Congruence

Yesterday, my friend James popped over for a few minutes while he was in town. He’s a dear friend of ours/mine. We had a nice chat and caught up on all kinds of things, emphasizing what’s good in our respective lives. In the midst of this chat, he shared with me a term in a psychology context that I’d not heard before–congruence. Congruence in common parlance is harmony, compatability, matching. In psychology, it’s not much different except that it focuses on how our thoughts, our emotions, our words and our actions correlate and the aspiration to have those things be authentic to our lived experience.

Last summer on the very day I took Bryan to the hospital, we had been at Miles Away Farm, visiting Jennifer Kleffner to pick up our portion that we had gone in on of a locally-raised and regionally-butchered beef. Walter and Danielle did us a solid and got it out of the car parked at St. Mary’s and delivered it to our basement freezer. While Bryan was sick, I wasn’t doing a lot of cooking for more than just him and the hamburger was the easiest. Flash forward to now, and I have a lot of cuts of meat that I’m not going to eat all by myself.

For Sunday dinner, I invited friends that I got to meet, know, and love through their original connection with Bryan. I made pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. They brought all the rest–salad, baguettes, wine, peach pie, and ice cream. Bryan and I used to love entertaining. Some of you may remember meals, parties, porch gatherings, and cookouts at our house. This was a big part of us.

Now it’s me. And I have to rediscover who I am by myself. It’s fascinating, painful, hard, scary, and ultimately good, too. I love to cook for others. I love to entertain and make folks feel welcome in my space. I love the conversation and dynamic that is created over a table of food. This IS me. And while the person I long to be and the person I behave as have a lot of incongruity, yesterday, my mind, my heart, and my actions were in harmony and it felt really good.