Self-Critical Thinking

The Hebrew prophets do not hesitate to criticize their religious tradition, even while loving it. Father Richard shows how they help us to incorporate the shadow side of reality:  

The Hebrew prophets are in a category of their own. Within the canonical, sacred scriptures of other world religions we don’t find major texts that are largely critical of that religion. The Hebrew prophets were free to love their tradition and to criticize it at the same time, which is a very rare art form. One of the most common judgments I hear from other priests is, “You criticize the Church.” But criticizing the Church, as such, is just being faithful to the pattern set by the prophets and Jesus. That’s exactly what they did (see Matthew 23). The only question is whether one does it in a negative way or in a way that is faithful to God. I pray that I am doing the second. You pray too! 

The presumption for most people is that if we criticize something, then it means we don’t love it. Wise people like the prophets would say the opposite. The Church’s sanctification of the status quo reveals that we have not been formed by the prophets, who were radical precisely because they were traditionalists. Institutions always want loyalists and “company men”; we don’t want prophets. We don’t want people who point out our shadow side. It is no accident that the prophets and the priests are usually in opposition to one another (see Amos 5:21–6:7, 7:10–17). I think it is fair to say that the prophetic charism was repressed in almost all Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity. None of us have been known for criticizing ourselves. We only criticize one another, sinners, and heretics—who were always elsewhere! Yet Paul says the prophetic gift is the second most important charism for building up of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). [1] 

We have to experience the negative side of reality along with the positive. No wonder we split, avoid, and deny. No wonder we prefer abstract ideas, where we can dismiss the unacceptable material. But the Hebrew Scriptures amazingly incorporate the negative. Jesus does the same when he is “tempted by the devil for forty days” (Luke 4:2). The Jewish people, against all odds, kept their complaining and avoiding, and kept their arrogant and evil kings and their very critical public prophets inside of their Bible. [2]  

Of course, there is such a thing as negative criticism and positive criticism. I think we can feel the difference on the level of energy. When we read the spare, unfiltered texts of the prophets, some of them sound negative, as does Jesus, too. But my assumption is that this criticism comes from a primary positive encounter with Divine Reality. We see this in other parts of their lives and writings. The positive energy is the overriding experience. [3] 

[49] The Same

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 26-27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The Grace of Aging

Author Connie Zweig writes about shifting our emphasis from our “roles” to our “souls” as we age, and how shadow-work allows us to discover a deeper identity:  

The shadow is our personal unconscious, that part of our mind that is behind or beneath our conscious awareness.… The shadow holds the key to removing the inner obstacles that block us from finding the treasures of late life.…  

The shadow is like a darkroom in which our feelings, dreams, and images lie dormant. Shadow-work is like the process of development in which our feelings, dreams, and images come back to life.  

In the context of age, most of us learn that being independent, quick, productive, and strong are highly valued and result in rewards of approval and status. On the other hand, we learn that their opposite traits—dependent, slow, unproductive, and weak—are devalued and result in disapproval and shame. Naturally, we dread the loss of these socially acceptable traits as we age, slow down, do less, and need others more.  

If our images of and associations with aging remain outside of our awareness, dormant in the darkroom, then … we don’t even notice that we fail to notice them. Like my eighty-nine-year-old friend, who told me that he didn’t want to be with “old people” because he wasn’t like them, we deny our reality and reject a part of ourselves. Our physical, cognitive, and emotional changes carry a heavy burden of shame. But without that awareness, our opportunities are lost.  

When we learn how to establish a conscious relationship with those parts of ourselves that are outside of awareness, we can attune to our many inner voices and detect which can be guides for us now—and which can sabotage our dreams. We can learn to slow down, turn within with curiosity, and open to what’s calling to us without dismissing it—and without being taken over by it. That’s what I call “romancing” the shadow. [1] 

Father Richard acknowledges that the shadow work of moving beyond identification with our roles and personas takes a lifetime:  

I’m sorry to report that shadowboxing continues until the end of life, the only difference being that we’re no longer surprised by our surprises or so totally humiliated by our humiliations! As we age, we come to expect various forms of half-heartedness, deceit, vanity, or illusion from ourselves. But now we can see through them, which destroys most of their game and power.  

