As true students of yourselves and mankind, you cannot be content with the present.
You must feel a Divine Discontent with things as they are,
however transitory or even incidental you may be or feel.
Professor Robert Clarkson Brooks
There is a mysterious and uncommon thread that runs through certain people. It appears they are in every culture. Poets write about them, history is driven by them, change depends on them. Religious people award it to god and irreligious people have no explanation. No matter how you look at it there are extraordinary people among us. These are people who cannot accept things as they currently are.
Alice Paul is a most exquisite example. She was a very privileged young lady, raised by educated people with an easy future in view. College bound, tennis racket in hand, friendly and believing she would be a biology teacher. Swarthmore College veered off her home path a little with music and distance but it was not much of a social shock to her. She had not yet set foot on the Road to Damascus or awoken to her life’s assignment.
At the insightful urging of Professor Brooks, Alice discovered the depth of her compassion once in service to the immigrants at the New York Settlement house. It was the explicit differential of her privileged life and the poor in New York and London that presented the problem that would inform her entire life. Equality, full constitutional equality, was in her sites. It motivated her. It defined her. It never let her out of its promise. From the time she saw, in total clarity, that social work was only treating the symptoms of economic inequality, Alice was called to action.
Like Boudicca at the lead, the prospect of success was not going to define the cause. The cause was intrinsically meaningful and, once fully perceived, nothing less would do. Alice’s mastermind began debating, configuring, honing in on full equality; all else was merely a cobblestone on the path. This was what the Quakers call her “Concern.” The Divine Discontent had been ignited and would never fall to embers in her ninety-one years.
The Quakers, and particularly the Hicksite Quakers, hold in esteem the act of stillness. Yes, it is an action, not inaction. One’s own truth rises up in the silence to light a knowing that will not be ignored, definitely not denied.
To have a concern means to feel a strong leading from the Holy Spirit to take action; to raise a question in meeting, to testify in public to organize a protest….. to have such a compassion to feel so keenly the plight of others, to care so much that one’s duty is to take action. Margaret Hope Bacon.
Alice’s primary biographer, Amelia Fry said, “Her divine discontent demanded an activist channeling. It had found its direction – women’s equality.” Of course today we know that this really is not only about women but about all people being equal. Lifting the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed to full equality includes everyone. As Gandhi would point out, the oppressor is in harm’s way as well. The goal is to end the entire cycle of oppression for all.
How is this Divine Discontent recognized? What Theodore Roosevelt called a “fierce discontent.” Deepak Chopra said, “Discover your own discontent and be grateful.. for without Divine Discontent, there would be no creative force.” For W.E.B. DuBois, it was a state of grace.
Most famously, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it Divine Dissatisfaction and prayed that a whole nation had it.
And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction. Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied, and men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, "White Power!" when nobody will shout, "Black Power!" but everybody will talk about God's power and human power.
There are certain attributes that appear again and again in those who suffer from this acute internal awakening.
TELLTALE SIGNS
The activist with Divine Discontent may not know the source but they always know the unrelenting disquiet. Others question, why can’t you just be happy for a moment or propose that you have done enough. But for those who cannot be sated, cannot be silenced, cannot declare victory midstream, this is impossible. Steps are always steps never the goal and nothing but the goal will do.
THE RISE AND FALL
Movements never actually die, they ratchet up and down, they scatter and retrench. The visionaries hold the course and wait for urgency to sound the alarm. As they rise and fall with time and circumstance, Divine Discontent holds a certain few at the edge of change as if lashed to the bow. Often it means they are ridiculed, marginalized and ignored while the drive never stops. From Selma to Ferguson many things occurred and racial equality visionaries stayed the course, only with far fewer numbers and slim media between. When the equality is measured again, as is reproductive justice in the 2010’s, there is an urgency that calls the sleepy to work but those with this unrelenting discontent never left.
