Community for Integrative Learning
1503 West 13th Street
Wilmington, DE 19806
302 651-0223
"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."
--Howard Thurman
The Dark Night of the Soul: Spirituality and Depression
Continued...
I want to turn from looking at spirituality per se to looking at some examples of growth through adversity so as to see how we might be able to use depression as a catalyst for spiritual growth. Not all of these examples involve depression, but they all do involve woundedness.
I think first of a dear friend of mine who is living with and dying of cancer. Mark would probably never say that his cancer is a gift. That stretches the imagination and credibility far too much. However, by the way Mark is living his life, by what he is doing with the cancer, he has become a gift for others. Death will eventually take him from us and we will be the lesser for it and will mourn his passing from us, but we will be immensely richer because of how he has taken something that befell him, that he would never have asked for, that he has cursed and screamed at, but he has turned being consumed by this stalker-of -the-living called cancer and into a spiritual journey that is life-affirming, that is a movement toward wholeness even while it is a journey toward death. He will die living! If he can turn cancer into something to be used creatively and life-givingly, then what can we do with depression, with pain, with loneliness, with sadness? No, I could never call cancer or depression a spiritual gift, but I could say that since you have this illness, what are you going to do to turn it into something that has meaning beyond itself, that promotes life, and that affirms spirit and love as being ultimate in our lives. More about that later.
When I was a seminary student I had a fellow in homiletics, a professor's assistant who was a promising minister and seminary professor. I had not heard of Welton Gaddy for many years, but just several years ago I came across a book he wrote entitled A Soul Under Siege: Surviving Clergy Depression. It is the story of his depression, his hospitalization, his besieged soul, and his recovery. It is a remarkable story, one filled with his story of darkness, questions, doubt, and of his courage. He took his illness and eventually made use of it to help many others, especially clergy and churches that nurture clergy. It is an honest confession that lives out the advice that it is time to stop being so nice and start being real. Hear his questioning and a very important answer he found about the meaning of his illness in his life:
"Well before I left the hospital, I wanted the doctor to answer a nagging question: "Do you think I can function as a minister again?" At that time, hearing someone else's opinion, especially from a doctor, the positive one which I heard was very important to me. Later, though, I became more concerned with my own response to that inquiry. Fortunately, clarity on that issue has prevailed. The product of months of careful introspection, reflection, and anticipation is a staunch conviction that I am better prepared to function effectively as a minister at this point in my life than at any previous time. ....
"After enduring a period of subjection to battering questions, disturbing doubts, and draining considerations of other possibilities, I know I am a minister. That identity is independent of any institutional position, specific professional possibility, or other person's (or persons') opinion. Functioning as a minister has legitimacy apart from the source of one's salary. My ministry holds more promise than ever before in terms of a capacity to address profound human concerns and to help people who hurt. My own hurts serve as important sources for ministerial acts of healing." (pp. 140,141)
Do you know the story of Dan Gottlieb? Dan is host of that public radio show "Voices in the Family." In her book, The Gifts of Suffering, Polly Young-Eisendrath tells Gottlieb's story. A bright young man in a promising career, Gottlieb says he remembers that fateful day:
"At the age of thirty-three, just when I thought I was a pretty powerful guy professionally running two drug clinics and supervising thirty people and teaching at the Family Institute of Philadelphia, I encountered the most transformative event of my life. I was driving on the expressway on my way to pick up a Thunderbird to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary.
"We both had always loved those cars, and I was driving up to meet my Uncle Irv, who was a car dealer near Harrisburg, to get the car. It was December twentieth. I was listening to Donna Summers on my eight-track, feeling really good, a great sunny day. All I remember is seeing a black thing flying through the air. I saw it for a millisecond before it hit me. The truck wheel (from an oncoming tractor-trailer) hit the top of the car and just flattened the car out. People came around and the only thing I remember is saying, 'Call everybody I know and tell them to come here right away.'
"That moment I was a quadriplegic. But I didn't know it for twenty-four hours, although everyone was telling me. It just didn't register. My body was paralyzed and traumatized and so was my mind, I became, in many ways, like an infant, and it would take me eight years to grow up again." (pp38-39)
Listen to an event several years later that reveals some of how he has dealt with what life dealt him:
"A couple of years after his accident, Dan Gottlieb learned to drive a specially designed wheelchair van, which is his magic chariot, allowing him freedom and the feeling of being a regular guy. ÎAfter I started driving, I had trouble paying my tolls, I was clumsy and I would drop the quarter. Yet I was very self-conscious and still struggling to be independent. I went over this toll bridge from New Jersey and I'm fumbling to get the quarter in the cup, worried that all these people behind me are going to blow their horns. A toll taker saw me and came over. ÎCan I help?' he asked. ÎNo, I'm okay.' The message was I'm fine, leave me alone.
"I finally get my hand out and throw the quarter and I miss it. It hits the street. I feel like a failure. So I say to him, ÎI'm going to need hour help after all.' He says, ÎNo problem,' and puts up his hand to doff his hatexcept he had no hand. We smiled at each other . We knew. We knew about being different and about suffering. And aloneness. And that's what I teach and what I want others to see.' " (p. 133)
Dan Gottlieb's story is one of enormous pain, utter darkness, eventual divorce, deep and fierce anger and resentment, but he has gone on to turn his disability into a means for helping others. It informs his life but does not define him. He has turned an utter disaster into a means for loving and caring for people. Now I am certain Gottlieb would never say that he is glad that he became a quadraplegic. That is crazy. But he does say that he has learned how to live, to really live, to be fully alive and he has turned this tragedy into a means for helping others. If spirituality is the patterned ways that we relate to what is ultimate in our lives, his ultimate is living and loving, no small spiritual matters.