Comfort

I’m a creature of comfort. 

I love my comfortable couch and dining room chairs with cushions. I love flannel sheets in the winter. I love the feeling of warm water. I love air that is not too hot, not too cold on my face. I love warm drinks with just the right amount of sweet. In The Lord of the Rings, I identify fully with the hobbits, with their Bath Song and concern about missing second breakfast.

I’ve done fine when I’ve lived without these things. During our years in Gabon, the air was usually not comfortable. It was hot and sticky. I survived just fine with lumpy cushions on rattan furniture and stiff chairs. When we moved to Nice, I appreciated the increase in physical comfort even as I missed the warmth of Africa, like the way friends hold your hand until you let go when you greet one another.

Our church in Nice helped run a retreat center up in the mountains. A great deal of work went into making it hospital and beautiful, and our weekends there were filled with friendship, hikes, and laughter. But. There was not one comfortable place to sit in the whole place. I brought it up one time—what if we brought in a couch and chairs with cushions? And my friends were perplexed. For the French, a retreat center in the mountains should be rustic. It’s a place to enjoy the beauty of nature. Wooden benches for dining and plastic chairs for gathering were all you needed.

During those years overseas, our churches had no bulletin or outline for me to follow, to know what was ahead. I sat on hard surfaces—benches in Gabon, pews in France--during long church services where I squirmed and shifted. My French friends were willing to get hungry during long meal prep—no snacking to tide you over. My Gabonese friends were more willing to go without food or sleep to pray and sing together over a weekend. I noticed these differences and my attachment to comfort and plenty. I mostly went with the flow and learned in small ways to live with discomfort even as I always noticed it. Always squirmed.

So. Comfort.

I’m thinking about comfort and my deep appreciation for all the ways I am comfortable. But I’m thinking about Lent too. In my churches, Lent has sometimes been observed as a convenient time to practice focused prayer or read a book together. Good things. I've never put much focus on Lent as a period of waiting or sacrifice. 

My good friend in Nice, Cristina, is from an orthodox tradition where fasting and going without were a part of her year. We often celebrated holidays together, coloring Easter eggs and decorating Christmas cookies. She would say, “Non, merci,” to small things in the weeks leading up to holidays. Things like sugar. And I wonder if her understanding and joy in the bounty of the holidays—like my Easter cinnamon rolls—was greater because of what had come before.

I’ve been reading Soong-Chan Rah’s Prophetic Lament these days as I consider the brokenness of our world, of my world. Rah writes,  “The absence of lament in the liturgy of the American church results in the loss of memory. We forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain.”Whether it’s attending a day about racial justice or reading statistics and stories of the refugee crisis, I find myself at a loss. I feel a call to pray more intentionally in the coming weeks. To lament. I’ve found some guides that will focus my prayer because I am often at a loss for words. 

I’ve also wondered what it would look like for me to actually be uncomfortable in some tiny way over Lent.

I’m not talking hair shirt or anything drastic, like cold showers or uncomfortable furniture.

I’ve been thinking about sugar. I drink tea a couple times a day with a spoonful of sugar. I’m partial to bits of chocolate and cookies. It’s funny, but this week as I began to consider this tiny going without, I felt compelled to bake up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And I did.

Over the last few days, I've noticed the sweetness of sugar—the French vanilla creamer in the coffee I had yesterday, my strawberry yogurt, my Girl Scout thin mint snack when I got home from work—and faced a tiny bit of fear. What would I do without a sweetened cup of Earl Grey tea in the morning? Seriously. I am worried about this.

And I would probably do this imperfectly. I am not one to be full of steely resolve. 

But, I am trying to listen these days. To fully appreciate where I am without being numbed by it. And maybe letting go of a small thing for a brief period of time.