We all identify with our persona so strongly when we are young that we become experts at denial and learn to eliminate or deny anything that doesn’t support it. Our shadow self makes us all into hypocrites on some level, someone playing a role rather than being “real.” We’re all in one kind of closet or another and are even encouraged by society to play our roles. Usually everybody else can see our shadow, so it is crucial that we learn what everybody else knows about us—except us! [2] 

[48] My Neighbor

A man must not choose his neighbor: he must take the neighbor that God sends him…. The neighbor is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you into contact.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

What the Shadow Reveals

This week’s meditations focus on the shadow self, an essential concept in Richard Rohr’s work drawn from Swiss psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Jungian analyst Ann Belford Ulanov describes it this way:  

On a personal level, our shadow is all we would not be, often all our parents told us was bad behavior; it is all we would improve, all we would fix and get over, move on from.… Our enemies can tell us what our shadow is in a minute, though it is hard for us to see because, like a physical shadow, it is always behind us, adding three dimensions, depth. Most of us have dreams of being chased by a shadowy figure; that was the origin of Jung’s name for this complex. We find in our shadow complex what our ego deems negative, and usually it is. But we also may find in the shadow good parts, positive dreams, capacities for hope and creativity that we have left to languish. Sometimes it is the shadow part that saves our lives, that points the new direction. [1]  

Richard counsels us to be mindful of ways religion can create the shadow within:  

Persona (Greek for “stage mask”) and shadow are correlative terms. Shadow work gradually detaches us from our diligently constructed personas, often shaped in the first half of life. Our stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not “true.” Our shadow is what we refuse to see about ourselves, and what we do not want others to see. The more we have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work we will need to do. Therefore, we need to be especially careful of clinging to any idealized role or self-image, such as minister, parent, doctor, nice person, mentor, moral believer, or president of this or that. These are huge personas to live up to; they trap many people in lifelong delusion that this role is who they are or who they are only allowed to be.  

The more we are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self we will likely have. This is especially dangerous for a “spiritual leader” or “professional religious person” because it involves such an ego-inflating self-image. Whenever ministers, or any true believers, are too anti-anything, we can be pretty sure there’s some shadow material lurking somewhere nearby. Zealotry is a good revelation of one’s overly repressed shadow. 

Our self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is simply created out of our own mind, desire, and choice—and everybody else’s preferences for us! It is not objective at all but entirely subjective (which does not mean that it doesn’t have real influence). The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows us to see beyond our own shadow and disguise and to find who we are, “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). [2] 

The Overly-Defended Ego 

Father Richard explains the ego’s role in creating the shadow self:  

The ego is that part of the self that wants to be significant, central, and important by itself, apart from anybody else. It wants to be both separate and superior. It is defended and self-protective by its very nature. It must eliminate the negative to succeed at this. The ego is what Jesus called an “actor,” usually translated from the Greek as “hypocrite” (see Matthew 23). If our “actor” is merely defended, the shadow will be denied and repressed; but if our “actor” is overly defended, the shadow is actually hated and projected elsewhere.   

One point here is crucial: The shadow self is not of itself evil; it just allows us to do evil without recognizing it as evil! In fact, we often believe that we’re doing something good. That’s the power of the shadow. That is why Jesus criticizes hypocrisy more than anything else. Jesus is never upset with sinners, but only with people who pretend they are not sinners. Check this out, story by story, in the Gospels. This is surprising and even shocking! Why is it that this clear pattern is seldom pointed out in sermons? It might have to do with the fact that religion often can’t see its own shadow and projects it elsewhere. Thus, the high degree of morally judgmental people among most religious groups, which allows them to remain untouched in their self-sufficiency, racism, militarism, and materialism. 

