Dissatisfied and discontented

After literally being pilgrims (some say vagabonds ) for a few decades - moving from place to place - we now find ourselves in the season of yet another place. Supposedly, a retirement location! Finally settling down, as many expect us to. Others say it is only a “sabbatical”.

Well-meaning friends ask: Are you comfortable in the new place? Are you content with small-town life? Are you satisfied with your support systems? Some suggest that maybe it’s a time to read, reflect, and renew—a season of rest and recovery. 

Everyone has their expectations. 

The key words seem to be: a season of comfort, contentment, and satisfaction.

But to add to my confusion, I came across these two readings today! One, written by a friend in a devotional, says:

“We hesitate to move out of our comfortable middle-class lives. But the world longs for authentic faith that shows up in self-giving acts of grace, justice, compassion, and love.”

Jonathan Sacks, in his book, which I am reading now, writes: “Religion, an opium of the people? Nothing was ever less an opiate than this religion of sacred discontent—of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Faith is not acceptance but protest against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet, but ought to be.”

A reminder to be discontented, dissatisfied, and discomforted - always. 

He continues: “There are cultures that relieve humankind of responsibility, lifting us beyond the world of pain to bliss, ecstasy, meditative rapture. They teach us to accept the world as it is and ourselves as we are. They bring peace of mind, and that is no small thing.”

Paraphrased, this could be seen as a life of contentment, comfort, and satisfaction—the so-called “retirement life.”

But then he reminds us: “The righteous have no rest, neither in this world nor the next,” says the Talmud.

And then the challenge: “To be different, iconoclasts of the politically correct; to be God’s question mark against the conventional wisdom of the age; to build, to change, to ‘mend’ the world until it becomes a place worthy of the divine presence—because we have learned to honour the image of God that is humankind.”(Sacks, Jonathan, 1948–2020. Function. Kindle Edition, p. 27)

I wonder—what does it mean to be dissatisfied, discontented, and uncomfortable amid the middle-class comfort and contentment of my life?

Then I realised, as Sacks writes, that this is not for the faint-hearted. The faint-hearted look for comfort and satisfaction. But people of faith courageously embrace discontent and dissatisfaction because their vision of the universe is anything but comfortable.

I need to have the courage to find dissatisfaction, discontentment, and discomfort, right in the middle of this satisfied, contented, and comfortable life I am trying to build. 

Then today I came across this obituary of Pope Francis in The Guardian.  

“On that night of his election he stepped out on to the balcony overlooking Saint Peter’s Square in simple white robes, refusing the fancy red mozzetta or cape that Benedict had sported when he had been announced as pope. When told to put on white trousers, he later remembered in his autobiography, he replied: “I don’t want to be an ice-cream seller.””

“This personal modesty never wavered in all his years in Rome. He picked up his own phone, shunned limos and preferred to walk if possible (sciatica later caused him to use a wheelchair) – as, for example, on the day after his election when he slipped away on foot to collect his suitcase and settle the bill at the modest pensione where he had been booked in before the conclave began. If it had to be four wheels, he took a bus, or frequently squeezed his bulky frame into the papal Fiat 500 saloon”

“Francis had a clarity of thought that shaped every last aspect of his own life and ministry.” 

Maybe I should have clarity of thought before courage!