Today has been a good day of sipping coffee with the sun shining through my window and Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Mozart's Requiem playing in the background and a book in my hands. I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell which is a very captivating look at how we make judgements, decisions, form opinions, etc all very quickly (as in a 'blink' of an eye) and how such judgements are measurable in some way before they become conscious. There is another book though that has been calling out to me the past few days called Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope by Joan D. Chittister and it too is also a very captivating read (perhaps because of where I am in life?). She's been talking about the interconnectedness between struggle and gifts. She uses the story of Jacob wrestling with God as the basis for her reflections. I thought I'd share a quote that stood out to me this afternoon as challenging, comforting and encouraging:
The elements of struggle [...] change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring. They are, we see, the price to be paid for becoming new. To struggle is to begin to see the world differently. It gives us a new sense of self. It tests all the faith in the goodness of God that we have ever professed. It requires an audacity we did not know we had. It demands a commitment to the truth. It leads to self-knowledge. It builds forbearance. It tests our purity of heart. It brings total metamorphosis of soul. If we are willing to persevere through the depths of struggle we can emerge with conversion, independence, faith, courage, surrender, self-acceptance, endurance, purity of heart, and a kind of personal growth that takes us beyond pain to understanding. Enduring struggle is the price to be paid for becoming everything we are meant to be in the world. (pg. 19)
This, in part, is what it means to live on the strength of the Absurd.
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