Jungian scholar Ann Belford Ulanov points to the dangers of the group shadow: 

On a cultural level, shadow means what our group, our tribe, our religion, our political party deems negative, out of bounds, to be shunned, to be improved, or to be punished. Behind every social oppression lurks a piece of group shadow whose members are exporting it onto others who are not of their tribe. When the shadow part is not faced, it goes unconscious and lives there. [1] 

Father Richard continues:  

We cannot really get rid of the shadow; we can only expose its game—which is, in great part, to get rid of its effects. Or as it states in Ephesians, “Anything exposed to the light turns into light itself” (5:14). The cause of our unrecognized and fully operative evil is our egocentricity, not our weaknesses. Only those who are converted can say like Paul, “When I am weak, I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When Jesus does oppose human sinfulness, it is the sins of malice with which he has no patience; the sins of weakness are always patiently healed. Jesus rightly accuses us religious folks of “straining out gnats while swallowing camels” (Matthew 23:24). This pattern exists to this day. 

Jesus and the prophets deal with the root cause, which is always our radical egocentricity. Our problem is not usually our shadow self nearly as much as our over-defended ego, which always sees, hates, and attacks its own faults in other people, and thus avoids its own conversion. 

[42] Members of One Another (Seemed appropriate for this Juneteenth)

We shall never be able, I say, to rest in the bosom of the Father, till the fatherhood is fully revealed to us in the love of the brothers. For He cannot be our Father, save as He is their Father; and if we do not see Him and feel Him as their Father, we cannot know Him as ours.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 23). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Jesuit priest Greg Boyle founded Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program. He shares stories of the men and women he works with who demonstrate that each of us is sacred, no matter what we’ve been through:  

Joel, a man who did considerable time in prison, told me, “When my toes hit the floor in the morning, I’m on the lookout.”  

“On the lookout for what?” I asked him.  

“For God,” he said. “God is always leaving me hints. He’s dropping me anonymous tips all the time.” This is the God of love trying to break through. This God will not be outdone in extravagant tenderness. Leaving hints as “deep as the nether world or high as the sky,” as the prophet Isaiah reminds us [7:11]. We get to choose: the god who judges and is embarrassed [by us], or the One who notices and delights in us.  

Greg Boyle or “G,” as he is affectionately known, tells the story of Anthony, a trainee at Homeboy Industries who has three daughters: 

Half of Anthony’s life had been spent in jails and detention facilities. Before coming to us, a meth addiction crippled him surely as much as his earlier gang allegiance did. We’re speaking in my office one day and he tells me that he and his twin brother, at nine years old, were taken from their parents and a house filled with violence and abuse and sent to live with their grandmother. “She was the meanest human being I’ve ever known,” Anthony says. Every day after school, every weekend, and all summer long, for the entire year Anthony and his twin lived with her (until they ran away), they were forced to strip down … sit in this lonely hallway … and not move. “She would put duct tape over our mouths … cuz … she said, ‘I hate the sound of your voices.’” Then Anthony quakes as the emotion of this memory reverberates. “This is why,” he says, holding a finger to his mouth, “I never shush my girls.” He pauses and restores what he needs to continue. “I love the sound … of their voices. In fact, when the oldest one grabs a crayon and draws wildly on the living room wall and my wife says, ‘DO something! Aren’t ya gonna TELL her something?’ I crouch down, put my arm around my daughter, and the two of us stare at the wall, my cheek resting on hers, and I point and say, ‘Now, that’s the most magnificent work of art … I have ever seen.’”  

Here is the Good News: The God we most deeply want IS the God we actually have, and the god we fear is, in fact, the partial god we’ve settled for. God looks at us and is ecstatic. This God loves the sound of our voices and thinks that all of us are a magnificent work of art. “You’re here.” God’s cheek resting on ours. God’s singular agenda item.  

