After my visualization of receiving divine restoration, healing and comfort, I was thinking about Jim’s final days. He really was seeking a miracle. He was sinking further and further, deeper and deeper into his desperation and pain and wanted someone – anyone – to provide him with instantaneous relief from what had taken almost 60 years to build up. He wanted a miracle, he really did. When no instant miracle appeared, he lost hope. Recently at a group meeting for those who have survived the suicide of a loved one, people were talking and wondering about what might have been the final trigger that pushed their loved one to take their own life. The moderator responded by talking about a glass of water, slowly filling up drop by drop by drop over time. One drop might represent childhood trauma or abuse, one drop might be a failed marriage, another drop financial troubles, another drop a physical illness,. etc. until one day, a drop hits and the glass just overflows. Which drop caused it? The first drop? The last drop? One of those middle drops? No way to tell, but the cumulative effect – not one thing – is what led to the final act of despair. We may have been able to provide comfort and support for their current troubles, but none of us could fix the broken child inside, nor was it our job or responsibility.
My picture of depression is of a dark swirling cyclone, a vortex of past sadness and anger, that if one gets sucked into can pull you down, down , down. At the bottom of the pit are shackles that can keep you there. You must take responsibility – get counseling, get on meds if needed and fight like hell – to stay above that whirlpool. We do have to take action ourselves and reach for hope. Be intentional about it. The Scriptures say to take “every thought captive.” My counselor talks about telling your mind what it can and cannot dwell upon. Switching the channels deliberately.
Above the waves, on the surface passes a ship. A Mystery Ship. We don’t exactly know where it’s going. We have a vague idea, some clues and suggestions and we hope that its destination is better than the vortex that threatens to suck us down. We’re not quite sure who’s driving it, although we have some clues and want to have faith that the Captain is good navigator, but we have to take the opportunity to reach up and grab the ladder to climb aboard. It takes effort. It’s totally our choice. We can see light inside the portholes. We see sunlight above it. Do we reach up or succumb to the pull of the depths below? The Mystery can be appealing and frightening at the same time.
MYSTERY SHIP
Ride, captain ride, upon your mystery ship,
On your way, to a world, that others might have missed.
Mike Pinera & Frank”Skip” Konte, of Blues Image, in Ride Captain Ride (1970)
I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers. … The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
Ken Kesey “The Art of Fiction” – interview by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, him who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein in Mein Weltbild (1931), as quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. The Apostle Paul from his First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 2:7
The accumulation of junk at the bottom represents some scary stuff. Lost dreams, lost relationships, traumatic childhood events, substance abuse – some heavy baggage. The wheels coming off of a life and no one to help navigate around the debris of brokenness, to break free of the shackles and rise above the mess. May God Bless those in the counseling and pastoral community who help us fragile humans unpack some of those frightening pieces of luggage we’ve been dragging around, work our way through them and discard the stuff that needs to be discarded, and then rise above it into the light.
