Facing depression this Holy Saturday

This site focuses on awakening the spiritual life.  Frankly that's easier said that done.  Sometimes there are forces at work in us that make awakening on our own pretty damn tough, if not downright impossible. Holy Saturday seems an apt time to reflect on the nature of depression and the spiritual life.  We live most of our lives somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  And for millions of people clinical depression can make us feel so far from Easter that it's announcement of life's triumph over death seems little more than whistling in the dark.

The recent and tragic death of a cherished friend has made me more more aware and sensitive to the effects of depression, as well as the dangerous and debilitating stigma we still attach for mental illness.  We must work much harder to remove this stigma, and find ways to stand with and support suffers and their families so that clinical depression is no longer a hidden and isolating disease.

Here's a link to a remarkably candid and healing interview on Speaking of Faith---one of my favorites podcasts (you can download the MP3 or just listen to in on your computer; see the links under the photo banner; it reads like this: SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:18) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:00) ¦ » Podcast).  If you prefer, here's a link to the written transcript.

In it Krista Tippet not only engages a few remarkable people who explore their own experiences with depression from a spiritual perspective, but she shares her own journey through the darkness.

I commend it to all with the prayer that a thin ray of Easter's light may break in upon us and help us find healing---both in us and through us.

Seek the answer here

The life of prayer carries us into the way of the Cross. It's a stripping, a nakedness, and a dying.  But who wants that?   Nobody . . . unless letting go of all this also involves a receiving.  You'll only detach yourself from what you hold dear if there's a compensating attachment to Something greater. On this Good Friday (good, because the way of death leads to Something greater, the fulness of Life itself) here's is a meditation from St. Bonaventure that invites you onto this path.  This way of "darkness, not daylight," dying, silencing, and nothingness "carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love."

If the conventional ways aren't working for you, if you know suffering and darkness, if death's come near, and what's dear to you has been pulled from your hands, if you've got more questions than answers . . . you're closer to God than you think.

Seek the answer in God's grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom, not the teacher; darkness, not daylight; and look not ot the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love. Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions, and all the fantasies of our imagination.

Becoming real

The embrace of suffering baffles most of us.  We view it as weakness---for in our modern world suffering is an enemy. But suffering is reality, and to suffer is to be human.  So embracing suffering is about embracing your humanity---becoming real.

This is beautifully put in the children's tale, The Velveteen Rabbit, when the toy Skin Horse says to the toy rabbit : "When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."

Suffering's not about becoming a doormat, letting people do cruel things to you, ignoring your rights or the rights of others. Instead, suffering is about letting go of the outrage that only strengthens your ego.  For when you mind being hurt your ego feeds on the resentment you feel.  And when it's fed long enough and has gotten big enough your suffering, turned to resentment will, in turn, inflict suffering on others.  You become part of the cycle of violence.

You will suffer, no matter what you do to try to keep yourself from suffering.  What you do with your suffering will either damn you to a life of anger turned to festering resentment toward others, or it will humble you and make you real---that is, human, and deeply compassionate.  You may no longer have what you thought you needed to live the life you wanted.  You may have to let go of what you thought you could not live without.  But you are still alive, still breathing, still capable---in fact, more capable---of true love.

"When you're Real, you don't mind being hurt."  That's an extraordinary freedom---a freedom that woos us this Holy Week.

United with Christ

To be united with Christ in his Passion means to suffer with him. To be united with him, you cannot wield power as most others do. Anger has no place. Controlling others is excluded. Leadership is inverted. The ways of worldly leadership are unmade. You learn to suffer rather than protect yourself, to serve rather than be served, to lose rather than win.

But to what end? Does the "end" even matter? Is not interest in outcomes an invitation to arouse the ego?

To simply live as Jesus does, rather than to live conditionally, calculatingly---this is the center. You are to wield only the power of secret prayer. It is this glorious humiliation of yourself, this holy emptiness, that runs with---not against--the true grain of the universe, the real current of creation's flow.

Amazing Grace for the Wounded Soul

Theologian Ray Anderson has penned an important, yet little known book that is help for all who are struggling with broken hearts, wounded souls.  Judas and Jesus: Amazing Grace for the Wounded Soul is helpful not only for those who are facing the darkness of their own despair, but also for those who love them and try to walk beside them. It's particularly relevant in these difficult times.  It's a good resource to help us move forward in at least one of the directions I charted out in my recent sermon after the tragic death of a friend who was haunted by severe depression.

About the book, Eugene Peterson says: "As theologian and pastor, Ray Anderson courageously probes the Judas experience in order to help us get in touch with the depths of despair and hopelessness within ourselves.  He finds there, where we often least expect it but should dare to embrace it, the forgiveness of Jesus, the grace of the risen Christ."