________________________________________________

Sarah Young

My loving God, You are my Strength! I begin this day feeling weak and weary, but that’s okay. My weakness is a reminder of my dependence on You. I need to remember that You are continually with me, and You will help me as I go along my way. So I take hold of Your hand in joyful trust—asking You to strengthen me and guide me. I delight in Your loving Presence! Whenever I’m feeling inadequate for the task ahead, it’s crucial for me to stop and think about my resources. You, my Strength, are infinite: You never run out of anything! So when I work in collaboration with You, I must not set limits on what can be accomplished. Instead, I will depend on You to give me everything I need for this endeavor. Whether I reach the goal quickly or gradually, I know I’ll get there in Your perfect timing. Thus, I can refuse to let delays or detours discourage me. Help me to keep moving forward step by step—and to trust wholeheartedly that You know what You are doing. I’m learning that perseverance and trust make a potent combination! In Your strong Name, Jesus, Amen

PSALM 59:16–17; But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble. 17 You are my strength, I sing praise to you; you, God, are my fortress, my God on whom I can rely.

ISAIAH 41:13; For I am the Lord your God. who takes hold of your right hand. and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you

PHILIPPIANS 4:13 NASB; I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. 

ISAIAH 40:28–29; Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 174). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Sustained Breath by Breath

CAC teacher James Finley shares how he experienced “the oneness of presence that alone is ultimately real” when he was a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane:  

One day as I walked back and forth in the loft of the barn reading the Psalms, I began to realize that what we tend to think of as the air is actually God. In a subtle, interior way I sensed that I was walking back and forth in the atmospheric, all-encompassing presence of God, who was sustaining me breath by breath….  

The most intimate depth of this awakening moment was a simple awareness that God, who was sustaining my life breath by breath, knew me through and through as mercy within mercy within mercy. I was so overtaken by the intimate depths of my very presence being accessed by the presence of God in this way that I stopped reading the Psalms and simply sat on a bale of straw breathing God as I looked out over the meadow….  

What was even more amazing is that this graced awareness of God and I inhaling and exhaling ourselves into each other continued for the next three days. It’s not that I walked around in some kind of trance. Quite the opposite, actually, in that I felt very present to each thing that I did throughout the day, but present in a pervasive underlying awareness of being in the presence of God, sustaining me breath by breath, knowing me through and through with an infused sense of mercy without end.  

The third day of my God-breathing way of life fell on a Sunday…. As I walked along [a] narrow dirt path with its overarching canopy of trees, I paused and touched a leaf hanging from a low-lying branch. As I touched the leaf, I looked up and saw a single cloud hanging in the clear blue sky and whispered, “It’s one!” The infinite presence of God I was breathing, the cloud in the sky, the leaf I was touching, the earth on which I was standing, and the immediacy of feeling myself blessed and awakened to this all-encompassing presence were, in that instant, realized to be inexplicably and all-pervasively one. Please know that the words I am using in attempting to describe this intimately realized oneness are impoverished in a superficial, wordy kind of way compared to the transcendent oneness beyond words that I was so graced and privileged to experience.  

Moved by the all-encompassing presence in which I was immersed, I walked off the path onto a field, where I sat in the tall grass moved by a strong wind with the blue sky overhead, all of which were experienced as bodying forth the endless diversity of the oneness of presence that alone is ultimately real.  

[40] Dangerous Moment

Am I going to do a good deed? Then, of all times—Father into thy hands: lest the enemy should have me now.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 22-23). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

God’s Sacred Book of Nature

Richard Rohr believes that nature has been revealing God long before the Bible and Church came to be:  

Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth.  

If you scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 p.m. on December 31. That means our written Bible and the Church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God had nothing to say until the last moment. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation (see Romans 1:20). “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31).  

Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species, and even then, we did not have enough love to go around for all of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest.  

