next, I went to Dynamic Catholic’s Lenten message. One of the Dynamic Catholic Ambassadors shared about giving herself a haircut as a child, nervously confessing it to her parents, and receiving love and wisdom.
And then, I went to the daily readings. Isaiah 58:1-9a (fasting, but then fighting and not showing compassion) and Matthew 9:14-15 (Jesus and disciples not fasting, because they are in Jesus’ presence).
It’s a day of contrast and paradox.
Three times a week a friend and I meet on Facebook for an hour of writing. We split the time into two sprints of writing. Before we begin, one of us will read a poem or quote to take inspiration from. Today, I brought an excerpt from Matthew Kelly’s I Heard God Laugh.
“Is your life working? . . . The danger zone is marked by comfort. This is where things aren’t great, but they aren’t horrible either, so you just continue to middle along. We gravitate towards comfort, and it’s amazing how comfortable we can get with things that are uncomfortable or worse.”
It always surprises me what I write about at this point in my day. Things that I didn’t know I needed to reflect on.
First writing: How comfortable am I with discomfort?
I think I get way too comfortable with being uncomfortable. In my marriage I was the frog not realizing that I was in a pot of boiling water. And the boiling water was my own self-imposed silence, when I disagreed with or had a problem with something my husband said.
I once told my therapist that I was good at avoiding conflict. He abruptly said “No, you’re not, there’s conflict all around you. What you’re good at is avoiding conflict resolution.”
That shattered my image of my role in the marriage’s failure. The truth stared me in the face. I do know that I tried to express my opinion in later years and it was not well-received. Still, I wonder what might have been, if I would have found my voice sooner.
So, I lived with a lot of discomfort to not feel the discomfort of conflict. And it didn’t work.
For the second half of the hour, I wrote on the Thomas Merton quote that my friend brought:
“One has to be in the same place everyday, watch the dawn from the same window or porch, hear the same birds each morning to realize how inexhaustibly rich and diverse is the “sameness”.
I felt the first half hour tip on its axis as I realized that sameness can be comfortable discomfort or more than comfortable comfort.
In a writing group that I belong to, one woman decided to reflect on Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem ‘Who Understands Me but Me?’ for entire month. The poem is about his suffering and he understands it as beautiful. Since people share their writings, if they choose, I found myself checking for her daily posts, wondering how much more she would excavate from the poem and from what she brought to the poem. And, as Jimmy Santiago Baca might have said, it was beautiful.
I wonder, what might I learn about God, myself, and my world, if I reflect on these opposites throughout Lent? And the first thought that comes to me is that it’s a kind of confession of what in my life I’ve done and left undone, when I think about avoiding conflict actually being avoiding conflict resolution. And maybe I will find other paradoxes that may or may not serve me well. And maybe, it too will be beautiful.
Naked Soul Thoughts 