My memory was mistaken. I thought I had found the letter tucked under my study door. A decade later she tells me that she sent it through the mail. I am quite certain of the season-Lent and therefore winter-for I quoted her note in my Easter sermon. I should ask her if my memory is playing tricks on me here as well. In any event, out of the cold and darkness it came, under the anonymous signature, "A parishioner." Darker and colder than winter, its mood was hopeless, not a hint of spring in the heart she dared to open but not expose.
Dear Mr. Church,
What is the meaning of adversity? I don't think I can handle it anymore. Nothing it seems has gone right in my life. I am very tired of this stupid life. If you can tell me the reason for suffering or pain or adversity, please tell me. I know people do not have an answer, and I know many people overcome adversity but I am tired of it. I feel absolutely hopeless. Is there a god or is there not a god? If I feel there is not a god what is the sense of going on? And for whom?
I know this letter sounds crazy, but I am tired of it. I feel absolutely hopeless.
A Parishioner
P.S. Yes, I've had therapy and medication-now you must really think I'm crazy-but I remain hopeless. Please help me.
How could I be of help? I knew neither the gender nor anything else about this person. Asking my staff for assistance, together we tossed around a few possible names. One occasional visiter had just lost his wife and children to a tragic accident. Perhaps he was the one. Another member of the congregation was facing bankruptcy after more than a year without work. Both were deeply depressed, and with good reason. We thought of the man who had gone off his medication and was acting strangely, and of the woman who had checked herself out of rehab and clearly was drinking again. But we were in touch with these people. Whoever had written this desperate cry for help was nowhere on our screen.
At this moment I realized that the enormity of our task was even greater. Even if the author had chanced into our midst, we wouldn't have be able to fit the person with the picture, for any one of our parishioners could have written that letter. Shortly before my time, a successful investment banker and leader of the congregation closed a lucrative deal one day, and took his life the next. I myself remember the boy with a perfect report card and perfect family who no longer could bear the weight of perfection. Attempting suicide, he too sought to end his secret pain. I should have known this lesson by heart. Never judge the contents of a package by its wrapping.
For ten years I remained in the dark about the author of this poignant cry for help. It was clear that he or she was depressed, perhaps even suicidal, but I could do nothing. I thought the sermon might prompt a visit, or my inclusion of this letter in my book Lifelines. Still not a word. And then a miracle happened. Three weeks ago, I was leading the usual check-in that takes place before Wednesday evening prayers in our chapel. During the service everyone participates, in Quaker fashion praying in silence or out loud as the spirit moves us. A sensitivity to what people are struggling with at that point in their lives helps me to open the service on the right note, and also assists them in preparing their hearts for worship.
"I have been wondering whether or not to tell you this," she said.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I'm 'Anonymous,'" she replied.
"That's just fine," I said, not at all sure what she was getting at. "Anonymity is an honored tradition in 12-step groups. On the other hand . . . "
"No, Forrest, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm 'Anonymous,' the one who wrote you that letter, the letter you put in your book."
This left me almost speechless and on the verge of tears. I scarcely knew this woman, not even by name until a month before, when she first joined our prayer circle. Had you asked me, all I could have told you about her is that she is happy, very happy. Her prayers are always prayers of thanksgiving. She speaks often of the joy she receives from life and from our church. In eloquent, simple words, she mentions little acts of kindness, given and received. "This is real wealth," she has said more than once. "Kindness is life's true miracle. Love, life's greatest joy." She is in heaven. That is the miracle.
One day I shall ask this lovely woman how she managed to get from hell to heaven, but it doesn't really matter. Even as hell comes cloaked in many different guises, there are at least as many ways to uncover heaven beneath them. Not that any of these ways is simple or painless. On the contrary, here on earth to get from hell to heaven one must always pass through purgatory.
Depression locks our minds from without. It is as if the little devil perched on one of our shoulders mugs and gags the angel on the other and has both ears to himself. Since each speaks in our voice, we have no idea that this has happened, only that our every thought is dark. With the better angel of our nature unavailable to contest the devil's logic, we see no exit from our plight.
Depression is a dark night of the soul. Though we may see them shining, the stars offer no illumination. Even the sun can seem cruel. As for the joy that others seem to take in life, this too offers but cold comfort to an already frozen heart. When depressed, we feel alone in such company, estranged from the very people who most wish to offer their aid. Inwardly or openly, we may even be derisive of their attempts to assist us. When counseling those who are suffering from depression, I find that sometimes the most helpful thing I can do is to shake my head and say, "Isn't it awful." Not to tell them to go to the gym, or to set out and accomplish at least one thing every day, or to think about what a gift life is. Simply to love them and tell them so, this and how sorry I am for the misery they are suffering.
This is not much, I know. Nor is it enough. I also make sure that they are seeing a real doctor. If almost unbearably slow to kick in, psychotropic drugs can work wonders for people whose depression is triggered by a chemical imbalance. I have them promise me one thing further: that they won't kill themselves until making a phone call. Together we write down at least six numbers (including my office, home and cell phone numbers) for them to keep in their wallet. No deeply depressed individual can honestly pledge not to commit suicide, but keeping a promise to pick up the phone first falls within the realm of possibility. One or two numbers is not enough, by the way; nor is the assurance that he or she will "call you before I do anything." If the phone is busy or an answering machine chirps its sensible greeting on the other end of the line, anyone contemplating suicide will take this as one more sign (when almost none is needed). On the other hand- excluding vengeful final calls to punish others and thereby make one's suicide even sweeter-merely to connect with the sound of another's voice can sometimes be enough to break the spell of death.
