You may be sleepwalking and not know it

"Wake up, sleeper!" This same call came to me when I was at the midpoint of my life---married with children and successful in my career, but frankly, troubled by a gnawing sense within me that I'd lost something dear to me. Years earlier, I'd tasted God and that taste made me hungry for more.

But over the course of the next several decades I'd become dull to the hunger once awakened in me. Or maybe it's fairer to say I didn't know where to look to satisfy my hunger for the sacred, so I satisfied myself with lesser things and forgot the real taste of God.

You could say that I was sleepwalking and didn't even know it.

I can't describe how the call came really (who can describe such things?).   All I can safely say is that the call came . . . slowly. Less like lightening from heaven and more like the gentle dawning of a new day.

I'm sure the call had been coming to me for quite some time.

I'm also sure that I'd done very little about it; I wasn't looking for change, so change came looking for me.

Of course, I have no way of knowing how this call is coming to you. Nor do I know what you're doing about it. But this I do know: you might be sleepwalking and not even know it. And God's calling to you, whispering everywhere, "Wake up, sleeper!"

And I know you'll face a challenging decision: awaken to the mischief of God that's knocking at the door of your heart, or push it away, stop your ears, and keep keeping on with life as it is, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger within you for Something more.

How to keep from clobbering yourself and others

Nonjudgment requires humility. "Have no confidence in your own virtuousness. Do not worry about a thing once it has been done. Control your tongue and your belly" (St. Anthony). And it requires patience, a patience that trusts that God will work all things out and that you are rarely competent to judge the path rightly. In fact, it knows that you by your own presumption will usually screw things up.

Nonjudgment, therefore, is nourished by a contemplative nonattachment to the false self.

If you're attached to the many masks of your false or fallen self, you'll be unable to judge rightly when necessary and instead will probably end up clobbering yourself and others.

Severe depression: medication as grace

Here's important testimony from a reader who has lived through severe depression and offers some important advice regarding the use of medication.  Depression sufferers and their supporters, please listen to this!  (A response to my recent post: Light on Severe Depression.)

As a pastor who was hospitalized with clinical depression and anxiety and stress syndromes, I can add my personal AMEN to what you have shared, Chris.

The church certainly remains behind the eight ball on this one. In my congregation’s case (at the time), they carried out a better model. They teamed with my presbytery (regional governing body) to create a team to take care of both me and the congregaton’s ministry (liaison with the session [governing board]). The session granted me a three-month, paid leave of absence.

I had the grace, space and time to rest and get well, under the care of an excellent Christian psychotherapist and a quality psychiatrist, who found just the right medication.

Speaking of the latter–STAY WITH YOUR MEDS TO THE END OF THE REFILLS, my friends.

Thinking you’re better just because the symptoms go away is a BAD REASON to stop your meds without careful consultation with your physician(s). You’ll just dig a whole that ends up being harder to climb out of than before.

And depression sufferers: IT DOES GET BETTER. Indeed, it often takes a lot of time, hard work, and trial and error–but you’ll find God in the midst. That’s a promise fulfilled in my case!

Practicing nonjudgment

Nonjudgment is the intentional ceding to God the sole role of judge; we refuse to take God's judgment into human hands. Nonjudgment lives in submission to Jesus' explicit teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Nonjudgment is a "paying forward" of the grace a mercy received by the sinner from Christ; by practicing nonjudgmental we preach the gospel (John 20.23). Improvising on this text, the Desert Fathers say: "When we cover a brother's sin, God covers our sin; when we tell people about our brother's guilt, God does the same with ours."

This is the strange logic of the gospel--the opposite way.

We refuse to judge just as we refuse to engage in violence--so that we are vanguards, heralds, the New Adam/Eve of a wholly new way on earth and refuse to perpetuate what tearing us apart.

Light on severe depression

A year ago yesterday, I lost one of my dearest friends.  I've written and spoken publicly a lot about mental illness, suicide, and the need for us to become more open and understanding of those who struggle with mental illness and, in particular, severe depression. Here are several links to some of what I've said in my effort to mainstream an all too common silent struggle that isolates the sufferers and their families, and open the doors for us to live more compassionately in ways that foster healing and hope.

One out of every 10 Americans will experience clinical depression during their lifetime.  Dark emotion will become chronic and debilitating, affecting their ability to function, interact with others, and derive pleasure from life.   One out of every four women will be clinically depressed at some point in her life. Because of our increasingly complex and interrelated world, clinical depression has become a modern epidemic.

Says Parker Palmer: “People walk around saying, ‘I don’t understand why so-and-so committed suicide.’ Well, I understand perfectly why people take their lives. They need the rest. Depression is absolutely exhausting. It’s why, day by day for months at a time, I wanted to take my life. What I don’t understand is why some people come through on the other side and reclaim life with new vividness and with new intensity. That is the real mystery to me.”

Here is the original post just days after Jamie Evan's death.  It contains links to audio sermons.

And here is a link to a written manuscript of the sermon and a post entitled, God and Suicide: A Personal Encounter.

In addition here's one more link to an audio sermon from summer 2010, "When Depression Seizes You."

Depression is real, common, and treatable.

Contrary to the way it makes us fee, and what we may have been taught, it doesn’t disqualify any of us.

Please join me in standing alongside those who suffer in silence and loneliness.  Pass these on to friends and family members.