Of Brooding and Grey Days

           It’s currently raining this Sunday morning. Rain always seems most depressing on Sundays; perhaps it is because that is the day I tend to be most joyful. Not today. Today there is a grey sky, a light, spitting rain, and gloominess in my heart. Now I know this gloom is partially caused by external factors – I’m sick, more tired than I’ve ever been before, and I’m stressed out of my mind by school. That’s the wonderful thing about being an embodied soul, I get to be affected by the physical and the metaphysical, the temporal
and the transcendent. This is seen most clearly in the Eucharist where Christ feeds us both bodily and spiritually. While the blessings of this relation are self-evident – I can be spiritually blessed by eating a strawberry (perhaps I even ought to be spiritually blessed) and I can be physically made well through the joy of laughter and the soul-healing that comes from deep friendship (Ben and Brodi, this means you) – it is not without its drawbacks. Even though my spiritual life may be excellent on its own, it will be affected by my physical state; mental and physical exhaustion can often lead to spiritual exhaustion.
          This is never truer for me than when I am depressed. I rarely become depressed spiritually first; it is always the result of emotions running amok during times of physical exhaustion and sickness. This depression often leads to a sort of brooding. Webster’s defines brooding as

 1: a of a bird : to brood eggs or young; b : to sit quietly and thoughtfully; to meditate
 2: to hover, loom
 3: a: to dwell gloomily on a subject; b : to be in a state of depression

Brooding seems to be the proper word for such behavior. Brooding, like caring for a nest of eggs involves a separation from the outside world and a focus on the one thing that seems most important to me at the moment (while this is legitimate and proper for hens, I think it less so for me). Like a hen, I sit isolated and alone thinking about myself and what it is that makes me feel sad, lonely, and depressed. Rather than meditate on the transcendence of God’s beauty, truth, and goodness which He communicates in Love, I tuck my little problems and worries under me and keep them warm and alive. Soon, despite the fact that they are making me miserable, they become the focus of my existence, the center of my thoughts. Like Gollum’s ring of power, they become precious to me despite the fact that they are destroying me. Why? Because they are mine. I seem to possess them utterly (though in reality they utterly possess me). Like Gollum, I begin to hover and loom over those “precious” things, staving off all attempts at their removal. Perhaps, like Gollum, I am aware that their removal would bring me peace, but I must be in control.

          This “dwelling gloomily on a subject” always involves a narrowing of focus, like that of a hen with eggs. Focusing on those negative elements shuts off my sight to the world “more full of glory than [I] can understand.” This step is vital for a state of depression. One can legitimately dwell gloomily on certain subjects; for many evils in our world that is the appropriate response. But in refusing to see glory and Love in the world – even on grey days – I create the perfect situation for pride to be incubated. As Richard Hooker describes the fall of the angels, “There was no other way for angels to sin, but by reflex of their understanding upon themselves; when being held with admiration of their own sublimity and honour, the memory of their subordination unto God and their dependency on him was drowned in this conceipt, whereupon their adoration, love, and imitation of God could not choose but be also interrupted,” so my depression involves a turning away from my dependency on God. Even more perverse than the angels’ fall is my fall into depression; angels were enamored of their own sublimity and greatness, in depression I am enamored by my weakness.

 So often this depression, once begun, turns to disappointments for nourishment - little things (or big) that I expected from God. Some are even in the normal course of things and their absence is disruptive and abnormal. This happens in relationships often; as people fail to live up to the expectations I have arbitrarily (or sometimes even reasonably) set for them. Sometimes people are not what they seemed, or lack a quality we thought we treasured in them until we found it lacking. But all this is a depressing brooding over the eggs of self-love, personal expectations, and desires. This is especially perverse in relation to God. Such feelings depend on my feeling worthy in and of myself to make those demands. The truth is that nothing I have, not even my existence is of myself – it is all a gift from God. The fact that I am able to make these demands demonstrates that I have no right to make them. This becomes even more evident as I move past the question of existence and look at all the rich blessings provided to all mankind. Finally, the blessing of the Incarnation and His death and resurrection for me calls me out of myself, to wonder, and then to worship. Worship leads to communion with God through Christ, the very reason for my existence. The fact that God has made this possible through creating man with an insatiable desire for that communion, for giving man reason, for the gracious gift of faith, and for the inestimable gift of His Son to make it all possible leaves no room for self-focus and pondering one’s “problems.”

