The Dark Night of the Soul: Spirituality and Depression

Concluded...

I also want to share with you an example of compassion, woundedness, and transformation, of using wounds to help others and this example is from a story in the Bible. This is probably a familiar story for those of you in the Christian tradition and perhaps not so familiar to those of other traditions. It is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I prefer to call him the compassionate Samaritan, since we do not know that he was good, only that he did good. We know he was compassionate in his treatment of the wounded man. The story reads like this:

"On one occasion, a legal expert stood up to put him to the test with a question: "Teacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?"

He said to him, "How do you read what is written in the Law?"

And he answered, "You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your energy, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus said to him, "You have given the correct answer; do this and you will have life."

But with a view to justifying himself, he said to Jesus, "But who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replied: "There was a man going from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him half dead. Now by coincidence a priest was going down that road; when he caught sight of him, he went out of his way to avoid him. In the same way, when a Levite came to the place, he took one look at him and crossed the road to avoid him. But this Samaritan who was traveling that way came to where he was and was moved to pity at the sight of him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring olive oil and wine on them. He hoisted him onto his own animal, brought him to an in, and looked after him. The next day he took out two silver coins, which he gave to the innkeeper, and said, 'Look after him, and on my way back I'll reimburse you for any extra expense you have had.' Which of these three, in your opinion, acted like a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

He said, "The one who showed him compassion."

Jesus said to him, "Then go and do the same yourself."

(Luke 10: 25-37, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, translation by Funk, Hoover , and the Jesus Seminar)

Now to help understand this story, I need to give some background about the Judaism of Jesus' day. Early in its history the People of God heard God calling them to be "holy" which they interpreted to mean "pure" or clean. You are to be holy or pure. So rules were written about being pure. One could be born pure, such as Priests and Levites, and one could earn purity through behavior and keeping the purity laws. Some were more pure than others. For example, men were pure and women were impure or unclean. Women became pure or holy only through their menfirst their fathers, then their husbands. Those who were physically whole were pure while those who were maimed, blind, lame, leprous, were impure. Those who were Jews were more pure than Gentiles and so on so that a purity map was established.

In the story, the Priest and Levite passed by on the other side because the wounded man -- probably Jewish himself, since Jesus tells this parable to a Jewish attorney -- is bleeding and therefore unclean. The Priest and Levite would have been rendered unclean had they touched this fellow. Religion can prevent compassion. But the Samaritan stopped and helped him, put him on his animal and took him to the inn. He showed compassion. Now who was a Samaritan? Samaritans were hated by the Jews because they were half-breeds and therefore impure, unclean. And Samaritans hated the Jews because they were always kicking them around. Here as the Samaritan stops to help, impurity looks upon impurity, woundedness looks upon woundedness, hate looks upon hate. But now the hate has turned into compassion. What changes, what transformations have happened inside the Samaritan for him to be able to stop? And what did that Jewish man in the ditch, half dead, feel when he looked up and saw this hated half-breed looking down and starting to help him? Now, who would be hardest for you to be helped by? As you look up from your wounded place, who would be hardest for you to receive life-giving help from? What does it take to learn to love an enemy? What does it take for you to transform your wounds, like this Samaritan, into the ability to healas a wounded healer? You surely did not ask for your illnessand it matters not to me whether your depression is biological or psychological in originyou can utilize it for your spiritual growth and that of others in how you learn to transform your wounds into the means of grace and the means for helping others and to make this world a better place. How do we do that? Let me suggest several simple means for seeing your depression as a catalyst for spiritual growth:

First, just as I have said, let your wounds be the basis for being a wounded healer. Your depression can be a "wake-up call" for using your woundedness as a source of healing for others. Actually, your being here is a reaching out for help and to help others and that's exactly what I'm talking about. In your statement of beliefs you say in number 7: "But there is always something available for us that gives our lives meaning. We just need to know where to look." Again that's what I'm talking about and that "meaning in our lives" is also a spiritual adventure so that in your words "A full life awaits us."

Second, your depression can be a catalyst for your spiritual growth in that it can help you to reevaluate the images of God and of yourself that you have lived with. For some, depression can be a crisis of faith and some of us may need to re-examine, in light of our woundedness, what we were taught about God and what we were taught about ourselves. Some of those beliefs of childhood may actually hinder your recovery and hinder positive beliefs and positive behavior. Some old images of God may not carry you through the tumultuous times of life and some images of yourself that were transmitted through your faith may be pathological and harmful to you on your journey through your dark night of the soul. This can be a spiritual awakeningto discard yesterday's images of God and of yourself and to grow into new ones.

Next, in the dependency of illness, sometimes we have to look at and deal with how difficult dependency is for us, how difficult it can be to ask for and receive help, and it can be a valuable part of our spiritual journey to learn about our need for others, our need for help, our need to speak our truththe truth of our lives, and to know about what John Yungblut means when he describes his Parkinson's disease as the "hallowing of my diminishment." It takes too much energy to be bitter about our need for others and that energy that goes into bitterness can be redirected into our healing and recovery and into presence with others. All this is deeply spiritual, though not akin to stained glass religion, but deeply spiritual.

And some depression is spiritually appropriate in this world. When a young gay man is tied to a fence in Wyoming and killed because he is gay, we will experience some appropriate anger, some appropriate depression, some appropriate pain. When an airliner crashes, when we see starving people on our TV screens, when unspeakable horrors happen to people we love and even to people we don't know, we should feel some depression, but we, as spiritual beings, cannot be the containers of all this pain or situational depression. We have to feel it and we may need to take some action, but then let the feelings pass through us into the center of spiritual reality that we call the heart of God. We cannot bear all this alone.

Last, I believe deeply in an energy called love. I believe that love exists at the heart of this world, that love and compassion are the essence of what we call God, not purity or appearances or laws or "being somebody". And I believe that when we allow it, we can feel, experience, tap into, share in, be a part of, this great energy, this great love that is who God is. We do not have to be defined or stigmatized by any illness; we do not have to be contained or constrained by our past, we can move on; we do not have to stay the same but we can grow and be transformed, we can use our wounds, our dark night of the soul, to continue to grow spiritually and make a difference in people's lives. We can use our own faith in creative ways, not destructive. In this "season to be jolly" though many aren't, we can continue to overcome darkness with light and hate with love and we can come to love ourselves and our enemy as we look face-to-face into their face and into our own. In this season of giving what a great gift! What a great gift indeed!

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

"Wild Geese," by Mary Oliver
from Earth Prayers, Ed. by Roberts & Amidon

Home