Restlessness is not comfortable. We’d rather not spend too much time dwelling on thoughts of missing out… or of doubt… or spend too much time dwelling on the mundanity of life. That’s not a comfortable place to be.
So when someone like Casey Tygrett comes along suggesting that restlessness is a gift because it opens us up to the movements of God, that feels a little jarring.
Casey Tygrett is a speaker and the director of spiritual direction practice for Soul Care, which helps church and nonprofit leaders restore health to their souls. He is the author of The Gift of Restlessness and is the host of the Restlessness is a Gift podcast. Tygrett holds an MDiv and a DMin in spiritual formation from Lincoln Christian Seminary. He and his family live in south suburban Chicago.
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This episode posted on April 19, 2023
Transcript
Ryan Dunn
This is the Compass Podcast where we disrupt the everyday with glimpses of the divine.
Restlessness is not something that is comfortable. We'd rather not spend too much time dwelling on thoughts of missing out or dwelling on doubt or really spend too much time dwelling on the mundanity of life. Kind of doing the same thing over and over again, right? That's not a comfortable place to be. So when someone like Casey Tygrett comes along and suggests that restlessness is a of God that feels a little bit jarring. So in this episode, we're going to have a conversation with Casey about restlessness and how it can be a form of refining and gaining clarity. And one of the things that Casey notes is that restlessness actually helps us see reality more clearly. We're going to get into that. Casey Tygrett is a speaker and the director of spiritual direction and practice for soul care, which... helps church and nonprofit leaders restore health to their souls. He's the author of the gift of restlessness and is the host of a podcast called Restlessness is a Gift. I'm Ryan Dunn and Michelle Maldonado has been traveling a bit and had to miss this episode, but we'll catch up with her next round. But in the meantime, here's my conversation with Casey Tigrit.
Ryan Dunn (00:09.759)
Casey, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us this morning. And second of all, kind of our right of initiation question on the Compass podcast is how goes it with your soul?
Casey Tygrett (00:22.210)
Oh my gosh, it goes, it goes. Can I just leave a period there? Like it goes. It's been an interesting couple of weeks that you catch me here, but my soul right now is probably in the place where it needs to rest a bit and that's coming, but a few more things to do before we get to that. So.
Ryan Dunn
Mmm. You can.
Casey Tygrett
It's like the last couple miles of a long road trip and you're like, if I can see the signs and the miles are going down, down, down. So we're coming to that. If that's enough of a metaphor for you, we're coming up to that point of being able to rest a bit. But yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that question. Nobody asks that.
Ryan Dunn
Yeah.
Ryan Dunn
Sure, well it's ironic that you say that your soul is in a place of needing rest, and we are gonna dedicate the next half hour or so to talking about kind of the opposite of that, restlessness. Of course, you've written quite extensively about that, and before we get into kind of the depth of some of your writings, I'm just curious, is it an exhausting process to dive
Casey Tygrett
Hmm.
Ryan Dunn
deep into restlessness?
Casey Tygrett
I think it can be. I think there were times when it definitely was only because it's tough to talk about a concept like that. And I flesh this out a little bit in the book that is really so common to humanity. We may not, everybody, I feel like I've realized everyone has a different word for it or a different way they like to articulate it, but that all kind of ties back to this one hub, all the spokes come back to it. And so in one sense, you find a lot of.
conversation partners, you realize you are not alone. But on the other hand, trying to walk through the various iterations of it in your own life and knowing that my stuff is different than someone else's stuff, we may carry the same term for it. That can be draining, especially if you're looking at it from the perspective of this is the thing, how do I fix that or how do I solve that? And that probably was the most exhausting.
is probably the most exhausting part of talking about it is how do we move past this whole fixing mentality when it comes to restlessness? So yes and no probably is the best way to answer that. Sometimes, absolutely, sometimes there's a good bit of freedom in it too just to just to name some of these things.
Ryan Dunn
Well, during this process, you've come to a pretty enlightened, I would call it view of restlessness. Um, but you note that you go through these periods of restlessness like every six months or so. And I have a feeling that there's quite a few of us who resonate with that, that we feel like there are just periods where, uh, we feel unsettled as well. Just out of curiosity though, have you ever been inspired to do something drastic or foolish or even regretful in response to these periods of restlessness?
