Depression and Spiritual Growth

G. COMPASSION and MAJOR DEPRESSION

From the combined experiences of brokenness, which can make us suffer intense "pain", and Grace, which, by super-human intervention can alleviate that pain, we can learn compassion, one of the central ideas of Buddhism, and also, Quakerism. When I was in the hospital in 1997, I attended psychotherapy and psychodrama groups in addition to getting direct medical treatment. I remember (with embarrassment now), how I felt sitting at the table at my first group meeting with other patients in the hospital. The overwhelming majority there were not in for medical treatment, but were dealing with complex life situations. There were alcoholics, drug addicts, drug pushers, and prostitutes. I remember thinking "Here I am a university professor. What's a fellow like me doing in a place like this?" I found out the answer as soon as people started to tell their life stories.

Theirs were lives full of neglect and abuse. Most of the men there had been severely beaten, "to within an inch of their life" by their fathers, stepfathers, or their mother's current "boyfriend", while they were young. Most of the women had been repeatedly sexually abused (a polite euphemism for raped) while they were children, again by their fathers, stepfathers, their mother's current "boyfriend", or a relative. These were people who had suffered terrible trauma in their formative years. Their lives had been effectively destroyed. And as I listened to them I considered my own background: my parents had divorced when I was 5, and my mother effectively abandoned me by putting me into a shabby boarding school, where I stayed through 10th grade. I had been greatly deprived, but not destroyed. By comparison to them, I had been quite fortunate. We were, at the deepest level, all the same: we were human, we had been badly hurt, and we needed understanding. I was overwhelmed with a growing sense of compassion, and I realized that this was an opportunity to reach out to one another with caring and honesty. The psychodrama groups, in particular, were especially effective: often we left the group, for lunch, shaken and still shaking. But we had penetrated to the point where we had truly touched one another.

I also came to realize that Quakers in our Meetings rely on the same degree of compassion from other members of the Meeting and from God. There, we stand spiritually naked before God, whether we speak in the Meeting or not, and seek His/Her compassionate understanding of our lives. And when we do speak, we rely on the compassion of other members of the Meeting. We cannot do it alone: it is more effective to join with others and go together. The best philosophy to adopt is "one step at a time", holding God's hand.

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