[Magdalen] Motley Pew

[Judy Fleener]

Thank you, Molly for the metaphor.

On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Molly Wolf <lupa at kos.net> wrote:

> Clouds: A Metaphor
>
> Sometimes all you need is a really good metaphor.
>
> I am frankly a Facebook junkie, not least because it tends to introduce me
> to people I would not otherwise hear of and ideas I didn’t know I needed.
> (Besides, I like the silly quizzes.)
>
> And so I sat at the feet (actually the Facebook page) of a handsome black
> guy named Prince Ea, a hiphop artist two years younger than my younger kid,
> who in quite simple terms upended my way of thinking with a really useful
> metaphor, which I have taken to my gravity-challenged bosom.
>
> He was talking about the self and depression.  Depression, he said, is
> like clouds in the sky.  It comes and goes, comes and goes, but the sky
> remains, and the clouds don’t.  When the clouds are gone, the sky remains.
> Depression isn’t who a person is; it’s something a person has.
> Temporarily. Like a bad cold.
>
> Now, this may be obvious to the rest of you, but I was brought up with the
> Ghost of Freud  and the notion that a neurosis is forever and is somehow
> the responsibility of the person who has it, because otherwise the person
> wouldn’t be neurotic. Neurotic is what a person is, not what a person has.
> You could learn to live with it, that was all. Or at least this was the pop
> version current in my youth.
>
> From a psychologist’s standpoint back then, depression was a life
> sentence, biologically determined and likely hereditary.  It would always
> be a trap into which you could fall.  I was told to avoid intellectual
> pursuits and not to have children, lest they inherit the disorder as I had.
>
> On the popular front, depression was like cancer, a sign of the Evil Eye
> and something that might just possibly be catching if you attracted it.
> Depression was cooties.  Once cootified, always cootified, and cooties are
> (we know) unclean and also contagious.  Hence the stigma. Like Job’s
> comforters said, you must have done something to deserve this.
>
> Besides, it was all in your head, a moral failing; if you were depressed,
> you just needed to get over yourself and haul your socks up because the
> rest of the world has it tough too… This buffleguff is still out there,
> sadly enough.
>
> But here is this gorgeous young black guy, radiating wisdom and telling me
> that depression is like clouds in the sky; sometimes we can’t see the sky
> for the clouds, but it’s still there and it will be there when the clouds
> have gone, even if they come back, even if they last a long time.  There is
> a you who exists beyond depression as the sky outlasts the clouds.
> Depression is what a person has, not what a person is.
>
> I still get fits of depression, although they tend now to be lighter and
> briefer than the old suffocating weight of years back.  But I’ve also
> suffered off and on from another form of dark fog, one that doesn’t get the
> airtime that depression gets:  what feels perilously like the absence of
> God.
>
> It’s the sense that God has somehow left the house.  There is a God-shaped
> hole all right, but it’s like the space in a molar where the filling fell
> out.  It is a hollowness at the centre that demands to find a filling.
>
> Now, I believe, with all my heart, that faith is pure unspoiled joy for
> many people, and I’m glad for them.  I’m glad for people whose strong faith
> helps them through difficult times and makes them pursue justice and
> mercy.  In their journey in faith, for some the walking is strong and
> joyous, even when the path is difficult; people walk in company, singing as
> they walk.
>
> You go, guys, and I’ll cheer you every step of the way. Me, I hobble and
> my feet hurt and I can’t keep up on the hills, and it makes me too cranky
> for singing around the campfire.
>
> I’m told to work harder, to believe more strongly, to pray more fervently,
> but that’s just as useful as telling someone with depression to “just get
> over it, already.”  I’m fed such lines as “if God feels far away, who
> moved?” or “count it all joy” or “take an attitude of gratitude” when I’m
> up to my earlobes in the freakin’ Dark Night of the Soul.
>
> It’s the spiritual equivalent of living high up in rainy country, where
> you can’t see the forest for the fog – what they used to call in Nova
> Scotia “black thick of fog”.  Fog so thick that (so legend has it) you can
> actually shingle it.  It’s like chill fog at evening, when it closes in
> like a spiritual sepulcher and the deep green of the forest turns ominous
> and strange..
>
> I have spent long periods – dreary, resentful, grumbling periods – hanging
> on to faith merely by believing in belief: not actually believing, but
> trusting that belief is possible if a person just hangs in there.  Being
> pig-stubborn is a real advantage sometimes.
>
> It took me a long, long time to learn that this is, in fact, a perfectly
> valid way of getting through one’s spiritual life, if not perhaps the most
> delightful experience.  For some of us, it’s not that faith is the easy way
> out.  It’s the hard way, far harder than easy skepticism. The Dark Way, the
> via negativa, is ancient and honourable.  Fun, not so much.
>
> But with Prince Ea’s metaphor in mind, I can understand something I tend
> to lose in the suffocating darkness:  that there is always sky behind the
> cloud, and that the fog does pass.  I will see the blue of daylight sky
> again.  If I travel the journey, it’s in a silent company, and the silence
> is companionable. And if I feel like this, it’s probably time for some deep
> self-care.
>
> I am reminded that I have a soul that exists like the blue summer sky:
> limited because this life is limited, but only clouded, not permanently
> hijacked, by the temporary tomfoolery of some of my neurotransmitters.
> Tears may last any number of years, but joy really does come in the
> morning. But it doesn’t come because I’ve purchased it with fake
> cheerfulness, but because God is particularly gracious when I’m
> particularly miserable.
>
> I am also reminded that if I’m willing to see further and deeper, past the
> blue of a sunlit day, up through the atmosphere and beyond – if I’m willing
> to chance leaving not just my self behind, but my beautiful
> blue-green-clouded world as well – there are stars out there.  Gazillions
> of stars.  Extravaganzas of brilliance stretching out far beyond what mind
> can ever grasp, the Creation that God reminds Job about.
>
> It’s just a matter of a good metaphor, one that carries me to a steadier
> place with a much, much longer view.
>
> The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no
> other way. -- Mark Twain




-- 
Judy Fleener, ObJN,SSH
Western Michigan