Casey Tygrett
I think things that fall under those categories have definitely occurred to me. The good part is having some people in my life, my wife, my friends, who I can be like, here's what I'm thinking, and they sort of look at you and cock you at their head and go, you know, the less direct ones of them just go, oh really, why would you do something like that? And then my wife is like, that's a...
Ryan Dunn
Okay.
Ryan Dunn
Tell me more. Okay.
Casey Tygrett
but that's not you and that's a terrible idea. Like, oh, you're right, that is a terrible idea. So, and it varies in degree. So those every six month periods can be growing facial hair, which I'm not great at. You, I have figured this out. And so you're officially like my patron saint of beardage. I can't do that. So, but I'll try as just to change something up because that restlessness just asks you to say,
Ryan Dunn
You're right.
Ryan Dunn
Ah!
Ryan Dunn
Yeah.
Casey Tygrett
everything needs to change. So what can you change and what can you manage? Well, this is something I can do or switching up a habit or a routine or things like that. So that's the low end of the spectrum. The high end of the spectrum is what you're talking about. It's leaving a job, it's leaving a relationship, it's making just really rash decisions with little wisdom and with a whole lot of compulsiveness.
not emotion, but the feeling of compulsiveness that I this just has to, we just have to do this, we just have to do this. And being able to temper that is is a big part.
Ryan Dunn
Hmm. So accountability to others, or at least openness and acceptance of the input of others sounds like a way to temper that a little bit. Are there other kind of checks that you put around yourself to keep you grounded?
Casey Tygrett
I think others in terms of friends and family, others in terms of maybe even sometimes a faith community, sometimes a faith community is the thing that causes the restlessness. One of the things that I do in my life is I operate as a spiritual director and it's a wonderful chance for me to walk with people in various stages of life. And one of the conversations I have most frequently is someone who has
discovered that the community of faith they've attached to and that has given them identity and grounding for so long now is not a place they can continue to stay. Either because something really dark has happened, there's been some abuse or some mistreatment or some betrayal, or just because it's one of those where good for you, I just can't stay. Maybe is the phrase to say that, like I bless this stuff because it was so good at a certain stage in my life. I'm not there anymore.
and so I have to move on. And so sometimes that community accountability is the thing that causes the restlessness. So I think that finding that group or tradition that helps to provide some buffers and some boundaries. But I also think really being one of the things that helps us remain accountable, but also gives us perspective about it is really just having the permission to call it what it is and say, this is not
me having to fix something. But this is a natural outgrowth of being a human being of living in skin with spirit. And knowing that, of course, things are going to change. And of course, a global pandemic, or a job change or this situation of abuse or turning 40 turning 50, like these things are going to bring up and stir up the water. And so just being able to say and be
be at peace with the fact that, yeah, restlessness is gonna be part of this. It's often when, it's when we don't talk about it, and when we see it as either a character flaw or even in certain contexts sin, that's when I think we lose, it doesn't matter who we're being held accountable to at that point, because the way we've framed this story is just gonna, it's gonna cut our legs right out from under us.
Ryan Dunn
And we have this tendency to, um, to look at ideas or experiences, feelings like restlessness, uh, kind of like dirty dishwater, right? And we just want to drain it out, get rid of it as fast as possible. Like it has its purpose, but let's, let's move on. Um, and so the idea that, that you would dedicate so much interest into this topic, that's compelling and interesting to me. I would love to know a little bit about like what brought you to the place where you wanted to
dive into it so deeply that you would write a whole book about it.
Casey Tygrett
There were several factors. And I love talking about this because from a perspective of the topic is always wonderful, but also just the life and the process of writing and creating, it never goes like it seems. We see a book on the shelf and we think, oh, well, someone decided to write this and someone wanted to publish it. And it really has more of a story. There's more of a narrative, a growth, a development of it. And so books actually, I feel like are collations of a-
a person's life at a particular time and place. And so for me, writing about restlessness began with just the acknowledgement that this is something I'm constantly talking about. I feel like I've inherited it a bit. My family, there's a personality piece to that where I see a lot of this in my dad, this feeling of if things have been the same too long, they need to change. And so that's something I've talked about quite a bit.
but it's something also that I've noticed in other people. And so beginning to write the book was, a lot of times writing is the way that we figure out what we think, figure out what we think about ourselves, about God, about others, and until it gets out of our heads and onto a page, sometimes we don't really know what we think. And so I wanted to do that. I wanted to put it someplace other than just the swirl of my own neuro pathways.
