Divine Discontent

Quotes from Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life by Sarah Ban Breathnach


Day 43:  Divine Discontent:  Learning to Live By Your Own Lights

"Discontent and disorder [are] signs of energy and hope not despair."  Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgewood (1910-1997) British historian

"When we practice switching on the 'spiritual electricity,' what should we expect?  More energy and inspiration and delightful coincidences and the ability to accomplish goals with grace?  Yes, certainly....But one thing you might not expect--the one thing that might throw you--is how dissatisfied you may suddenly feel when the power is not present; when you are in the dark because you forgot to turn the switch on...The dissatisfaction you can feel manifests in various annoyances...The transformation process is working...You're going through a spiritual and authentic growth spurt...I call it Divine Discontent.  This is the gift of sand in the oyster that eventually creates the pearl.  This creative second chance is when we come into our own.  Where we finally claim our own lives and wrestle our futures from fate.  When we learn how to spin straw into gold.  When we realize gratefully that we can live by our own lights if we access the Power."

"Discontent can be a blessing.  It is an intensely creative state that nags and pokes you to get yourself going and accomplish what you really want in life."  --Barrie Dolnick from "Instructions for Your Discontent:  How Bad Times Can Make Life Better"

This is exactly where I'm at right now....dissatisfied.  It's been several years now since I was raising children (one of the most creative things a woman can do), and creating new gardens (I have more than I can care for now), decorating my house (there's nothing left to do), and writing stories and learning to draw and paint (my muse has left me to go live with someone else).  But I'm coming to realize that this is a time of transformation from within--learning to live by my own light and not someone else's--that is to say, to not need others' opinion of my creations to validate them.  I just need to be about the business of discovering my own unique style, to deal with fear of being criticized, or worse, ignored!  And then letting the Light that is within me shine through me to help others along this journey that we are all on together.


Day 44:  Once Upon a Time You Trusted Yourself

"Today, try to find a photograph of yourself when you were about ten.  Make sure you're smiling...look at it every day.  Send love to that young girl.  Try to travel back in time and imagination.  See yourself at ten..."

Sarah then lists questions like where did you live?  Who were your friends?  Your favorite book:  Food?

"Have fun with this exercise, because age ten was probably the last time you trust your instincts...Try to contact the girl you once were.  She's all grown up now.  She's your authentic self, and she's waiting to remind you how beautiful, accomplished, and extraordinary you are...thoughts and feelings still remain largely invisible in order to feel real.  We need to bring that invisible world to expression."

The above is my 3rd grade photo when I was 8.  You will not be able to find an age-10 photo of me smiling.   We'd moved that summer before and it was the unhappiest year of my life up to that point.  I have no 4th grade photo because that was the year leading up to the move when my father lost his business--our reason for moving.  Buying my school photo was probably the last thing on my mother's mind that needed to be done. But here--in 3rd grade you can see a genuine happiness in my smile--not self-consciousness at all, as I would become as my first move turned into nine more moves by the time I left home at 18.

A few years ago while researching my paternal ancestry I wrote out the story of each ancestor ending with myself.  I went through old diaries and photographs and asked my aunt questions (my parents were both gone by then and my brother much younger and therefore didn't remember that part of my life).  That was the year I took ballet/dance lessons.  I remember being elated when I was finally able to do the splits.  When it came time for my recital my mother picked out my outfit.  I didn't like it at all and refused to attend the recital.  I don't remember if I told my mother that was why I didn't want to participate.  Apparently, though, if you didn't participate in the recital you weren't allowed to continue lessons.  Was that the school's rule or my parents?  I don't know.  At least I stood my ground back then about wearing the hideous outfit!

There were other things that happened that year that shaped my future--like coming to know Jesus and being baptized, planning and holding an Easter party for my friends, and having my half-sister and half-brothers visit for several weeks in the summer and loving having lots of siblings even if it was just for a few weeks.  All six of us kids would pile into our station wagon for a week's stay at Mamaw's and Papaw's farm where adult supervision was non-existent.  In fact, it was better we didn't hang around the house because Papaw would be highly annoyed whenever any of us let the screen door slam.  Yes, I think I will sit with that little girl awhile and learn from her.


Day 45:  The Great Romance

                       

"What if----what if Life itself were the Sweetheart?" --Willa Cather (1873-1947) American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist

"Women often confuse love and romance...while love and romance are frequently in each other's company, they're not the same.  Think of love as emotion.  Romance is its evocative expression. Romance reveals the depth and breadth of a lover's feelings in a certain, tangible way...Women want and need love, but our constant craving is for romance.  However, the most delicious mid-life secret for women is the discovery that while love's tango might require two, living a deeply rewarding romantic life requires only one singular sensation:  you."