          But God also calls to me in little things throughout the day: the delicate pattern of raindrops on glass, my aged and worn prayer-book, my rosary, the fresh green tones that only appear after a rain, the early, unexpected encounter with a dear friend (Ben again), a warm, extended, and compassionate embrace. Well, friends and embraces are hardly little things… And then I’m reminded of all God’s gifts, and I am humbled and ashamed at the baseness of my ingratitude. And I teeter on the knife edge between redemption and fuller depravity, because it’s easy in becoming ashamed at my failings and weakness to become ashamed of myself. But that is just as self-focused as ingratitude, and just as far from the truth. Focusing on my weakness turns my gaze from Christ and handicaps my attempts to imitate him (and I ask myself, “Is this not the message you have learned again and again from Brother Lawrence and Thomas à Kempis?”). But God catches me and, through various mediating forces – especially my dearest friends, pushes over onto the side of redemption. He never stops His pursuit of me; this both inspires and overwhelms me.
          In returning my gaze to Christ, I am able to see His glorious gifts through the illusion of grey and gloom. "The world is hot and cruel,/We are weary of heart and hand./But the world is more full of glory/Than you can understand." In focusing my sight on Christ, my periphery becomes filled with wonders; these wonders, once seen drive me to Christ. Sometimes cycles are hard to break; sometimes that’s a good thing. And then I remember the cycles of the universe in Dante, all driven by the Love of God; I smile through tears.
          I’ve been crying a lot lately; often, stronger than the most despairing pressure of depression is the pressure of a Love that is truly inexpressible. I think this is what St. Thomas meant by the beatific vision. Wonder leads to worship, worship to communion in contemplation. And then there is the Love – it burns like an all-consuming fire yet leaves me larger than when it started. And I am again humbled. At such times, I think of St. Augustine and C. S. Lewis both of them world-weary, both of them longing for their true home and the release from temporality. But these moments of intense longing, the kind of longing that almost breaks my heart, don’t come out of depression. They don’t come from being weary of the world’s trials. They stem from a longing to be fully united with the Love that “moves the sun and the other stars” and to be perfected in my love. I realize that I will never be truly satisfied here because this is not my home – I am made for something better, more glorious, more beautiful, and less grey.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you/Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,/The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed/With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,/And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama/And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away…/I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope/For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love/For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith/But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

          I think also of this life and what is best in it. And again I’m crushed by God’s love for there never is any true loss. Everything I possess is (supremely in my case ;) ) replaceable except for those friendships God used and is using to draw me to Christ. I’ve heard it often said that you don’t take anything with you when you die; that isn’t true at all, I am able to take that which is most precious to me. In heaven, I will bring with me those friends that I impacted and especially those who have impacted me; does anything else even matter? And this is not a loss, this is a gift greater than anything but redemption. Earthly friendships are ever tinged with the specter of loss – whether it be by death or location – and the distemper of disordered love. This is all made new as I will join my friends in perfect Love united in the love and worship of God where there will be NO PARTINGS. This is something for which I daily long.

          I look at God’s gifts of friends in my life and see tangible evidence that I truly have no excuse to be depressed or self-focused. I think of Ben who has loved me long and taught me the meaning of unconditional love; words fail utterly. I think of Brodi (we used to loathe each other) and his demonstrations of care for me; I think of how I have learned from his passion, longsuffering, and devotion – my communion with Christ is stronger because of you and all I have learned from you. I think of Bart who, heaven knows what he saw in me, invested in me and bullied me into a reconsideration of my faith; this past year has been the largest period of growth in my life and is directly the result of God’s work in me through Bart. I think of Erik, whose wisdom and patience is like a rock. I think of my newer friends, David, Stephen, and Belle. God’s blessings truly are never ending and I’ve already learned so much from you. Thank you all for your investment in my life, it will have eternal results.

