Oh, I wish you could be sitting here by the fire with me tonight. Charley sprawls near the Pennsylvania bluestone, lulled by the heat; flames dance and leap, coals underneath glow like with all the colors of a sunrise. A sunrise over the Indian ocean, let me add--and there is no prettier sunrise, I assure you.
Unusual night! Martin is out, collecting Thai food, several Bacchanalian fruit flies are drowning themselves in my wine, and for the first time in many hours, I hear only the wood stove fan, the crackle of wood, and the wind chimes on the front porch.
How spoiled I have become in my long periods of solitude. The two youngest were home today, playing with one group of friends or another, and while it was lovely to spend a day full of their goodness, ingenuity, and creativity, I find myself all the more grateful for the silence tonight--the kids are either at friends' houses or at events. It as if my old friends are gathering around me, linking hands and smiling quietly--my old friends in my head. I know that sounds a bit insane, but you know what I mean. In fact, sometimes I have such a lively conversation going as I drive alone (characters in a book I'm working on chatting away) that I have to remind myself: I am alone. How funny. I got lost, again, on a drive I've driven at least 200 times, because of the chit-chat in my head.
There was a time when I was afraid to be alone, because, like many immature extroverts, I felt incomplete without the company of others, whether I particularly knew or liked them or not. With thirty-six years, three children, and lively communities, that time is gone. I find myself craving solitude like the most ardent introvert.
Good news: my dear mother-in-law is mending at last. I rejoice with her news!
There are very wonderful people in my life who are going through or have recently journeyed through the dark tunnels of depression--some more acutely than others. When I try to speak encouragement to those people, I feel as if they are at the bottom of a pool. I can see their faces there, and I know they see me, and even hear me. But my face above them is distorted, wavy, and the words I and others who love them say are echoes, distorted by the water, mere sounds. I long to reach down and pull them out, watch them shake the water from their eyes and ears, wrap a towel around them and say, "See, you're okay!"
I have been thinking a lot about hope. When all the evils of the world flew out of Pandora's box, one thing remained: Hope. The thing with feathers that perches in the soul, Emily Dickinson wrote. That sings the song without the words and does not speak at all. Hope--a song without words when words mean nothing, that sings even in the darkest places, whether we can hear it or not.
A dear friend of mine just climbing out of depression memorized this verse from the Psalms recently:
I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
I love the image of the 'land of the living.' The people I know who struggle with depression feel as if they have left that land, at least most of the time. Wait. Wait, and if at all possible, hope even while you despair. That is what I want to tell them. There is nothing cliché or easy about hope. It is hard.
With the transitions that have rocked us in recent years and indeed all the moves that have demanded flexibility and can be so wearying and befuddling, my soul has found a new image recently: I like to think that God, since God is out of time, is before me, in my future, preparing whatever is coming next. God has travelled before me and is even now unpacking the boxes, putting things on shelves, shaking clean sheets over a bed, smoothing the pillowcases. God knows I will be weary when I arrive, but when I do arrive, I will soon feel at home again.
Mostly I think of this image in relationship to inner journeys, like sadnesses, grief or depression. I do not think God desires anything that is evil for us; I do not think God sends depression as a kind of enema or punishment or purgatory. But I think God is there both in the journey through depression and at the same time, is on the other end, waiting, holding a light. Or perhaps the light is there all the time--perhaps God travels through the tunnel, and God is the light--for even darkness is as light to God (so the poet wrote).
What was it another dear friend, who struggled with debilitating depression, told me? I love this so much:
One day, I woke up and I heard a chickadee singing outside my window. I felt joy stir in me for the first time in many months. It is not because the chickadee had just then, at that moment, on that particular morning, found my window and begun to sing; no, the chickadee had been there every morning, singing and singing. But that morning, I was able to hear its song. And I knew I was getting better.
Too, it makes me wonder: how many chickadees are singing at my window? And can I, bound by my own anxieties and plans for success, hear them?
Perhaps Emily Dickinson was thinking of a chickadee.
Unusual night! Martin is out, collecting Thai food, several Bacchanalian fruit flies are drowning themselves in my wine, and for the first time in many hours, I hear only the wood stove fan, the crackle of wood, and the wind chimes on the front porch.
How spoiled I have become in my long periods of solitude. The two youngest were home today, playing with one group of friends or another, and while it was lovely to spend a day full of their goodness, ingenuity, and creativity, I find myself all the more grateful for the silence tonight--the kids are either at friends' houses or at events. It as if my old friends are gathering around me, linking hands and smiling quietly--my old friends in my head. I know that sounds a bit insane, but you know what I mean. In fact, sometimes I have such a lively conversation going as I drive alone (characters in a book I'm working on chatting away) that I have to remind myself: I am alone. How funny. I got lost, again, on a drive I've driven at least 200 times, because of the chit-chat in my head.
There was a time when I was afraid to be alone, because, like many immature extroverts, I felt incomplete without the company of others, whether I particularly knew or liked them or not. With thirty-six years, three children, and lively communities, that time is gone. I find myself craving solitude like the most ardent introvert.
Good news: my dear mother-in-law is mending at last. I rejoice with her news!
There are very wonderful people in my life who are going through or have recently journeyed through the dark tunnels of depression--some more acutely than others. When I try to speak encouragement to those people, I feel as if they are at the bottom of a pool. I can see their faces there, and I know they see me, and even hear me. But my face above them is distorted, wavy, and the words I and others who love them say are echoes, distorted by the water, mere sounds. I long to reach down and pull them out, watch them shake the water from their eyes and ears, wrap a towel around them and say, "See, you're okay!"
I have been thinking a lot about hope. When all the evils of the world flew out of Pandora's box, one thing remained: Hope. The thing with feathers that perches in the soul, Emily Dickinson wrote. That sings the song without the words and does not speak at all. Hope--a song without words when words mean nothing, that sings even in the darkest places, whether we can hear it or not.
A dear friend of mine just climbing out of depression memorized this verse from the Psalms recently:
I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
I love the image of the 'land of the living.' The people I know who struggle with depression feel as if they have left that land, at least most of the time. Wait. Wait, and if at all possible, hope even while you despair. That is what I want to tell them. There is nothing cliché or easy about hope. It is hard.
With the transitions that have rocked us in recent years and indeed all the moves that have demanded flexibility and can be so wearying and befuddling, my soul has found a new image recently: I like to think that God, since God is out of time, is before me, in my future, preparing whatever is coming next. God has travelled before me and is even now unpacking the boxes, putting things on shelves, shaking clean sheets over a bed, smoothing the pillowcases. God knows I will be weary when I arrive, but when I do arrive, I will soon feel at home again.
Mostly I think of this image in relationship to inner journeys, like sadnesses, grief or depression. I do not think God desires anything that is evil for us; I do not think God sends depression as a kind of enema or punishment or purgatory. But I think God is there both in the journey through depression and at the same time, is on the other end, waiting, holding a light. Or perhaps the light is there all the time--perhaps God travels through the tunnel, and God is the light--for even darkness is as light to God (so the poet wrote).
What was it another dear friend, who struggled with debilitating depression, told me? I love this so much:
One day, I woke up and I heard a chickadee singing outside my window. I felt joy stir in me for the first time in many months. It is not because the chickadee had just then, at that moment, on that particular morning, found my window and begun to sing; no, the chickadee had been there every morning, singing and singing. But that morning, I was able to hear its song. And I knew I was getting better.
Too, it makes me wonder: how many chickadees are singing at my window? And can I, bound by my own anxieties and plans for success, hear them?
Perhaps Emily Dickinson was thinking of a chickadee.
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