"When you're living from the heart, every moment brings another chance to fall in love."  -Martha Beck "Finding Your Own North Star:  Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live."

"If you want a romantic life, act as if you are in the throe of a passionate affair in your personal preparations...surround yourself with the things you love, so that your home is a sanctuary, not just a dwelling place.

"The only thing you must do to live a deeply romantic life is to base every decision you make on love."  -Martha Beck

A while back I started a folder in my Photo Library of romantic photos I'd taken.  I think it's time for me to visit that folder, then do a post on Morning Musings.  Sarah has really pegged me by claiming most of us crave romance!  Why were we women given this craving when most men do not crave it?  Perhaps it's so that we'd turn that craving loose on our homes.  Domesticity would be drudgery if we didn't love making a home for ourselves and our families.

I love her statement that living a deeply rewarding romantic life requires only myself.  She is absolutely right.  It's part mindset, part visual effects, part implementation.  It's learning what you love (without having to consider what others love) and implementing it whenever and wherever you can.  It's surrounding yourself with beauty--even if it's just a photograph from a magazine tacked to a board; spending time out-of-doors in a natural setting; listening to expressive music; making one corner in your house just for your tea or coffee and devotional reading time.  If you have a fireplace, use it more often, and if you don't, they have some really cute small electric "flame" stoves you just plug into the wall to give you that ambient glow of fire.  Just planning romantic scenarios is romantic!


Day 46:  A Woman With a Past

Tasha Tudor

"My primer on authenticity began when I had the blessed good fortune to meet one of the most amazing persons in the world, who became my mentor, a true Renaissance woman who showed me the extraordinary hidden depths beneath my ordinary."

This new friend, Cassandra said, "You must start seeing each day as a blank page waiting to be filled up with amusing anecdotes, profound turning points, provocative choices, and pursuits of passion."

"I don't know how successful you've been with learning to cherish yourself above all others.  But that doesn't mean we can't join the Woman with a Past club, because along the way we've all racked up a past whether we wanted to or not; and what's more, we've all paid our dues...A woman with a past...celebrates her quirks, exalts in her extravagances, feels secure in her own skin, faces down her fears and learns to treasure her foibles.  Because of that she's grounded in the soul knowledge that there is no other woman like her.  Never has been.  Never will be.....this week ponder and ruminate on how full we might feel if we called back to ourselves and were grateful for a female confidant, worldly and wise, soulful and sincere, compassionate and calm, graceful and generous, who finds no fault and only seeks to comfort us.  Call back your Woman with a Past, your Authentic Self."

When you are not outgoing it is not easy to put yourself "out there" to be in a position to meet up with a potential mentor.  I've had to turn to women I've "met" through books, like Tasha Tudor and Beatrix Potter to "mentor" me through the example they set.  It's a relief to see that Sarah was referring to someone we all have access to in person--our authentic selves.  When we moved to where we live now--39 years ago--I'd been married for 12 years and was childless for the first 10.  I had a completely different sort of life and accomplishments and setbacks that my new social group knew nothing about.  All they knew now was that I was a mother of a two-year-old.  They didn't know about my successes or my difficulties that made me who I was at that point.  No one knew I needed a mentor desperately as I tried to navigate my new life as a mother.  I wish I'd known she was with me all along.


Day 47:  Loving Your Authenticity

Don't look down!

"A sobering thought:  What if, right at this very moment I am living up to my full potential?" -Jane Wagner, American writer, director and producer

"Jane also points out that the 'ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.'...The reassuring news is that you've not completely lived up to your potential or you wouldn't be drawn to this book.  I'm in the same boat, or I wouldn't be writing this book---again!  We're both on an exhilarating adventure, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves not to look down.  We're both staring at a blank page right now.  For all its glorious promise, this blank page is intimidating, especially since we're hoping to fill it with passion and purpose, love and longings, wisdom and above all, a happy ending.  We might not have an inkling as to how to begin or where we're headed, but today let's agree with Audrey Hepburn who believed that nothing we set our heart, soul, and imagination to is impossible:  'Why, the very word says 'I'm possible.'"