Casey Tygrett
So I began that work probably in 2018, early 2019, and then put it away for a while. And thought, man, maybe this idea would come back. Then 2020 and 21, living through that period of time, and obviously we could all, everything we talk about from now on will have some root in what happened in those particular years, especially for me in the US. But coming back to this concept,
after all of that, both the universal stuff that we all shared, but also some of the personal, the what's the universal in the particular of my own life, my own family, we had some major things happen during that period of time in our life in our family. So coming back to that and saying, okay, now the story of restlessness through that framework feels so different. And there are so many different things to talk about. And so
just being able to not only make sense of what restlessness is for me, but also to make sense of a restless period of time, a very focused, very restricted, very tight, very potent period of restlessness for myself and for other people too. As a pastor and a spiritual director, I'm constantly in conversations with people who are trying to make sense of this. And so the book really felt like something that needed to happen for me to make sense of my own stuff.
Ryan Dunn
Yeah, for sure.
Casey Tygrett
but also to help other people with that permission idea. Is it okay? And what happens after we give ourselves permission to say, yeah, restlessness is part of this. It may actually be something that helps us move forward. It might actually be good, it might actually be a gift. What happens when I give myself permission to believe that? And how do I come to terms with that?
Ryan Dunn
Well, we're recording in April of 2023. In your impression, have people gotten less restless since, say, June of 2020?
Casey Tygrett
I don't think so. I don't think it's anymore. I think it's always a matter of getting channeled into specific places. I think our restlessness depends on where we are in our life, who we're surrounded by, our personal narratives. I noticed that I was talking with someone who was finishing their college, their undergraduate degree.
in 2021, two, so they graduated recently. And they were talking about how that shaped everything for them, their feelings of completion, their feelings of connection to their university. Some of the things that are taken for granted in other narratives like mine, 1996 to 2000, we had Y2K, but that wasn't nearly the thing that was supposed to be dating myself here, but.
Casey Tygrett
Yeah, I had flats of water in my basement. I'm just saying it, I had canned food. It was all going wrong. But that changed, that is it's certain kind of restlessness that's a certain focus for that particular person. So there still are the particularities that are probably the same as it would have been. It's just heightened and maybe a bit more aware. I think our social media and media culture in general may elevate our response.
Casey Tygrett
to that restless feeling because of our awareness, because of the feeling of needing to have an immediate reaction. Whether you are someone with 100 followers who just does this for fun, you see something, you're like, I feel like I need to say something about that, or I need to make a statement about this. And I think there's a restlessness that goes along with that too.
So I wouldn't say we're more or less, I would say it's probably different. I would say there are some places where we are a bit more restless in terms of our own way of being with each other. I think relationally, our restlessness has increased both in America because of politics, also because of various cultural battles that are being fought, that we could argue the merits of whether they should or shouldn't, but that has changed things. That has definitely changed things.
Casey Tygrett
Maybe a little bit more in the relational standpoint, but in general, I think it's just flowing into different channels.
Ryan Dunn
Well, I'd like to dive into a couple things that you wrote and a couple quotes that really kind of stuck out to me. They splintered at me a little bit or shimmered in a way, I guess. That's a more appropriate way of putting it. One of those was that you wrote that restlessness exposes reality as it is. Do you have some examples of that? How does restlessness reveal reality to us?
Casey Tygrett
Yeah, taking restlessness seriously, giving yourself permission to look at it, acknowledging, I define restlessness in the book as the state of being stuck in the present tense. It's that we cannot go back to the way things were, but we have no idea what forward looks like or where we're headed next, but we are simply planted in the present tense. And so it's that irritated, unsettled feeling of, I can't go back to the time before.