The only way in which the most severe forms of clinical depression illuminate God's nature is by defining the limits of divine intervention. Neither Jesus nor anyone can save someone who is helpless to receive salvation. Psychiatrists and loved ones can provide a safety net and a measure of understanding, but beyond this we can do almost nothing. Blessedly, such depression may lift on its own or by virtue of the right medicinal agent. This may teach patience and gratitude, but little more.
On the other hand, in the great majority of cases, the power of love and understanding can work their magic in helping to free one from the grip of depression. And often, when the darkness does begin to break, strangely the light, however flickering, is more radiant than it had appeared before midnight struck. Witnesses to the dawning of hope after a dark night of the soul are among the most clear-sighted observers of life's beauty. Through their keen eyes we can see things we tend to overlook. Distracted by the tasks of daily life, how easily we miss discerning hints of the divine within the ordinary. Those who return from hell on earth have much to teach concerning how we might find heaven here and now.
There are many ways to travel from hell to heaven. Yet to get home after dark, whatever our path may be, we will we need a lamp to guide us, and to find one can be difficult. In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, you will notice that God doesn't just "let there be light, and there was light." It takes four days before the proper balance is struck between light and darkness. And still the darkness remains-in the firmament, between the waters, in our own lives. It is as if God keeps toying with the balance. Our lives are a little like that. We keep toying with the balance as well. For me, the hope contained in these first few verses of the Bible is that, at the end of each, God says, "It is good."
How then can we balance the light and darkness in our lives? Not surely in the mirror of the past, reflecting happiness lost or stolen from us, its images reminding us that everything we once dreamed of has not come to pass. Whether it is our own fault or the fault of the fates-our given parents, the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation, the economic strata into which we were born-such reflections may help us to apportion blame, but do little to lift life's bane. It is no better to lose ourselves in the future, consumed by worry about things that may never happen. God's light shines only upon the present. It is our ability to discern a divine presence within each passing day that redeems our days from the pain that abides within them.
Witnessing to this, in her poem, "Exile," Kathleen Raine encounters unexpected hints of light illuminating the shadows of her life and marking her path home:
Sometimes from far away
They sign to me;
A violet smiles from the dim verge of darkness,
A raindrop lands beckoning on the eaves,
And once, in long wet grass,
A young bird looked at me.
Their being is lovely, is love;
And if my love could cross the desert self
That lies between all that I am and all that is,
They would forgive and bless.
For my once-anonymous parishioner, her love crossed the desert of self, leading her home through the light-riddled darkness from a personal hell to the doorstep of heaven. I have witnessed this miracle many times, in my own life and in the lives of others. After the rain comes the rainbow. And the rainbow could not exist without the rain.
In closing let me share with you a letter posted from prison to Gilda's Club International, an organization that devotes its money and lobbying efforts to aid those suffering from Cancer. Joanna Bull, Executive Director of Gilda's Club, sent a copy of this letter to Jan, who passed it along to me.
To Whom it May Concern:
I hope this missive finds you in high spirit. Your ad in the U.S. day put me in very high spirits. If a little guy like that can stand up and fight cancer, then a 215 pound, 6ft. man can go a round or two. But the significant feature of cancer reveals itself when you meet other people directly or vicariously and you experience real kindness. Someone to strain with, to strain to see you as you strain to see yourself. Someone to understand; someone to accept the regard, the love, that cancer sometimes forces into hiding. It's strange. The day I saw your ad in the newspaper a relentless rainstorm struck. It rained all through the night. I think you understand the emptiness a person can feel inside when they have cancer. That morning the storm abated to a drizzle, and suddenly it stopped. We were out on the yard--there is only one way to describe a prison yard with seven or eight hundred inmates interacting at one time--it's like the New York Stock Exchange. Suddenly an inmate pointed at the sky and shouted, "Look!" I looked where he was pointing. There, filling the whole sky, was the first complete and perfect end-to-end rainbow I've ever seen. Above it, like a Technicolor shadow, was a second ghost rainbow about half as bright as the first. Above that, a third echoed, half as bright as the second, shimmering in and out of existence, leaking tears of color into the dome of the sky. At first only a few other inmates looked up and then those few began to shout. And then others took up the cry, tugging at their friends, gesturing at the sky. Everything ceased and the ambient background noises of the prison yard diminished into a silent symphony of spiritual wonder. For perhaps five, eternal minutes nobody could speak. As I stood there looking at this rainbow hanging like a warm cloud in the arctic sky, a vivid picture of the little boy in the Gilda's Club ad appeared in my mind. A peace flowed through me so profound that the tears began to flow from my eyes. This was God's way of letting me know I wasn't alone. You have my sincerest regards.
May God shower you with peace and happiness,
Robert
The body that contains it may be cancer-ridden and behind bars, but any heart that can receive such abundant joy and express such perfect love is nothing if not free.
Amen. I love you. May God bless us all. Copyright AllSouls 2001.