What I can feel today

August 15th, 2024 | Vickie Wu, Associate Director

A little over a year ago, I wrote an article about how embracing discomfort helps us grow. You can read it in full here.

I have been thinking about it recently for a few reasons:

For one, we have been having difficult conversations as a community over the last few months about the ongoing war in Gaza and how we might be led to act. Some of those moments have been hard and left us feeling raw and unsettled and uncomfortable.

This week, we had Steve Chase, former interim director of BHFH, as a Friend in Residence. We held two “threshing sessions,” one run by Regina McCarthy and the other by Steve, on Israel/Palestine. These are places to dig deeper into the issues without trying to make a decision. And we dug deep — these sessions lasted well into the night, and created a space for folks to share their feelings, beliefs, and life experiences, and keep doing the important work to, as Steve puts it, “come to moral clarity.” The air is beginning to clear, and we’re moving through our discomfort and into healing and possibility.

Also this past week, BHFH began the process of getting ready for construction on our deck. We moved out of the kitchen, and we are operating in a make-shift kitchen in the dining room. It actually hasn’t been as difficult cooking in that space as you might imagine. But it does involve a significant amount of discomfort we have to learn to live with for a few months as we renovate the rear ell roof and decking.

In the piece I wrote just a little over a year ago, these parts still feel so true:

”I’ve spent a lot of my time here at BHFH learning to step outside of my comfort zone. Learning how to live and work in community, learning about Friends, and even just learning how to be a reasonable human being after a decade in a commercial kitchen were not always easy, but were all important and rewarding things to experience.

As I settle into the role of Associate Director, I expect that there will be days where I feel way out of my depth and not sure if I’m doing the right thing. I expect that there will be days when everything is hard and I will upset someone, despite my best efforts. There will also be days where I end the day with my cheeks hurting from laughing or smiling so much. There will also be days where we all show up for one another in beautiful ways. There will also be days when both negative and positive are true, or days where the discomfort shows us the path to growth, to better understanding of our world and of each other, and to a tighter and even more vibrant community.”

I think moving through discomfort in such a pursuit is certainly worth it. And I can feel it today.