you know, I acknowledged that I was an addict, or that I was addicted to this particular thing, I can't go, we can't go back to the time before March of 2019, or November of 2016, or pick pick your timeframe, whenever you want to whenever you want to pinpoint that we can't go back. But we have no idea what moving forward looks like. And so there's, there's a sense of just being stuck in the here and now. And in that moment, we're really confronted with everything that's true about us. So the story that
really resonates with me in this conversation is the story from the Bible of Jesus in the wilderness. And that the wilderness is this place where everything, all of our coping and management mechanisms get stripped away. It's silent, so we can't manage our life with words. The resources are gone, so we can't medicate, we can't soothe all of our
relationships, we're in solitude and maybe even loneliness. So all those people we used to lean on. And so sometimes restless periods are more like a wilderness where everything has been peeled away. The comforts we felt before or the certainty we have moving forward, it's all gone. And when that happens, we have to stare reality in the face. And so when I, every once in a while, will feel this urge, like I need to make a change in my job.
me or you know, maybe I would broaden this to say if we feel like we're in a place like, I need to make a change in my job. And we start looking at other jobs. There's a reality that comes with that, that isn't just what do I what would I rather be doing, but why. And if we allow ourselves to really dive into that and say, why right now am I looking for some new work, it might be because hey, it's it's time to move on. It could be because there's a failure or
a rift in a relationship in that work that we need to acknowledge and we want to run away from it, but we can't. So we're stuck in this particular spot. As a parent, you know, walking through a mental health crisis with our child, we have all these expectations of how they're going to turn out and what's going to happen. And then all of the sudden, those expectations aren't going to be met.
Casey Tygrett
And we don't quite know what to do with that. We don't know what it's going to look like in the future. And to be honest, we never did. Like, we're kidding ourselves. Like, I know exactly how my child's gonna turn out. No, you don't. None of us do. But we think we do. And when our presumption about that gets pulled away, then we get to see all kinds of stuff about us. I wanted them to be that way for me. Not for them, but that was about me.
Ryan Dunn
That's true.
Casey Tygrett
And so that's where restlessness, if we allow ourselves to really lean into it, starts to peel back the curtain on pull back the curtain on some, some realities that are in our life that otherwise we, why would you think about it? If everything is fine and the comforts we have and the, the compulsions or the coping mechanisms we have are all in place. We don't really have to encounter that, but it's, it's when we are in those moments that we, we stare reality in the face, uh, pretty strongly.
Ryan Dunn
So it sounds like then to really kind of glean something useful or productive, those are bad analogy or bad terms for it, but you know, as you put it, lean into the restlessness that there's a reflection process alongside of that. Not just kind of fleeing away from the restlessness or seeking the Band-Aid fix, but to really ask that question of why.
Do you have some practices in mind when you think about the ways of practicing reflection in terms of restlessness?
Casey Tygrett
There are a few things that I feel are helpful. Obviously, we mentioned a couple of those, just conversation, being able to have some people around you that you're able to talk with about this is very important. The structure of the book is actually built around the Lord's Prayer. And one of the things that I find helpful about that is not literally praying that, but, and prayer is a part of this, obviously, I would.
Casey Tygrett (19:35.574)
I would never not recommend that. But it's for me, it's the questions behind each line of that prayer, because they were carefully chosen. I love to say, do you notice the stuff Jesus didn't say pray for? What's missing in there? Like, don't pray for your aunt's cat. Like, oh, I love that. You should pray for your aunt's cat. I'm not saying you shouldn't. But he chose those very specifically. And one of the things I notice is they all correspond to some really gut level.
Casey Tygrett (20:04.002)
ground level human needs. So the need to belong, the need to have enough, the need to have a purpose, the need to be mended, forgiveness, can relationships in a world be mended, the need for safety, the need for rescue. Those are like those core, really solid, this is what all human beings are longing for. And the Lord's Prayer is structured as a way of praying for that.
But I think in restless times, we can ask ourselves those questions. Okay, right now, I feel like I can't go back and I can't go forward. I like to say it, bartenders have that phrase of you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. I like to phrase it in terms of I can't go back, but I can't go forward, using that phrase a little bit. So I can't go back, I can't go forward. So where do I belong? And how do I understand where I belong? What's enough for me right now? Whether it's...
Casey Tygrett
actual resources, or friendships or relationships or energy. And so one of the ways of leaning into it is just asking some of those very human questions. What do I need to be safe right now? What do I need to be rescued from? What needs to be mended? And do I even believe mending is possible? I think one of the challenges with forgiveness, whether it's interpersonal, us needing to forgive someone else or being forgiven by someone else.
or even the greater sense of mending and forgiveness on a corporate scale is that it is one of the things that we want the most and it's one of the things we think is the least possible.