BURNOUT
For the activist with Divine Discontent, even in the throes of terrible burnout, there is a longing to heal and get back to the work. There is a guilt in the unsolicited rests. There is shame that they cannot return to 100% participation. And, most tragic of all, peers demand more work and push beyond the spirit’s measured intent.
THE DIS-EASE OF DIVINE DISCONTENT
There is a grave possibility for tragedy and pain in this dis-ease; assassination for men and obscurity in poverty for women.
New York Times, November 4, 1975, page 21.
“Mother of the U.S. Equal-Rights Measure Nearly Penniless in Nursing Home at 90.”
Ridgefield, Conn. On the eve of the vote on the Equal Rights Amendments in New York and New Jersey, the author of the original federal version is near destitution, recovering from a stroke at a nursing home here.
Dr Alice Paul, now 90 years old, nevertheless continues to push for the amendment that she drew up in 1922 and keeps abreast of the states that have ratified the equal rights amendment to the Federal Constitution.
Discontent without resources is pure torture and, unshared, it leads to a melancholy isolation. The knowing of process, of strategy and that the new leagues of change-makers must learn through their own doing unfolds as a disregard. Alice Paul warned NOW and all in hearing distance that the deadline for the ratification of the ERA meant it would never pass. It was over before it began. Alice explained that opponents had only stop the threshold state from ratification to preclude a super majority within the time allotted. In other words, it was just a matter of disabling one state in seven years.
As she was sitting in her wheelchair in a retirement home, foolish people, expert in nothing but the practice of ageism, did not confer with Miss Paul. March 22, 1975, the day the ERA was passed from Congress to the states, Lethe Mae Glover, Miss Paul’s housekeeper, said that Miss Paul was deeply sad. Alice knew, with the deadline attached, it would never pass. She was the ultimate political strategist with three law degrees and fifty years of contemplating the Equal Rights Amendment; not just in its application but in what it would take to become law. Miss Paul called the deadline the “axe of the opponent.” At age 91, Miss Paul said she was worried she was useless.
Divine Discontent is different from social discontent, a collective sense that things as they are cannot, do not serve the citizens. This is not the discontent that housebound ladies suffered and mushroomed into Freidan’s Feminine Mystique. This is not the quiet percolating in which a community is so oppressed that nothing can relieve the pain but public protest. This is a private singular ineffable call of dissatisfaction, maybe sustained by believing things could be better, a vision of what that could be and once seen, undeniable.
ORIGIN
One can only speculate about the origin of Divine Discontent.
It is only perceived in the use of it as the source alludes detection.
It calculates in the head.
It serves in the hands.
It marches in the feet.
It resides in the heart.
It is a dis-ease that does not seek treatment, only action.
It is an infinite whisper that shouts when justice is in sight, LIFE COULD BE BETTER.
LINEAGE
Maybe you are one who is struck with this terrible dis-ease. Maybe you suffer with this mystical vocation to advance social justice. Maybe you know life could be better and see justice in the mist.
If you do,
keep it safe from anger,
feed it with servant leadership and
know it is fueled by love and love alone.
If you do,
know that angels bend down from the clouds to get a better look. There is something very special about this calling as it is a discontent with things as they are and it is the Divine offering the vision for change. As Gandhi is so often quoted, Be the Change, as how else is it going to get here but through your hands, your feet, your heart. You are the demonstration of justice, sent to inspire.
If you do,
your benefactors’ spirits will rise to assist you. They are heavily invested in your success. Call on them often to light and shorten the road.
Henry David Thoreau * Dorothy Day * Harvey Milk * Barbara Gittings * Oscar Romero
Martin and Coretta King * Bayard Rustin * Susan B. Anthony * Mohandas and Kasturbai Gandhi
Margaret Sanger * Rachel Carson * Harriet Tubbs * Sojourner Truth * W.E.B. DuBois * Jane Addams
And so many whose names we have lost.
Now your new advocate, Miss Alice Paul.
And should you be so fortunate to have been born with this terrible unquenchable knowing coupled with an inability to just “sit this one out,” lucky you.
