Manic Depression and Easter

Just finished reading this week's People magazine.

People, the tenth largest magazine in circulation in the U.S. (as of 2010) is an interesting amalgamation of feel good human interest stories, heartbreak (both serious and stupid), celebrity gossip, and just a touch of trashiness. Throw is some fashion and food, and it is a magazine with a wide angle and a larger audience.

My dream one day is to have a picture of me coming out a Starbucks with my grande in People. Then I know I have made it.

This week's issues has Catherine Zeta-Jones on the cover and the article about her details her battle with Bipolar Depression II. Also in this week's mag--which could be titled the Depression Issue--is the story of teen singer and Disney star Demi Lovato who has struggled with anorexia and bulimia, and Bipolar clinical depression. Later in the pages, is the story of the Florida military mom who killed her two kids in January, who had chronic depression.

Finally, there was brief blurb and picture about author David Foster Wallace who committed suicide in 2008. If you have the interest and the time and the soul strength for it, you can read this article about him and his depression from the New Yorker--the verbose literary hard-stuff anti-thesis to People's soda pop. People was heavier and harder than usual this week.

We used to get the New Yorker free when Lina was in marketing, and I tell you, I had real mixed emotions when that weekly publication came like a powerful word wave, knocking me over...only to regain my footing, before getting smashed again. As a lover of words, I could not stay away from reading its prose, until I finally got to the place where I just perused the comics, because I had to finish my Dissertation dammit! Then, the New Yorker stopped sending the issues gratis.

As one who works in mental health--that is what school counselors do a good deal of the time behind close doors (do you really think a society that lives like we do could avoid fall-out among the young?), I know that Depression is a very real malady among many. It is not a disorder in one very real sense...it is a normal reaction to an abnormal world. Some seem particularly affected by it, most grapple with it off-and-on. And, the rest who are Depression-free, are in denial.

I remember attending a church that where the pastor had a time during the service where he solicited peoples' prayer requests. Most of the time it was for medical issues. In our society it is safe to ask for prayer publicly for a broken toe but not a broken soul. Indeed, one of the lurking issues behind physical illnesses, are the emotional and psychological states that either create or exacerbate or complicate illness. It is not cause-and-effect, but there is linkage. For example, the relationship between cancer and anger has been posited.

The Bible is profoundly realistic about the world that we live in. Although it is easy to stereotype the Scriptures as "Pie in the Sky" it is actually more like "Blood in the Mud." From the Fall, to Cain slaying Abel, to the Old Testament savagery, to Jesus the Christ on the Cross, to the Apocalypse, no honest skeptic can assert the Bible does not present the world as it is. But here is the interesting thing. The Bible also conveys deep hope. The grace of God redeems the mess...He does not just bless it. He transforms it. He brings wholeness out of hopelessness.

One of the missions of this blog is to proclaim both the realities of the sin-saturated world we live in (being realistic) and the idealism that the Gospel has a monopoly on (Shalom)....redemption and a better day coming, both temporally and eternally, for those who put their trust in Jesus. Grace-giver, truth- teller, Savior, lover of our souls, soiled and all. I am committed resolutely to explaining how the Gospel makes all the difference in providing both the diagnosis and cure to our dis-ease and yes, depression. My prescription: Hard truth, spoken silly and satirically and even perhaps sophomorically. Hey, I work with high schoolers...whaddya expect?

Jimi Hendrix, in his song Manic Depression, sings of "Knowing what he wants but not knowing how to get it" and manic depression being "a frustrating mess." A woman seems to be his tantalizing tormentor...I think it is not too much of me to see the woman as the world. Beautiful, alluring, dangerous, and tragic. And as we indulge her, and as she indulges us, we are both left full and empty. David Foster Wallace wrote, "You burn with hunger for food that does not exist."

May I humbly, reverently, and passionately commend Christ to you, the Passover Lamb, to satisfy your Good Friday souls. The Easter meal is for all. Take and eat.