Depression and Spiritual Growth

3. Brokenness

Anyone who finally emerges from an extended period of major depression or severe mania will likely be weary and feel "broken''. For those people I would like to quote the wonderful poem by Helen Weaver Horn which was published in the December 1992 Friends Journal. [I have omitted the word "Christmas'' from the original because it seems distracting here.]

From Brokenness

This is the daily miracle:
that glancing off each granite face,
the Seed at last finds lodging
in the broken place,
and from the dark heart of the cleft
sprouts Grace, springs green.

We all have broken places. They come from loss, failure, illness and many other problems of life. I used to think that the broken places were sources of danger, places through which pain, grief, even death, might harm us. But the above poem shows that view is wrong: They are instead the places through which Grace, and Light, and Life itself, can first penetrate our souls. And the places through which we can reach out from the prisons of our body and mind and touch the world, touch each other, touch those we love, and touch God. In the end, brokenness also ... is a gift.

4. Gratitude

When one emerges from major depression or serious mania, one has a strong sense of gratitude for having survived. One realizes that it didn't have to turn out all right. A year or so ago, I read a poem in The Friends Bulletin in which the poet started by relating how he was sitting in Meeting when an old, weathered, man stood up, and out of the Silence said "Friends, it is our duty to show the World our gratitude for what we have been spared", then sat down. The poet went on to ruminate about what the old gentleman might have meant. However, I didn't have to read any farther. I know what I have been spared! No matter how deep the "hole'' I was in when I was depressed, I could see deeper. And later, when I worked with other bipolar people in our self-help group, I learned just how much deeper the hole could have been. Likewise, no matter how far from reality I had gone when manic, I learned from others the sheer terrors that could have awaited me had I gone farther. Yes, I have been spared, and I am intensely grateful for that.

next: Love