Accepting Paradox in Others

Dear Leo,
Do you ever have that feeling of really liking someone but also finding yourself repeatedly irritated by so many of the things they do or say or how they say what they say or how they don't do what they say others should do?!?

I've had that experience recently, and it leaves me feeling disoriented.  I think, maybe, that feeling of "disorientation" is true, and I've given it the proper word, because I feel most whole and balanced and true and able to move forward when I am oriented in Christ, when my eyes are fixed on Christ, when it is Christ that I aim to please and to follow and be shaped by.  If I have allowed myself to be too focused or too influenced by another person, I have misplaced my proper orientation!

In the other experience (of liking someone in general but being greatly irritated by their particulars) I think, maybe, that the "liking" is recognizing some basic commonality; I have identified myself w/ them.  And then the irritations are when I either see in them things I don't like in myself, or I am being disabused of the generalized identification; I'm being reminded that the other is truly other, and I have to reorient myself as to who I am!  I'm not sure about all this.  I'm just wondering about it.

At any rate, I was somehow reminded of something by Rohr:

People are odd creatures: We are at the same time very good and very sinful.  These qualities do not cancel each other out.  Faith is to live and to hold onto that paradox.  Those with room for those two seemingly contradictory truths to coexist are the ones who can recognize the Kingdom of God. 

The absurdity of human reality will not shock them:  They've already faced it inside themselves.  The enemy is not out there, the enemy is us.  And when they see the paradox, they stop fighting the world.  They stop hating and avoiding the world.  They're free to live that threshold existence that we call the Kingdom. 

Then he goes on to say some important things about the Kingdom and about the nature of "threshold," but it was the reminder that we're all paradoxical creatures that's helping me abide in Christ's pure and faithful unconditional Love for each one of us, and all of us together.

Thank you, Leo, for listening.
Thank You, Abba, for Being!

~Mack