Read, instead, the Book of Wisdom: 

How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist…. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5). [1] 

Author Barbara Mahany reads God’s sacred Book of Nature in her own backyard and throughout creation: 

I read intently the Book of Nature, even here in my humble plot of earth … where a rambunctious tucked-away garden offers me respite and a place for genuflection…. 

Into its pages I step in the murky hour just before the dawn, before the rising sun stages its rehearsal, bleeds pink into the edge of night. It’s where you might find me, nose pressed to the glass, when the softening winter sky at last exhales and the first tumble of snowflakes fall, blanketing the world in a quiet like no other. Or, at twilight, the in-between hour when day dissolves into darkness, when on a summer’s eve I surrender to the rising surround sound of crickets and keep watch till the starkeepers trot out the stars…. 

And so the beautiful, the majestic, the intimate, and the sweeping is pressed onto the pages of the librum naturae, the Book of Nature. [2] 

Mahany shares this observation from Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), an English theologian and mystic:  

The very meaning of Creation is seen to be an act of worship, a devoted proclamation of the splendour, the wonder, and the beauty of God. In this great Sanctus, all things justify their being and have their place. [3]  

[39] Troubled Soul

Troubled soul, thou are not bound to feel but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, He has an especial tenderness of love toward thee for that thou art in the dark and hast no light, and His heart is glad when thou doest arise and say, “I will go to my Father.”…Fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in the quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. For the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go to do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feeling: Do thy work.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The Trinity Can Only Be Experienced

On Trinity Sunday in 2013, Father Richard had just returned from an interfaith gathering with the Dalai Lama and representatives from many world religions. Richard shared:  

Perhaps the most quoted line from the Dalai Lama is, “My religion is kindness.” Isn’t that simple? “My religion is kindness.” He asked, really challenging us from other world religions, “How do you teach kindness or compassion and how does this come from your understanding of God?” I had the job of representing the Christian tradition; I thought the job was rather easy, because of the feast we celebrate today of God as Trinity.  

Sadly, the doctrine of the Trinity hasn’t exercised much influence in the Christian understanding of God. If most Christians—Catholic or Protestant—are questioned about their real image of God, it’s generally an old man sitting on a throne. He’s upset half the time and it’s our job to make this god happy. This, of course, has almost nothing to do with our actual doctrine on the nature of God. What our tradition believes is that God is a fountain fullness of love, a water wheel flowing constantly in one direction: Father to Son, Son to Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit to Father—always outflowing, always outpoured, always giving, never taking, but only receiving what the other gives. It would take the rest of your life to try to comprehend what that means! 

Many of us say we believe in the Trinity—but we really don’t, because we don’t know what to do with it. We can’t even imagine it; all of our metaphors are simply words trying to grab at the reality, at the experience of God that ultimately can’t be verbalized. It can only be experienced. [1] 

The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich (1343–c. 1416) is one who experienced the Trinity. She had multiple visions of God or “showings” during a near-death illness. Through CAC friend Mirabai Starr’s translation, Julian describes her encounter with the Trinity:  

In the midst of this showing the blessed Trinity also revealed itself to me and filled my heart to overflowing with joy. I realized that this is what it will be like in the world to come, for all beings, and for all time. For the Trinity is God, and God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our creator and our sustainer, our Beloved forever and ever, our endless joy and bliss. I saw all this in the first revelation and in every showing after that. Whenever Christ appeared, I seemed to understand the blessed Trinity, as well.  

“Benedicte domine!” I cried. “Blessed be the Lord!” I said, in a full voice, with reverence and intention, in awe and amazement. I was thoroughly astonished that he who is so great—so holy and majestic—would bother to mingle with such a homely creature as I. What I realized was that our Lord Jesus Christ, moved by loving compassion … wanted to bolster me with his comfort. [2]  

All Life Is Sacred

Father Richard writes of the sacred nature of all life:  

Almost every religion’s history begins with one massive misperception; namely, making a fatal distinction between the sacred and the profane. Religions often put all their emphasis on creating sacred places, sacred time, and sacred actions. While I fully appreciate the need for this, it unfortunately leaves most of life “un-sacred.”  

