Friction and Beauty

I was watching reruns of Cop Rock and wondering how anyone could associate dancing and singing with police work. Sometimes the most absurd contrasts in life come together quite beautifully; Cop Rock is a notable exception. There are people in my life that I consider associates, we deal with each other, figure out how to interact, when to take each other seriously, when to blow each other off. We use each other for what we need, we are congenial, generally polite and we figure out how to exist side-by-side with no friction. This is a very functional relationship on a very basic level. I know people with marriages that function on this level. Hell, I know people who wish that their marriages functioned on this level. But there is something missing...Beauty. We often think of beauty as a quality that is born in quiet solitude, a gentle whisper of new thought, a natural selfless commitment or an unchanging standard that never disappoints. It would seem that friction is the last thing that you would associate with beauty. How is it then that the relationships that cause the most change in me are the beautiful ones? The conversations that come close to emotional eruption, the turmoil of miscommunication and poorly chosen words, the hurt of misunderstanding and the humility of confession and forgiveness, these are the events that have produced all of the beauty that I have found in life. Beauty that reaches beyond numb functionality and crude practicality and produces a spiritual form of interaction that slakes the cracking soul. Society seems to have been frozen in a stilted charade of impersonal interaction at times. I don't know if this is a new phenomenon in fact I doubt that I feel any different than any person in any society at the turn of any century. John O'Donohue says,
"...there's the whole homogenization of culture and consciousness in mass technology and media--although there's a lot more interaction than there once was between people, but it's all simulated, you know, and lacks the vitality and vigor and danger of a direct encounter with otherness. So these are some of the contexts which are creating a massive spiritual hunger."
This "danger of a direct encounter with otherness" is the kind of friction that creates sparks, direct contact, heat. We spend so much energy trying to become comfortable that we deny ourselves the beauty that comes from discomfort. I, myself, have traded joy for peace and found none.

Proverbs 27:17
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."