That's exactly why I am here right now blogging about Simple Abundance.  I am hoping to fill my blank page with passion and purpose and it is indeed intimidating.  Turning the impossible into I'm possible should be every woman's motto!  No wonder my hackles rise up when someone tells me something I want to do is not possible.  I must have known all along that they were wrong to doubt me.


Day 48:  Buried Dreams

"It takes great courage to excavate buried dreams....Our dreams--how did we love and lose you?  Let us count the ways:  naïveté, good intentions, relinquishment, bitter failures, detours, disappointments, rejection, wrong choices, bad timing, bungled efforts, stupid mistakes, unforeseen circumstances, whims of fate, and missed opportunities.  It's no wonder we need courage to retrace our steps.  But as we find our way back to our Authentic Selves, we'll discover buried dreams waiting patiently for us to start over again."

"A wise woman once advised me not to be a 'would-be-if-I-could-be or could-be-if-I-would-be.  Just be.'  And while I learned that dreams need doing as much as they need being, I have learned that the being always comes first.  Today is a day for being.  Be with those you love, be kind to yourself.  Be with your own thoughts.  Be quiet and call forth the dream you buried long ago.  The ember is still glowing in your soul.  See it in your mind, warm yourself tenderly in your heart."

"The dream was always running ahead of one.  To catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, that was the miracle."  -Anais Nin (1903-1977) French-American novelist, poet and diarist

I do have an unfulfilled dream, but it is not buried.  I wish it were!  I'm wanting to move house so that I don't have to keep being reminded that my dream was never fulfilled.  So this is why I'm searching for a new dream which may involve having to move.  We are still in the throes of figuring out if this is smart to do or not.  I've made my list of Pros and Cons and am making sure I'm running toward something rather than away from something.  But it's still scary when you've already staked everything you have/are on something that did not come to pass and then taking a chance that moving elsewhere is going to satisfy that unfulfilled longing.  That is why I'm diligently searching to discover what it is I'm truly longing for and whether it can be fulfilled without moving.

I've been collecting quotes to help me gain a higher perspective:

"Gratitude makes sense of the past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." (source unknown)

"What you seek is a compatible flavor, energy, or vibration aligned with your soul.  You seek an experience more than a person, and that experience is available through many avenues." - Alan Cohen

"Unless you find belonging in your solitude, your external longing will remain needy and driven." - John O'Donohue

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." James 1:5


Day 49:  A Studio of Your Own

She Shed

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." -Virginia Wolf (1882-1941) Influential 20th century modernist writer

Sarah writes about owning a painting by Elizabeth Pillard called "A Studio of Their Own" and how it inspired today's meditation:

"Since time began, the essential ingredients for women to create seem to be private space and money...but idyllic conditions come and go in our lives...However, I think this deeply embedded cultural notion that we need all the perfect conditions before we can birth a dream, create art, start a new business, or, more importantly, cultivate a lifestyle that we feel passionate about, is a subtle but sophisticated form of self-sabotage.  So is it lack of time, space, creative energy, emotion, difficult relationships, or money that you feel is holding you back today?....if I pull down the yellowed scrim of memory and return to the most creative time of my life when I was first writing Simple Abundance, I must admit that my circumstance were hardly ideal.  I had a young child, a marriage with trouble brewing, 30 publisher rejections, and no money to spare.  The space of my own where I created everything out of nothing was my side of the bed."

"Women have always spun straw into gold threads out of desperate need.  But what miracles might come if we give thanks first for the desperate need even before we're rewarded with the golden threads.  For truly, the space in which a woman needs to create is safeguarded within her imagination, to be hidden in the crevices of her heart until she's ready to make it come true.  I hate to be the one to break it to us both, but sometimes a woman finds her destiny in between sighs or sobs, staring at a blank wall, in the same bed she took to escape it."

This is good to know--that we can find a space within to safeguard our creativity until it is ready to come forth....when we are ready to let it come forth.  I have my drawing table in the corner of my bedroom, not that it's being used lately.  But when I did, it served me well.  And all my stories were written in bed.  Just like Sarah, so I learn.  Bed is a wonderful place in which to let your imagination spill out onto a page.  Perhaps I'm not spending enough time in bed lately.

The She Shed has become popular in the past few years.  They do look darling and I've thought about building one lots of times.  But what stops me is that I know that if I went to all the trouble of building such a place I'd feel pressured to be out in it and then what?  What if I don't get inspired?  It would then just be a reminder of another failed attempt to be creative.  No, I think I'll stick with my bed which can always be used for sleeping if I'm not inspired.