In authentic mystical moments, any clear distinction between sacred and profane quickly falls apart. Afterward, one knows all the world is sacred because most of the time such moments happen in so-called secular settings. For examples, look at the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Elijah, Mary, and Jesus. Few, if any, of their “sacred” moments happened in “holy” places, but simply wherever they were. Our Franciscan official motto is Deus Meus et Omnia, “My God and all things.” Once we recognize the Christ as the universal truth of matter and spirit working together as one, then everything is holy. Once we surrender to this Christ mystery in our oh-so-ordinary selves and bodies, we begin to see it in every other ordinary place too.

We don’t have to go to sacred places to pray or wait for holy days for good things to happen. We can pray always, and everything that happens is potentially sacred if we allow it to be. Once we can accept that God is in all circumstances, and that God can and will use even bad situations for good, then everything becomes an occasion for good and an occasion for God. “This is the day God has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).  

Our task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything—even, and most especially, in the problematic. The bad is never strong enough to counteract the good. We can most easily learn this through some form of contemplative practice. In contemplation we learn to trust our Vital Center over all the passing snags of emotions and obsessive thinking. Once we deepen contact with our strong and loving soul, which is also the Indwelling Spirit, we are no longer pulled to and fro with every passing feeling. This is the peace that Jesus gives, a peace that nothing else can give, and that no one can take from us (see John 14:27).  

Divine Incarnation took the form of an Indwelling Presence in every human soul and surely all creatures in some rudimentary way. Ironically, our human freedom gives us the ability to stop such a train and refuse to jump on board our own life. Angels, animals, trees, water, and yes, bread and wine seem to fully accept and enjoy their wondrous fate. Only we humans resist and deny our core identities. We can cause great havoc and thus must be somehow boundaried and contained. The only way we ourselves can refuse to jump onto the train of life is by any negative game of exclusion or unlove—even of ourselves. Everything belongs, including us.  

from George MacDonald

[38] The Highest Condition of the Human Will

The highest condition of the human will is in sight…. I say not the highest condition of the Human Being; that surely lies in the Beatific Vision, in the sight of God. But the highest condition of the Human Will, as distinct, not as separated from God, is when, not seeing God, not seeming to itself to grasp Him at all, it yet holds Him fast.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 21-22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Diana Gruver writes of finding solace and hope through others who share their experiences:   

As I slogged through seasons of depression … I have found the stories and presence of others who have experienced depression to be invaluable. I hear a hint of something I recognize—an aside, a metaphor, a clue that points to those marks left by the darkness—and I zero in on them. There is someone who knows, I think, someone who understands. They, too, have walked through the valley of the shadow of depression….  

They remind me I am not the only one to walk this road, that this experience is not an alien one. The lie that “surely no one has felt this” is cut down by the truth that others, in fact, have, and their presence makes me feel less isolated. These fellow travelers are my companions in the darkness of night.…

They give me hope—hope that this is not the end of my story, that I, too, will survive this. Hope that depression will not have the last say. [1] 

Theologian and minister Monica Coleman finds comfort and healing in the spirituals of the Black church: 

The further I’m away from Southern black churches, and the more I understand depression, the more I need spirituals. Created by enslaved Africans in the United States, spirituals express both suffering and dependence on faith…. Like the Psalms of the ancient Hebrew community, the slaves took their emotions to God, putting them to music….  

The spirituals give me a way to be sad without being alone. Because they are sung in community, they say: It’s okay to suffer. We know how you feel. We are suffering too. We all are.  

They aren’t afraid to linger in the painful places. They have no need to rush to praise. They can be slow … drawing out one syllable over tens of seconds … taking their time … waiting.… They knew how to take moans, make them hums, and then turn them into words. They knew how to give voice to pain and how to do it together. 

