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.”