Two apparent coincidences occurred which gave me the inspiration for this month letter. Firstly, the festival of Epiphany actually falls on a Sunday this year and secondly, when thinking about what to write I opened my Jerusalem version of the Bible at random and was confronted with page 983 which just happened to be headed “Epiphany” as the title to the beginning of Isaiah chapter nine, the opening line of which reads: “The people who walked in darkness has seen a great light: on those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone.” Rather a hopeful text for the New Year I feel.
Of course Isaiah is not always so positive. The people to whom he addressed his prophecy had been through a tough time indeed. In the eighth chapter he employs a powerfully dark image to describe the state of the people – “Distressed and starving he will wander through the country and, starving, he will become frenzied...he will find only distress and darkness, the blackness of anguish, and will see nothing but night.” (Isaiah 8: 21 & 22) Quite a contrast but it is the very people who have been wandering around in the pitch black of night who will see the light.
In my pastoral work as a priest and as a psychotherapist I often sit with people who are profoundly depressed. Stumbling around in the dark is quite a good metaphor for this distressing state. People often want a kind of magic pill that will make them feel better, less miserable. It is true that if they are clinically depressed medication can sometimes help though it is far from magical and often has rather nasty side effects. I used the word “apparent” with the word “coincidence” at the beginning of this month’s letter; I did so because I don’t actually believe in coincidences, I believe rather in a profound connectedness in all that we as human beings experience. Neither do I believe that depression is some meaningless emotional pain that is best got rid of. There was a reason why Israel was in a state of frenzied anguish and there is a reason for depression. When I sit with folk struggling with depression, together we try to work out what the depression is trying to say, what is it about their life that needs to be looked at and modified. We do this in order to come to what might be called an “Epiphany” or put another way “a ha ha moment” when the penny drops and the sufferer discovers a new truth about themselves which is utterly liberating.
Sometimes depression is reactive, by which I mean that some external circumstance is the main cause rather than an internal emotional malfunction. This could be anything: e.g. the loss of a job or a partner, etc. There is plenty to be depressed about as we enter the New Year. As a country we are still in recession; our children face the prospect of being worse off that we have been. Last year the capitalist system, which has sustained the west for hundreds of years, looked decidedly shaky and if it had imploded, largely due to the greedy speculation of the few, then what? Politicians of all shades promise to solve our problems but in fact seem fairly impotent; they have no magic pill. We see corruption in high places; the press, who need to be free if we are to be a democracy, have recently been, quite rightly, hauled over the coals for the irresponsible way they have behaved. The Middle East is in a dangerous state of flux which could have serious global consequences. Oh, dear, I am sounding rather like Isaiah in one of his darker moods!
However, light is meaningless without a darkness in which it can shine. So my text for this coming year as we enter the depths of winter is “the people who walked in darkness has seen a great light”. As individuals and as a society we can find ourselves in dark places sometimes due to circumstances beyond our control, but sometimes due to our own fault. None of this is however meaningless and it is often at such times that we experience a manifestation of God’s grace if we have the courage and faith to perceive it and grasp it and be willing to change.
Happy New Year – Fr Mick