Seasons of Discomfort and Joy

by Dr Raymond Perrier · February 22, 2015

Keen readers may have picked up in the last few editions of The Southern Cross that I have just started a new job. That also means that I have moved city, from Johannesburg to Durban.

Having moved from Johannesburg to Durban, and being robbed of a laptop in the process, offered Raymond Perrier a new perspective on Lent.

They say that moving house, changing jobs and getting married are the three most stressful things you can do. Well, having just done two of them over one weekend, I am committed to remaining resistant to the third!

It is not that I am not used to moving house. In fact, in the last 16 years I have lived in eight different places and in four different countries not a bad record of mobility.

So many of the aspects of moving house that some find difficult I have learnt to take in my stride and even enjoy. Not the packing (no one I know apart from my mother likes packing!) but unpacking can be great fun. I actually really delight in deciding where to put things, how to arrange my clothes and books and those sweet little things that we take with us as sentimental reminders (though I really can’t remember why I carry round a little grey pebble).

I suppose that the pleasure comes from re-making order where there was once disorder finding comfort amidst the discomfort. Because the key experience of moving house, city, job or all three is of being discomforted.

That does not quite mean the same as being uncomfortable. Rather, it is the experience of moving from a situation of comfort, in which all is known and predictable and safe and relatively easy, to one of discomfort where, at least at first, everything is unknown and unpredictable and not yet safe and easy.

So I find myself wandering down the wrong aisle in the supermarket because it is a different chain from the one I am used to. I drive round in circles as I learn to navigate new routes in a new city. And most importantly I have to meet new people, remember names and build new relationships professional, social and spiritual. This is not easy but it is worthwhile.

We can sometimes get set in our ways, doing things day in and day out according to a fixed pattern. While there is some value in this, it means that we are no longer so open to surprises the late British Jesuit Gerry Hughes wrote about the God of Surprises.

Sometimes we are forced by circumstance or bad luck to change our set routines an illness, or the birth or death of someone close, being retrenched or retired. These are moments when the Holy Spirit creates a gap in our ordered lives and so can breathe new air into our tidy but dusty worlds. It is not easy when that happens but we have to trust that the Lord knows how to help us grow.

I kept having to remind myself of that because of a particular source of discomfort. I was ready to say goodbye to my old home and my former job indeed I had chosen to do both of those but I was not ready for to say goodbye to the comforts of technology.

Within three days I found myself without the laptop and the phone on which I had come to rely. The phone just stopped working but the laptop more dramatically was stolen from my car in a smash and grab as I was setting off from Johannesburg to Durban.

Some might call that karma. Had I really lived for five years in that exciting but difficult city and never been a victim of violent crime? Three young men with a brick and a quick getaway proved me wrong in my last five minutes in the city.

These two objects had become almost extensions of my body. Forced to cope without them, I realised that I had been kidding myself about the ease with which I dealt with change even as I moved house, like a tortoise I was carrying round a protective shell of familiarity in the form of the laptop and phone.

I don’t think God creates these situations in order to test us or to confuse us the young thieves can’t claim they were instruments of the Divine Plan! But I would suggest that when these things happen, it gives us a useful pause for thought. Am I overly reliant on things or routines or the same relationships? Do I leave space for the God of Surprises?

The carol sings of Christmas as the season of comfort and joy; Lent, which we have just started, is a season of discomfort and joy.

Our Lenten observances of fasting, prayer and alms-giving should make us discomforted, they should force us to look at our lives and our world in a new way. When we stop drinking or smoking or eating meat, we notice how reliant we have become on our little pleasures.

When we spend more time in prayer, we might actually make space to listen to God as well as talking to him. When we give to the poor, we remember the needs of those around us whom we can so easily overlook.

But it is discomfort and joy. That reading on Ash Wednesday reminds us to look happy and not miserable during this season. The book of Lenten reflections which I have just written with Frances Correia (if you will allow me an ad break) talks about the joy of Lent because we know that it is a season that will end, and will end in the Resurrection.

Lent is a time for us to evangelise others, not because of the sacrifices they see us make, but because of the joy with which they see us living our lives, even as we sacrifice.

So whether involuntarily because of a new job or a Jozi tsotsi, or voluntarily because you make space in your comfortable life, welcome the discomforts of the Holy Spirit and enjoy this Lenten season.