This week on Speaking of Faith: the soul in depression

This week's Speaking of Faith radio program is "The Soul in Depression." I haven't listened to it yet but can imagine that this episode will be as thought provoking as the others. The program will explore the spiritual aspect of clinical depression and its aftermath with author Andrew Solomon, Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer, and poet and psychologist Anita Barrows. In host Krista Tippett's email journal, she writes,

I took the making of this program as an occasion to walk myself with some trepidation back through the spiritual territory of despair. Like many millions of people, I have experienced severe, clinical depression. And I think that "depression" is one of the most misleading and inadequate words in our vocabulary. When I try to describe the experience, I find myself grasping to say what it is not. Depression is not essentially about being sad, or down, or blue, though these may be symptoms. In the illuminating language of Andrew Solomon in this week's program, the opposite of depression is not happiness — it is "human vitality." It can have purely physiological origins. It may be triggered by old sadnesses grown unbearable or anger turned inward, as one saying goes. But it becomes a way of being in, and moving through, the world.

Ignatius Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order, spoke of "desolations" — a better word than depression, in my mind — that "lead one toward lack of faith and leave one without hope and without love. One is completely listless, tepid, and unhappy, and feels separated from our Creator and Lord." For me, depression was not so much about being without faith or hope or love; it was, rather, not being able to remember knowing those things, not being able to imagine ever experiencing them again.

You can find the program's local listings at the program's website. You will also find there resources, including book excerpts, poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, partial program transcripts, audio outtakes, as well as the opportunity to listen online.

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Comments

[Paul M. Martin]

Despair seems to me to connote more the spiritual aspects; depression the psychological.

People seem to articulate despair in quite different ways, even though the feelings involved show so much similarity. KT talks about never having lost love, faith, and hope, yet not feeling them. In my despairing period, I felt I'd lost two out of three and was on my way to losing the ability to love.

For many others, a sense of guilt seems to be a major theme.

[Nancy]

Tippett's guest Palmer Parker was very insightful. He said that on one level depression was the "least spiritual thing he'd ever done" yet it was apparent his depression was a spiritual turning point for him, at least in his recovery it was. He found that his soul "knows how to survive in very hard places, knows how to survive in places where the intellect doesn't, where the feelings don't, and where the will cannot." He talked about embodiment and that gave me the image of body and soul together. Very interesting was his story about the friend--a Quaker elder--that came in every afternoon and massaged his feet, barely saying anything, and how his willingness to simply be present with him in his suffering made a huge difference to him.

[Julana]

Thank you for that link, Nancy. I hope I find the time to listen to the program. I have read part of one of Palmer's books, The Courage to Teach, I think.