What’s to like? 5 things to detest about depression

Here’s one of those infernal lists. It hopefully speaks for itself.

Walking the depression tightrope: finding hope in the dark

It’s been a funny old time since the great revelation of last month. But I fully anticipated that. Getting used to something that was hidden being out in the open takes some adjustment. But one of  the interesting questions from the Q&A after the service on depression was what some of us found sustaining or supportive in the midst of the darkness. As someone for whom music has been a lifelong essential (both from playing and listening), it is only natural that music would be my first port of call. Which is not to say that art, poetry and books haven’t helped from time to time.

Facing up to Depression: so now it gets personal

It seems that mental health issues have been making headlines. The House of Commons even debated it a week or so ago, and Michael Wenham responded with a great little piece on EA’s Friday Night Theology. “Tell it how it is”, he simply concluded. And bizarrely enough (without the slightest inkling it would coincide so much with public square events), we had  our next Christians Facing Issues service planned for last Sunday on the very issue. Having tackled all variety of things in the past (the Credit Crunch, Celebrity culture, Pornography, Euthanasia etc), this time our theme was Facing Up To Depression.

The Depression Epidemic (at CT)

And while we’re on Christianity Today (see previous post), the focus this month has been on what they’ve provocatively headlined ‘The Depression Epidemic’. There’s actually quite a lot of helpful stuff there. The main article is interesting, but i found the accompanying pieces particularly useful:

• When you’re depressed: 3 questions to ask, 5 ways to respond (by Mark R McMinn)
• My Life with Antidepressants (by Joel Scandrett)
• Light when all is dark (by Kathryn Greene-McCreight)

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 85 (October 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• This is serious – Turkish Protestant churches sent death threats – directly affects a number of churches that I’ve regularly spent time with in Turkey. PRAY.
• My former All Souls colleague Jo Jackson has written a couple of great posts about weakness: 1. Willingly Weak and  2. Wonderfully Weak
• Phil Whittall (aka the Simple Pastor) has a great post on ‘We are alone in the universe‘

The Black Dog (10 years on) 8: SOME LITERARY COMPANIONS…

William Nicholson wrote Shadowlands, the play (which became the film) inspired by C.S.Lewis’s extraordinary testimony A Grief Observed. In it, he gave Lewis this lovely line, one he never actually uttered, but may as well have done.

We read to know we’re not alone

The Black Dog (10 years on) 5: THE INSENSIBILITY OF FAITH…

It’s been very moving to have messages in the last few days about my black dog posts. Thank you! At least it shows that it’s been worth it. As I mentioned in the first post, I’m genuinely not motivated by the kind of confessional culture that is all around us; still less am I trying to elicit sympathy. And I’m definitely not seeking advice or support (kind though some offers have been!). It is only to help those who don’t quite have the words for this yet. But I do realise that it’s raised lots of questions for some…

The Black Dog (10 years on) 3: THE DARKENED CAVE…

I touched on the surprisingly physical reality of the black dog yesterday. It’s surprising, because, of course, depression is as much about emotional pain and scars as anything else. But here’s the really weird thing: the emotional anguish actually feels physical at times. I think I really get now why people talk about feeling heart-sick. It is a piercing constant, perhaps a little like having emotional toothache.

The Black Dog (10 years on) 2: TECTONIC VULNERABILITY…

The thing about volcanoes is that they’re as immovable as mountains. Rock solid in fact. But of course that’s the deception of appearances. And in geological terms, they’re savage beasts, easily provoked to ire by invisible tectonic interference.

It probably seems a totally incongruous metaphor for the Black Dog – but probably only to those whom he’s never pursued. Because there is something so irrational, so mysterious, so dark even about so-called depression that it is as destabilising as a major geological event.

The Black Dog (10 years on) 1: BEHIND THE MASK…

Poets and artists have had it. Leaders and teachers have had it. Normal and extraordinary people have had it. For all I know, even educated fleas have had it.