          This brings me finally to what must be the solution to depression. This solution must entail a shift of focus away from myself and towards Christ and others. I am a work in progress and am still very broken, the beauty I can see in myself is akin to the tragic beauty of a shattered stained-glass window or a bombed cathedral. But in looking to Christ and seeing His work in me as mediated by others, particularly friends, I can see light and true beauty and I am made whole. Brooding is the opposite of wonder, the opposite of participating in the transcendent. In brooding, I set myself over the world and judge it; in wondering I become a passionate participant in the goodness of God. As St. John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” The funny thing is I never truly decrease when I turn myself over to God, rather He, being infinite, fills me. I am made whole and greater than I could ever have been had I not surrendered. “In order to possess what you do not possess/You must go by the way of dispossession.”

Joy and Letting Go

I have a hard time letting go of the things I love; my impulse at such times is to sink in my teeth and nails and hold on for dear life, unfortunately such a reaction never works and often makes the feeling worse. My entire life, God has been teaching me this lesson – all joys involve a little loss. Well, almost all joys for there is never an end to the enjoyment of God, only an increasing. And this is, I suppose, what earthly joys were intended to do, to lead us to the Eternal Joy. It is in the experiences of the best kinds of earthly joys that we begin most to desire the joys of heaven. C. S. Lewis writes in Till We Have Faces,

[Psyche] ‘I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death.’ [Orual] ‘Ah, Psyche, have I made you so little happy as that?’ [Psyche] “No, no no. You don’t understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine…where you couldn’t see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.

Psyche also says, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” C. S. Lewis, of course, makes this longing one of the central themes of The Horse and His Boy as well. In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” For the Christian, the desire for heaven – the desire for the presence of God – ought to be at the center of all joys. All joys ought to point him to the place where there will be no more tears. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis writes, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Earthly joys are fleeting, because they are only foretastes of greater blessings to come. As such, they cannot be clutched at if they are to be enjoyed properly. All earthly joys are tinged with the sadness of loss. But rather than allowing that sadness to turn focus inward, to refuse the earthly joys, or to clutch on to them past remaining joyful, that sadness of loss ought to orient ourselves towards the eternal joys of heaven. Through them, God whispers promises of greater Love and Joy and draws mankind to Himself. But those earthly joys must not be confused with the eternal Joy; they are not ends in themselves. “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are

restless until they rest in thee” (St. Augustine, Confessions, I.1). When earthly joys are enjoyed as ends in themselves they can lead either to insatiability or despair – insatiability because earthly joys do not ultimately fulfill, despair because without the eternal Joy, all joys end in loss. St. Augustine calls such thinking “marvelous shallowness” (City of God, XIX.4) This despair can be seen most clearly in the fear of death; death involves the loss or leaving behind much of what is held most dear – spouse, friends, children, one’s life’s work. But death, properly understood, is only the ending of the earthly joys and the beginning of the joys that never fade; death then is not to be dreaded but is “a consummation/Devoutly to be wished.” St. Augustine writes of the goodness of death “as we cannot attain to [the supreme good] in the present life, however ardently we desire it…Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness.” Ibid.

But the experience of earthly joys can also be a kind of death. There is the last time you see a friend, the last time you look at your home before moving, that last caress before burying a pet, the last class with a favorite professor, the last page of a book – in all of these, we die a little. St. Augustine writes in The City of God (XIII.10) “For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, then we begin to move ceaselessly towards death….Man, then, is never in life from the moment he dwells in this dying rather than living body – if, at least, he cannot be in life and death at once.” This is more than merely biologically true. But we are ever grounded in the glorious hope of the eternal Joy experienced in our release from temporality. And it is properly ordering our loves that allows us to truly experience earthly joys. Again, St. Augustine writes (XIV.7), “Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy…Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good.” When the experience of earthly joys turns our desire towards the eternal Joy, our love for them is good.