Casey Tygrett
It's a deep desire when we see news reports of people forgiving someone who assaulted them or killed a family member and we see that and we're like, oh, that's so noble. But when it comes to us, yeah, I just don't know if that's possible. So asking, absolutely. So asking, leaning into it is really asking those gut level questions. And if you're a person with a faith, I think spirit meets us in that.
Ryan Dunn
Hmm right, you know, sometimes it feels good to sit in that anger. Yeah
Casey Tygrett
I think there is wisdom and guidance from the divine in those questions. How do I know what's enough? Should I be asking what am I here for? What's my purpose? Or should I be asking what is it that I really love? What do I really, really love? What do I really need?
Casey Tygrett
What am I really afraid of? Sometimes that safety question, if I feel safe, if I need to feel protected, what is it that I'm afraid of? What's the great fear? And restlessness gives us a chance to ask that because all the other stuff is peeled back.
Ryan Dunn
You know, a lot of times we turn to spirituality and faith as a means of peace. And then along comes Casey, who writes something like the careful journey of spiritual formation inspires restlessness, this kind of act of unrest rather than inoculating against it. How do you, how do you see the spiritual journey as something that inspires restlessness?
Casey Tygrett (23:22.506)
I've always felt like there was a really strong tie between the language and understanding of human development and the language of spiritual development. And so early on in our life, we form these attachments and they might be secure, they may be insecure, but they're the things that make us who we are. So that could be family, that could be faith community, that could be a sense of ourself. We are loved and worthy.
or we are unloved and unworthy, we attach to those things. And then that sets up how we respond to what we do next. And I think that's true of spiritual journeys as well. We attach to a concept of God, of other people in light of God, and of ourself in light of God. And we live in that space for a while. Those attachments were really built to change.
growth and development means that we move from one set of attachments to another, the child who depended on their parents for everything, can then feed themselves. And so they don't need to attach to that their parents that way they do a different version and a different version and a different version. I think the same thing is true. What's key and what some of the great spiritual masters have taught is the distance between the first attachment and the new attachment is always accompanied by pain.
So there's some kind of suffering, mild or mild, moderate or extreme that moves us from one stage to another. For someone who I walk with, who I would talk with as a spiritual director, who is leaving their faith behind, it's pain that probably motivated that. Maybe not a pain in the belief. I find that people who make a change in their faith commitment usually have already done the intellectual stuff way ahead of time.
Ryan Dunn
Okay.
Casey Tygrett
It's the pain of losing community and losing people and losing our place in that community that's really at the heart of why we're hesitant. But there is a pain that comes with moving from one stage to another. And restlessness usually is the thing that inspires that pain, or that is consistent with that space where we are swirling and thinking the stuff that brought me here won't take me there. I feel like I'm being invited into
bigger journey, a broader journey to leave behind some things and to go out into the wilderness and see what's out there and then rebuild and reattach as I go. And it's restlessness that really allows us and moves us into those spaces. And so the spiritual journey is about peace. But peace in the sense of the Hebrew word shalom is peace, but not peace in the sense of the absence of conflict. It's
peace in the sense that everything is in its right place. And so if we're going to ever grow and be formed, it's as much about the things that are solid and stable and joyful and peaceful as it is about the things that are disconcerting and upsetting. And all of those things have a place. So it's moving from a feeling that faith is just black, white, in, out, good, bad, to a place where, like Jesus says, hey,
Casey Tygrett
God makes the rain fall on righteous and unrighteous. So be like that.
Like that's such, what in the world? That's counter to be perfect like my father's perfect. He blesses righteous and unrighteous people. Well, nobody's preaching that. Nobody's talking about that. And yet, when you hear that, you're like, well, yeah, because sometimes I'm a real good farmer and sometimes I'm not. And rain falls on me either way. So how do I embrace some of the unsettledness?
Ryan Dunn
Oh, thanks for, yeah.
Casey Tygrett
of that being true. And where does that take me?
Ryan Dunn
Well, if peace is something, is this state in which everything is kind of in its right place, can one find peace in the midst of restlessness or are we on some kind of mission to defeat restlessness instead?
Casey Tygrett
Oh, I think we can be. I think we can be on a mission to defeat it. I don't know how well we'll succeed at that. Because I.
Ryan Dunn
Okay. Is that a noble pursuit even?
