Comfort Zones
Sometimes I sit at my computer to write a blog entry and realize I have little to say. No new thoughts have surfaced in the previous days. It frightens me. When I stop reflecting, I feel like I’ve stopped living. My mind-numbing routines sometimes deaden my perception and awareness of God and truth around me. At other times, my mind is racing with new thoughts I cannot contain. Sometimes the reflections are spontaneous–gifts of grace–unexpected. Other times the reflections come only on the heals of adventures or experiences that give me new angles and light in which to see differently.
I have to force myself, however, to take these adventures, to get out of my comfort zone. The paradox is that the deadening routine that turns off the tap of reflection is also the place of comfort. To possess the possibility of new understandings requires stepping into the unknown that promises discomfort. A few months ago, finding myself in one of those doldrums of dulled-mindness I agreed to go on a mission trip to Guatemala. That’s where I’ve been for the last 10 days and why I haven’t had any new blog entries for a while (in case anyone wondered). I took a note pad to jot a few thoughts and found myself writing something new each evening.
Traveling to a country I had never visited, meeting people with dramatically different lifestyles from my own, and interacting with other people of faith in acts of charity and grace took me out of my comfort zone. At the same time, those same activities gave life to that mysterious part of my brain that wants to reflect and find meaning. In the coming weeks you will read some of the reflections that had their seed planted in Guatemala. They will be random as all my reflections seem to be, but they will also hold in common the thread of new experiences that challenge old thought. I’m glad I went to Guatemala. The trip helped me see what I could not see. It helped me know what I could not otherwise know. It opened the fount of reflection, which for me is the fount of life.
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