All kinds of stats get flung around about the black dog (1 in 4 so they say??) but who knows? What matters is not the exact numbers but how commonplace it is – and yet how extraordinarily varied.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 83 (August 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Prof Gary Habermas has made his 90-page book, Evidence for the Historical Jesus available as a free pdf.
• Gabe Lyons and Andrew Sullivan have a remarkable conversation about the pain of Church/LGBT (can’t they find a vowel!!?) relations
• She doesn’t mince her words here – it’s necessarily shocking – but this is important – Gail Dines TED talk on Growing Up in a Pornified Culture

Spurgeon’s Sorrows: a book I never realised I was desperate for

If you’re from a certain corner of the global harvest field that is the church, then Charles Haddon Spurgeon will be a familiar, if not revered, name. The ‘prince of preachers’ (as he was known) was perhaps the world’s first megapastor – but the wonderful thing about him was that it never went to his head, he wasn’t corrupt, he was a character of whom it could certainly be said that ‘what you see is what you get.’ A far cry, in other words, from the smooth-talking, chiseled and attractive megapastors of today.

The Paradoxes of Loneliness from Jean Vanier’s Becoming Human

Depression isolates and introverts. It’s a brutally vicious circle. And so when one occasionally gets swept up by outbreaks of energy, they are often focused on desperately trying to make connections beyond oneself. It might be music; it might be a conversation with someone who gets it with minimal explanation; it might be words on a page. I love that line from Shadowlands, William Nicholson’s TV play (turned into a stage play and then feature film) about C. S. Lewis’s grief for his late wife Joy (though bear in mind that the film really misses a lot of the theological nuance of the play, inevitably): 

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 76 (January 2015)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have a fab 2015

watch this space because there are some big changes afoot for Quaerentia in the coming months…!!

Sacred Treasure

• AN Wilson on cracking form: it’s the Gospel truth – so take it or leave it
• Ministry through the dark night: very helpful consoling piece by someone (!?) about depression and despair in ministry
• Interesting piece in the Washington Post: Gay Christians choosing celibacy emerge from the shadows

Deep (?but not stuck) in the frozen wastes of winter faith: Brueggemann on Beck on Freud & James

Q regulars will be aware that issues related to depression come up here from time to time. One or two have encouraged me to be a bit more open about such things and to pick up a few things that others might find helpful, or at least a resonance.

So here are a couple of extended quotations from Walter Brueggemann’s most recent book, Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. These paragraphs jumped out at me from his middle section on the need for prophetic grief in the face of contemporary suffering, In this he echoes the mourning of Jeremiah and Lamentations in particular.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 72 (September 2014)

Sacred Treasure

• Cranmer has been on form: 1. None dare call it evil, except Justin Welby; 2. I have forgiven Islamic militants
• Interesting stuff here from Tyndale House on Simon Gathercole’s work on the Gospel of Thomas
• “Your liberal and democratic principles are worth nothing here…” from the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul
• The stigma of being an atheist in the USA…

The Recovering Greenness of a Shrivelled Heart: Thoughts on Rachel Kelly’s Black Rainbow

Rachel Kelly is spot on: “But in the end, depression doesn’t follow rules: it is a devil that comes in many guises.” (Black Rainbow, p231) So there is a sense in which her experiences of depression (two highly debilitating and bewildering attacks and the subsequent need to manage it) will inevitably be unique. But her new Black Rainbow is remarkable: for it is no misery memoir but an act of generosity. In making herself vulnerable through talking so openly about facing and working through deeply personal pains, she has offered nothing less than a gift of grace. For in the midst of the bleak, black, barrenness of depression, she has found a path through. For those of us perhaps further back along the road, this is a germ of hope.

5-a-Day I: Detested & Loved words

Hate is a strong word. In fact, one of my favourite aphorisms of Graham Greene (taken from his astonishing The Power and the Glory) is that “Hate was just a failure of the imagination.” It is precisely because we are all such conflicted and complex people that the hatred of individuals is such a blight – there are always extenuating circumstances (even if they are not sufficient to justify actions).

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 63 (December 2013)

Sacred Treasure

• Katherine Welby was wonderfully open and honest about her depression and faith here
• LivingOut: This is a remarkable new resource for people living with unwanted same-sex attraction
• Don Carson gives 6 excellent reasons not to abandon expository preaching
• CS Lewis arrives in Poet’s Corner
• Prompted by recent death of Sir John Tavener, an Interesting piece from Charles Moore about how a brush with death draws people for religion.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 61 (October 2013)

Sacred Treasure

• Striking infographic on American Megachurches and their relative generosity
• List of Bible infographics on the Guardian Online pages, of all places (the comments are pretty much what one might expect!)