Thus I’m convinced that when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” from the cross (Matthew 27:45–46), he wasn’t making a profound theological statement about the hidden God. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, the spirituals of his people. He was in pain, and he began to sing. In my sanctified imagination, I see the people at the foot of the cross joining him as we do today in my faith community: slowly at first, one voice, then another, humming, then forming words. It sounds like this:  

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.  
sometimes I feel like a motherless child.  
sometimes I feel like a motherless child.  
a long way from home…. 

They remind me that if you stay in a spiritual long enough, you’ll hear God, you’ll feel hope. In the depths of depression, I can think of no greater spiritual gift.  

____________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

King Jesus, The Light of the gospel of Your Glory is an astonishingly rich treasure! What makes the gospel such amazingly good news is that it opens the way for me to know You in Your majestic Glory. When I trusted You as my Savior, You set my feet on a pathway to heaven. Forgiveness of sins and a future in heaven are wondrous gifts, but You provided even more! You made Your Light shine in my heart to give me the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of Your Face. Help me to seek Your Face wholeheartedly—delighting in the radiant knowledge of Your glorious Presence. One of the meanings of knowledge is “awareness acquired by experience or study.” Knowing You involves awareness of You—experiencing Your Presence through the Holy Spirit. It also involves studying the Bible to learn more and more about You. Though the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, I can perceive You clearly through searching the Scriptures and enjoying the Light of the gospel of Your Glory. In Your wonderful Name, Amen

2 CORINTHIANS 4:4; The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 CORINTHIANS 4:6; For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God …

PSALM 27:8 NKJV; When You said, “Seek My face,”. My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 153). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

For James Finley, therapeutic work can help us trust in the divine depth dimension of our lives. He presents a model offered by psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–1987):  

Carl Rogers created something called the “Rogerian triad.” [1] He taught there are three points of a triangle representing the beating heart of the therapeutic relationship. The first point on the triangle is unconditional positive regard. It goes like this: the therapist sits with the patient in therapy. The therapist lets the person know that no matter what you share with me about yourself, it will not diminish my deep respect for who you are as a human being. Little by little, the therapist’s deep respect and unconditional positive regard for you can transfer over to you. It can start becoming your renewed sense of unconditional positive regard for yourself. You internalize it. 

The second point is empathy. The therapist says, “I hear you saying …” and they say it back in such a way that you know they heard you. When you know you’ve been heard, you also know that you’ve been understood. The experience of being understood can deepen your capacity to hear yourself and understand yourself and to have empathy with yourself. 

The third point of the triangle is congruence, which is that the therapist is always honest with you in a respectful way. The therapist might say, “You know, quite honestly, I’m concerned about you when you talk like this. I’m really concerned about where you are.” And in that kind of compassionate honesty, little by little, you learn to be honest with yourself. When we risk sharing what hurts the most in the presence of someone who will not invade us or abandon us, we can learn not to invade or abandon ourselves. In the alliance with the clinician, you can be re-parented in love.  

What I’m suggesting is this: If we take the three points of the triad, lay it flat on the ground, and draw three lines down, we find each point connecting to God. 

The clinician’s unconditional positive regard for you incarnates the abyss-like infinite positive regard of God for you as the beloved. The presence of the clinician then becomes an incarnate manifestation of the welling up of this depth dimension, letting you know that you’re invincibly precious in all your wayward ways. To summarize Thomas Merton, there is something within you that is not subject to the brutalities of your own will, for it is that in you that belongs entirely to God. [2] 

The truth is that God is infinitely in love with you and infinitely aware of who you are. With infinite wisdom, God lovingly understands you through and through forever.  

Congruence is truthfulness, compassionately stated. You can be truthful with yourself. What is the truthfulness with yourself? It’s that you’re an infinitely precious, broken person. This infinite love for you permeates your brokenness through and through. It’s with you unexplainably forever.  