Casey Tygrett
I don't know if it's noble. I think it makes sense to us. I think in some ways it makes sense to our brain chemistry because restless times usually kick in that fight or flight lizard brain kind of response. We either fight it and like, no, this is not what it seems like and I just need to be stronger. I grew up in a real conservative Christian environment. So for me, it would have been, well, I just need to read more of the Bible and pray more and go to church an extra night.
So that's how I'm going to fight this. Um, sometimes it's, I just need to run away. So I'm going to met self-medicate. I'm going to distract. I'm going to give into compulsions that just helped me to ignore it. Or it could be just a flop and just let the restlessness overtake us and go into cynicism and say nothing. And, and we might experience various degrees of all of those, but the restlessness will, will always have the upper hand because we're sort of fighting against ourselves.
Casey Tygrett
We're fighting against something that's an invitation within us that is asking us to move and to learn and to grow and to be wiser. So I think it's possible for us to embrace both a rep to embrace the idea of being rested in a restless in a restless place. And the metaphor for me that really works that is in Mark, the Gospel of Mark in the account of Jesus in the wilderness.
It says he was with the wild beasts and the angels attended to him. I don't know. I've read that a bunch of times and thought, okay, so it's a detail, but to think that you're in between the stuff that you feel like might kill you and this heavenly blessing, that's a great picture for me of what restlessness looks like we're in between something that feels like we got to fight it or run from it or just submit to it. We can't outrun the cougar, you know, or.
will be rescued from that and we need to move into this glorious, blessed place. And the, what Jesus does is just abides, just remains right there in the middle between the wild beasts and the angels. And, and that I think is what it looks like to truly get the heart and the joy and the wisdom out of a restless time is to be able just to sit in the middle of it and acknowledge both sides of that.
And it's so simple, you can tell. Like it's so easy. Like I could give you easy three steps on how to do that. But it's no way, no way.
Ryan Dunn (30:22.407)
You could? Alright, I'm taking it. Give me the checklist. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can feel, I love your analogy there of pulling from scripture with that place because it is such a point of extremity. It's where you have like the life-threatening wild beasts and yet the life-saving.
Ryan Dunn (30:51.587)
idea of God's providence and supply.
Casey Tygrett (30:57.550)
Yeah, and it just reintroduces us to things that are, like I said, they're very much the grounded, rooted human sort of experiences of fear, of hope, of want, desire, hunger, ache, loneliness. I mean, all of that is built into those restless moments. And rather than run from it, rather than believe it's evil, there's...
an example of what it looks like a map of how we just we just stay in the middle of it. And that's why you know, one thing I would say is anybody who's reading this, who's trying to work through a period of restlessness. It is best not to try that alone. It is good to walk with someone whether that's I believe, because I am one, but I do believe in spiritual direction is a helpful, helpful thing. Sometimes it's therapy, you know, it's a counselor or a therapist who meets us in the middle and
Casey Tygrett (31:55.302)
and helps us to have some of those hard conversations and do the work, quote unquote, do the work as, as a lot of people talk about, but I think there's I do think there's extreme value and wisdom in doing that with someone else.
Ryan Dunn (32:10.919)
Let's spend just a moment talking about the nature of spiritual direction. You mentioned earlier that you work with some people who are kind of on the process or feeling a pull to kind of leave faith behind and yet they've gone to you for spiritual direction. Obviously that's going to include some kind of faith based processing and in language.
Ryan Dunn (32:40.876)
Um.
Ryan Dunn (32:44.971)
I guess the question then becomes how does somebody who is in that process work through spiritual direction or the spiritual direction, it doesn't just become about kind of providing
Casey Tygrett (33:08.331)
That's, yeah, absolutely. It's the way I describe spiritual direction is my job as a director. And one of the things that is, I think is fascinating about spiritual direction is, it's as much about the growth and development of the director as it is the directee. And so there's something happening in me as I am with others that is both personal
Ryan Dunn (33:26.100)
Hmm.
