What’s So Divine About It?
An old friend of mine — a minister with one of those wacky alternative churches that dotted the landscape in the New Age era — used to talk about something he called Divine Discontent.
It’s that betwixt-and-between restlessness that comes upon us when we can’t figure out where to go but don’t want to be where we are. Figuratively and otherwise.
I’m into alliteration and I like the phrase. I even liked the church, insofar as it was wacky and creatively engaging and helped me wrap my mind around all kinds of interesting ideas about life and the universe and other important stuff.
But the feeling? It’s wiggly. I don’t much care for it. And for the life of me I’ve yet to understand what’s so divine about feeling like there’s something I need to be doing and not knowing what the hell it is.
A little clarity might help. A little, I don’t know, specificity?
Enough with this fumbling in the dark.
How do you respond to an urge that compels you to move forward while not telling you where, exactly, forward is?
It’s maddening.
Is it urging you toward a new project, or a whole new approach? Is it just the chapter that’s not working, or the whole damn book? Should you revisit the lyric that refuses to settle into its verse, or the whole career?
And how do you know that wiggly feeling is not just a craving for novelty, or a resistance to the untidy middle of whatever trek you’re currently on, the beginning far behind, the end not yet in sight? How do you know it’s not fear disguised as a need for change?
What if you’re right on the verge of a breakthrough, and your timid little reptile lobe — the part of your brain that’s afraid of pretty much everything — is just throwing down one last hissy fit?
In other words, how do we tell the difference between Divine Discontent and fickleness, or fear, or flat out self-sabotage?
Well… maybe we could start by asking it.
Face it, if our heads could figure this one out, they would have done so already. This is not about our heads. It’s about our guts. And that wiggly sense in there that something needs to happen.
So have a little chat with that feeling in your gut. Ask it what it really wants.
And why it wants it.
And then listen very closely to what it says.
And when you do, keep this in mind: Divine Discontent doesn’t come packaged in layers of anxiety. It doesn’t scorn the work your currently doing. It doesn’t trivialize the present in favor of the future, or undermine your passions or make you feel small. It may speak to you of urgency, but it doesn’t rush. It may be critical, but it isn’t disparaging. It may ask you for more, but it doesn’t compare you to others, or get out some yardstick of accomplishment to show you where you’re failing to measure up.
The urging of Divine Discontent speaks to your strengths, which is to say, those things that make you feel strong. That’s because the voice of Divine Discontent is the voice of your Wild Artful Heart, and your Wild Artful Heart is strong and wants you to be strong — needs you to be strong — right along with it.
Periods of restlessness and discomfort and discontent are part of the Adventure. Not the best part, not the most fun, but necessary. We don’t have to like them. We just have to pay attention, and practice a little discernment. Learn when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em. And when to tell that wiggle in your gut to go away and let you get your work done.
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