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Sarah Young …Jesus Listens

My delightful Lord, This is the day that You have made! As I rejoice in this day of life, it will yield precious gifts and beneficial training. I want to walk with You along the high road of thanksgiving—discovering all the delights You have prepared for me. To protect my thankfulness, I need to remember that I reside in a fallen world where blessings and sorrows intermingle freely. When I’m too focused on troubles, I walk through a day that’s brimming with beauty and brightness while seeing only the grayness of my thoughts. Neglecting the practice of giving thanks darkens my mind and dims my vision. Lord, please clear up my vision by helping me remember to thank You at all times. When I’m grateful, I can walk through the darkest days with Joy in my heart because I know that the Light of Your Presence is still shining on me. So I rejoice in You—my delightful, steadfast Companion. In Your bright, shining Name, Jesus, Amen

PSALM 118:24 ESV; This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

COLOSSIANS 4:2; Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, 

PSALM 118:1 HCSB; Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. 

PSALM 89:15–16; Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound! They walk, O Lord, in the light of Your countenance. 16 In Your name they rejoice all day long, And in Your righteousness they are exalted.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 152). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

The Healing Work of Community and Service

Womanist theologian and pastor Dr. Monica Coleman writes openly about her experience with bipolar depression:  

I either felt sad or I felt nothing at all. I couldn’t feel happy or look forward to things I wanted to feel happy about. I couldn’t even remember what made me happy anymore. Feeling nothing was better than feeling sad, but eventually I felt sad. I was losing my ability to function. I had to detach myself emotionally from everything just to keep from crying all the time, and still sometimes that didn’t work. It took all my energy to get up and get dressed and be there and not cry through the day. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months and months. [1]  

In her quest for healing, Dr. Coleman joined a church-based knitting group that created items for homeless individuals. They met monthly, and—after struggling with depression for years—Coleman began to experience the presence of God again in a community dedicated to serving others.  

Revelation did not come to me in thunderbolts. God was just there. In the hot cup of tea. In the women who gathered. In our laughter. In the knitting. God was in my uniform rows of stitches. God was also in the dropped stitch that created an imperfection.… There is something holy in the movement of yarn through fingers and needles. It grounds you. It keeps you from falling through the chasms around you…. God is in every cell, every person, and every activity. Whether I know it or not. Whether it feels like it or not. God is creating. With yarn and needles, hiccups, unraveling, do-overs, a rhythm, and individual stitches, God is making something new. Something beautiful. I thought that my prayers and good intentions in knitting for homeless men were divine activity. I was knitting God into the hat and scarf. No. God was knitting me. With therapists, medication, meaningful studies, a small church community, a pastor who cared, friends who understood, and a name for my condition, God was knitting me. God was knitting me back together. [2] 

Coleman reminds us that our diagnoses do not define us but are part of our lifelong journey of discovering our true worth in God: 

I don’t want to be reduced to my symptoms and diagnosis. Tied down. I am learning the difference between captivity and rest, between an illness and a condition. There’s nothing wrong with me. After all, this is the only me I’ve ever known. But sometimes I need to slow down, check to see if I’m okay; look at the emotional heap of yarn in my lap, undo a few rows, and try again. I need to know that the things I drop, the things I can’t do the way I want, the hard parts of my life are not failure. They are evidence that I’m human. [3] 

[37] The Use of Dryness God does not, by the instant gift of His Spirit, make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after Him and His Will. Therefore either He will not, or He cannot. If He will not, it must be because it would not be well to do so. If He cannot, then He would not if He could; else a better condition than God’s is conceivable to the mind of God…. The truth is this: He wants to make us in His own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. How should He effect this if He were always moving us from within, as He does at divine intervals, toward the beauty of holiness?…For God made our individuality as well as, and a greater marvel than, our dependence; made our apartness from Himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to Himself, with a new and inscrutable marvel of love; for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of our individuality, and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to Him who made his freedom.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 20-21). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.