Casey Tygrett (33:35.010)
There are thoughts that are coming up. There are emotions. My body, like there are times when I'm having a conversation and my gut goes tight or my neck, I can feel it in my neck. And I think that what faith is recovering, what communities of faith are recovering is that connection between body and spirit. For so many years, we lost that. And like the body's evil, the spirit's good, escape this thing and everything will be fine. But there is such a deep connection. Our body knows things before our brain does. And so it will tell us.
hey, when they say that, you respond this way. Maybe it's time for you to think about what that means. And so I will attempt with everything that I have to pay attention to what's going on in me, but I'm there to hold a non-anxious space. So we're not in a hurry. We're not there to accomplish anything. I'm not there to really convert anyone or lead anyone in a particular direction or work a particular program.
Ryan Dunn (34:07.903)
Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (34:27.601)
Mm-hmm.
Casey Tygrett (34:32.813)
They had to hold a non anxious space for a person to listen to what, what the divine is up to. Um, now they may be questioning that if that being actually exists, if it's worth being with that being, if that being actually exists. And so my job is just to sit there with them, listening to what's going on. Also listening to spirit, uh, knowing that the divine is not allergic to people who aren't sure that the divine is real.
Casey Tygrett
There is a sense in which there's probably more of a presence there. When we are, when we feel distant, when we feel angry, when we feel doubtful, there's a closeness. And so my job is not really to say, well, you're wrong. Because don't you read this? Or don't you know this? It's more to say, let's talk about that. Where's that coming from? And one of the things I find not always.
But one of the things I find, especially with people who are wondering if they are should leave their faith, is that they're they're leaving a lowercase F faith, rather than an uppercase F faith, they're leaving a form or a practice behind. Which is a good healthy and natural thing. Now that's not everyone. There are some people who are like, I just this old God Jesus thing, I'm just, I'm done with it. Okay. But a lot of times, it's a particular brand or tradition.
that someone is saying, I just can't, I can't be, here's the things that I'm coming to learn and I just can't be a part of that. And so that transition is a different one. And so as a director, I can be with them in the middle of that. Help them to really diagnose the restlessness of it, to make peace with how they got to where they are and then to be able to help them say, so what do you feel like you're being invited to do? What's the next good thing? And
and then it's a relationship. So that's the other thing that's wonderful about spiritual direction is, we don't live in the one-off. It's an arc. And so being able to walk with people over periods of time, I met with a spiritual director, my own director, for probably eight or 10 years, and just where we came from to where we ended up was a very beautiful thing. And so spiritual direction for restless people is,
Casey Tygrett
Let's let's try and make sense of what it looks like to sit here. Between the wild beasts and the angels. What does it mean to sit here? And why are you here? What brought you here? What are some of the things that you can tell are not helpful and hopeful? The ways that you're hoping to cope with this? And how do we help you to move past that? So the faith conversation is definitely swirling.
but how we go about it in a direction session can be very different.
Ryan Dunn
Well Casey, The Gift of Restlessness, obviously one of your books, you have several books out and a podcast to go with it. I've appreciated getting the chance to kind of catch up on that. Where is a good place online for people to connect with you and follow along with all the things that you're up to?
Casey Tygrett
Oh, thank you for saying that. Yeah. So my website, kctigrit.com is probably the best place. There are resources there and places where we can talk about the book and the podcast and the, the blog and all the other things that I do, but there, social media, um, at Casey Tigrit on Instagram. I don't spend much time on Twitter anymore for my own mental health. So, uh, but.
Ryan Dunn
Hmm. I hear that so much. Yep.
Casey Tygrett
Those are a few places where they can find me. Or the book came out with Broadleaf Books and they have quite a few really wonderful titles. So you could also check that out as well.
Ryan Dunn
Well thank you for abiding with us in this space and for offering such great insight and even a sense of peace in talking about something as uncomfortable as restlessness. We appreciate it.
Casey Tygrett
Yeah, thank you, Ryan. Thanks for being a kind guide. I appreciate it.
Ryan Dunn
We have been disrupted by looking at restlessness in our lives. The Compass podcast is brought to you by United Methodist Communications. If this episode was something that was meaningful for you, then go ahead and check out another episode. I think integrating the spiritual and physical from May of 2022 would be a good follow-up. And an episode from January of 2021 with Tony Caldwell called Creating Change When Stuck in the Same would be a great one as well. While you're listening, go ahead and leave a rating and a review that would really be appreciated. Compass comes out every other Wednesday, unless of course we're interrupted by a holiday, in which case we're just gonna hit you the following week with a new episode. But in this case, we're gonna be back online in two weeks, and we'll chat at you then. Peace.
