Adjective or verb. . .what is my comfort zone?

There are lots of words in the English language-- 616,500 according to the second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary published back in 1989, which means it likely leaves out many newly minted words such as blogging and Brangelina.   If you were to say one word every second, it would take you just over a week to go through the entire inventory of the English language.  However, linguist David Crystal estimates the vocabulary of the average native English speaker consists of some 60,000 - 75,00 words including both active (those we use) and passive (those we understand) words, so a day would suffice for most people to exhaust their storehouse of vocabulary.

The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists provides a ranking of the most commonly used words in English.  Numbers 1-25 make up about 1/3 of all the printed material and the first 100 make up about half the written words in English. 

The First Hundred
the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with his they I	at be this have from or one had by word but not what all were we when your can said	there use an each which she do how their if will up other about out many then them these so	some her would make like him into time has look two more write go see number no way could people	my than first water been call who oil its now find long down day did get come made may part

Given those statistics, it's surprising that Sunday was the first time I noticed an odd synchronicity.  As I was spending a somewhat lazy morning lying in bed listening to NPR's Morning Edition and catching up on blog reading, at exactly the same moment I was reading the words "comfort zone" on the screen, the words were being said on the radio.  Granted, neither the word comfort nor zone appear in the top 1000 much less 100 commonly used words, which is probably one reason I noticed the occurrence-- because it isn't an everyday phrase.  But more than just the coincidence of reading and hearing the exact same phrase at the exact same moment, what made me really sit up and take notice was the juxtaposition of the contexts. 

The phrase I heard was in a story about the response of members and clergy in historically African-American churches to the upcoming vote in North Carolina surrounding gay marriage. A pastor used the parable of the Good Samaritan as a lesson in inclusion, saying, "Jesus is always calling us away from our comfort zones." 

The phrase I read was on a Danish fashion and lifestyle blog I follow. It described a look book full of romantic, embellished clothes that the author said inspired her but, as a Scandinavian women used to "edgy" and "minimalist" fashion, moved her out of her comfort zone. 

Radical acceptance, respect and compassion for "an other" on the one hand; wearing lacy skirts and pink fuzzy sweaters on the other:  Two  very different ways of moving beyond a comfort zone.  I don't want to imply that one of these examples is more noble than the other.  I've watched enough episodes of "What Not to Wear" to realize that for many women, fashion comfort zones are tied to deeper issues than just a personal preference for style-- body image, gender issues, power, sexuality.  And as for Jesus, well as one of my professors in seminary said, "What Jesus asks us to do is not usually difficult but it is frequently inconvenient."

Comfort by Edvard Munch

But this did make me think about my own comfort zones-- those I am willing to break out of or perhaps just stretch a bit, and those I want to stay hunkered down in for the long haul.  There have been situations in my life lately where I've had to move out of my comfort zone, not by choice but in order to be present with and for others.  And maybe that's the key to knowing when I should move beyond my comfort zone . . . when it involves the transition from comfortable to comfort, from adjective to verb.