St. Augustine further explains the difference between earthly temporal joys and the eternal Joy (XIV.25),

But even the righteous does not live as he wishes until he has arrived where he cannot die, be deceived, or injured, and until he is assured that this shall be his eternal condition. For this nature demands; and nature is not fully and perfectly blessed till it attains what it seeks. But what man is at present able to live as he wishes, when it is not in his power so much as to live? He wishes to live, he is compelled to die….or if he wishes to die, how can he live as he wishes since he does not even wish to live? Or if he wishes to die, not because he dislikes life, but that after death he may live better, still he is not yet living as he wishes…

St. Augustine realizes that blessedness is only possible when it is eternal; this is because blessedness must be possessed, and nothing can truly be possessed when that possession is temporal. In temporality, there is ultimately only loss.

For a blessed life is possessed only by the man who loves it. If it is loved and possessed, it must necessarily be more ardently loved than all besides; for whatever else is loved must be loved for the sake of the blessed life. And if it is loved as it deserves to be – and the man is not blessed who does not love the blessed life as it deserves – then he who so loves it cannot but wish it to be eternal. Therefore it shall only be blessed when it is eternal. Ibid.

The earthly joys, as Lewis writes, are whispers that God uses to align us more closely to Himself. St. Augustine agrees (XIX.13)

God, then, the most wise Creator and most just Ordainer of all natures, who placed the human race upon earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men some good things adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship…the objects wish are accommodated to our outward senses, light, night, the air, and waters suitable for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter, heal, or beautify it: and all under this most equitable condition, that every man who made a good use of these advantages suited to the peace of his mortal condition, should receive ampler and better blessings, namely, the peace of immortality, accompanied by glory and honour in an endless life made fit for the enjoyment of God and of one another in God; but that he who used the present blessings badly should both lose them and should not receive the others.

God is both the source (I Corinthians 6:17) and end of all joys. Living without recognizing the earthly joys would seem to demonstrate a perverse denial of God’s gifts not unlike the rejection of the gift of grace in salvation. Similarly, misunderstanding those gifts as ends rather than

means, like grace, of drawing closer to God, perversely destroys those gifts and the possibility for true joy. This

earthly joys beyond their appointed span; I must not allow the gift of friendship to become an end in itself and is the lesson God has been teaching me my whole life and a lesson I still am learning. I must not seek to sustain

from it seek the love and satisfaction that only God can give. I must not lose sight of the heavenly, eternal Joy that is at the root of all earthly joys nor the Love that begets all other proper loves. In surrendering to that Joy and that Love, “my desire and my will/[can be] turned like a wheel, all at one speed,/by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars” (Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII.142-145)

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Sonnet XVI: Palm Sunday

The king, in peace, rides on an ass' foal.

The crowd, in joy, calls David's son to save

Them now. They could not see that God's great goal

Would lead that Son from triumph to the grave.

He went into His house, the unknown Lord

And, flamed with righteous wrath to see it wronged,

He cleansed and cleared it. He would not afford

Dishonor place where all the prayerful thronged.

Thus twice unseen that first day of the week -

For what he was, was hated by the wise;

Loved for what he was not yet there to seek -

The coming week would bring still more surprise.

The calls of welcom soon to hate would turn

As with pure love for all his heart would burn.

Sonnet XV: Beatrice, Lady

She beckons onward, upward to the light

A figure sacred and refined, sublime

In beauty, grace, and love, each man's delight -

Defying each poor poet's halting rhyme.

She calls the men below to rise above

The earthly sphere, to reach the moving ray

Of beauty, truth, and goodness bound in love

As blinding to men's eyes as light of day.

She leads along that path with words of hope -

Rebuke dispensed with heart of love and grace -

Each step inspires along that weary slope,

The smile of reason chaste upon her face.

Here woman (helpmeet, teacher) shines a star

A taste of glory brought men from afar.