THE ABYSS
Melancholy & Spirituality

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

30 September 2001

The Text
He was beginning to emerge from the dark defile. In truth, he had already come through it more than once, and would come out of it again. Treatises devoted to the soul’s ordeal were mistaken in assigning successive phases to that adventure: on the contrary, all its phases were intermingled; everything was subject to infinite restatement and repetition. The soul turned about in a circle in its quest.

Long ago, in Basel, and in many other places, he had passed through this same long night. The same verities had been learned and relearned several times. But the experience was cumulative: the pace gradually became surer; the eye could see farther through certain shadows; the mind was at least becoming aware of certain laws.

Like a man who is climbing, or perhaps descending, a mountainside, he was rising or ascending in place; at best, at each turning the same abyss would open below him, sometimes on the right, sometimes at his left. The gain in actual ascent was measurable only as the air became more rarefied, and as new peaks appeared behind those which had seemed to bar the horizon.

But the notion of ascension or descent was wrong, for stars burn below as on high; he was neither at the bottom of the gulf nor at its center. The abyss was both beyond the celestial sphere and within the human skull. Everything seemed to be taking place within an infinite series of curves closing in on themselves.

            The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar

Part One
Nineteen days since September 11th. And here we are, gathered together, stricken still, now with grief, and anger, and fear, and some of us with depression; all of it running through our bodies, deep currents of the human psyche. There are, of course, many possible responses. Two are how do we seek justice for the dead, and how do we protect ourselves in the future? There will be an opportunity a little later today, when all who wish are invited to gather downstairs in the old meditation room, for an open discussion of such important concerns.

In this regard one more thing should be said. Kenn Hurto, a Unitarian Universalist minister, someone I deeply admire, has recently written to the colleagues, “I urge your attending within yourself to sleeplessness, depression, irritability out of context or proportion, thoughts of suicide, distractedness or an inability to focus.”

He reminds us how these emotions “are normal or at least typical reactions to life-challenging events. A recent survey suggested nearly 1 in 4 (of us) had suicidal thoughts after September 11, more than 70% reported feeling not sad but depressed.” Kenn then adds, so significantly, and I urge everyone here in this room to heed this. “If such symptoms continue for weeks, please seek out professional counsel.” Do not shun help. If you hear nothing else today, remember: “do not shun help.”

But still there is more. Beyond our calls for justice and protection for our society, beyond our need for care and counsel for ourselves, what might we seek in this terrible time? Well, here we are. We find ourselves at this hour in a sacred space. So what are the sacred questions? What meaning can we possibly find within this time of deepest reflection?

What might there be for us as we confront this terror within our hearts and minds, and the lethargy, the depression it can lead to for so many of us? I suggest there is something to be discovered in our not turning away from the profound sadnesses of our lives. We can learn from the mysteries of sadness, of melancholy, of depression. There are deep possibilities for us, if we will keep our attention focused, just for a little, on the matter of our sadness.

In the October 4th issue of The New York Review of Books, we find a prescient presentation, an essay by Rosemary Dinnage on three books about depression. In it she quotes a translation from the spouse of one of the writers, of Ranier Maria Rilke’s “Tenth Duino Elegy.”

“We, who squander our sorrows./How we look beyond them into the mournful passage of time/to see whether they might end.//But they are seasons of us, yes,/our winter--/Abiding leafage, meadows,/ponds, landscapes we are born/into,/inhabited by birds and creatures/in the reeds.”

Let us not squander our sorrows. Let us take just a few minutes together to consider the deep winter of our minds, and the cold of our hearts, and what terrible lessons might lay there. Now this is no casual call for me. For me depression is a family shame and persistent reality. As many here know my paternal grandfather was depressed and an alcoholic who committed suicide. Who knows where this litany of despair began? But I can tell you how it continued.

My father was also depressed and an alcoholic who attempted suicide several times. I still remember that day in my adolescence when I walked into the bathroom to find him hanging by a belt, and holding him up while my mother unhitched the belt from the shower. My brother was depressed, alcoholic and drugged when he committed suicide. And my son, depressed and addicted to heroin, also died by his own hand.

It is a testimony to the probabilities within genetics and the throw of cosmic dice that I do not seem marked by that longing for oblivion that has cast all the other males in my family from the precipice to their doom. But, in such a level of family catastrophe I am a survivor of depression only that one bit removed. And it marks me.

I know the wreck and the aftermath of depression not tended to; not addressed. So, I don’t want to waste, to squander those sorrows, our own individual griefs, or those that wrap our nation today, a ragged shroud. Let us not turn away from despair and the deep path through it, I suggest we can discover.

Two
For me Marguerite Yourcenar’s The Abyss speaks to one way we can engage the matter of depression, how it can be like an alchemical process, wherein we can burn much of the dross of our lives, can burn the delusions and illusions, and from that purification, take us on a spiral path to wisdom.

It has been my experience that the way to depth, to knowing something of myself, and the world within which I live, has been one of lessons learned, forgotten, and learned anew. Like, as Yourcenar tells us someone “who is climbing, or perhaps descending, a mountainside… rising or ascending in place; at best, at each turning the same abyss would open below...” This is much of my experience of the spiritual path, where the deep appears; I learn, and then, so quickly, quickly forget, only to be surprised on another turn, and a rediscovery of that deep.

Then she adds, so wonderfully, and to my experience accurately, “The gain in actual ascent was measurable only as the air became more rarefied, and as new peaks appeared behind those which had seemed to bar the horizon.” She describes a moment where we can look within ourselves, from a new perspective, one we’ve visited in kind before, but which now, out of that new turn, is more rarefied, larger, more encompassing. Here, we encounter a breathtaking view.

But questions leap from this moment. What really do we find at that larger perspective? What can we learn on our path through depression, our own, our culture’s, the world’s depression? Andrew Solomon, one of the author’s reviewed by Dinnage tells us, “You are never the same once you have acquired the knowledge that there is no self that will not crumble.”

I suggest this is the terrible message found within depression, and rediscovered whenever our path turns back toward the abyss. This knowledge is the abyss. Here we can see no coherence to who and what we are. It all just is. We just are, fragmented, and parts, cohering for a moment into a thing. Truthfully, our knowing something of that “just” and that “thing” can be, is terrible.

We are composed of so many parts and events, we find our existence birthing out of a cascade of circumstances, our genes, the conditions of our birth. Indeed we are simply the sum of all our experiences in a lifetime. Mutable and changing, we learn we are not safe. Our world, our families, our very lives; are caught in a web of conditions that will inevitably shift and will inevitably break the world and us apart.

That is a lesson we find in depression, one that has no glib response. Dinnage observes, “There is nothing smart or ironic or hip about depressive illness…” Nor is there anything smart or ironic or hip that we can draw upon in our reflections on the state of our souls and our nation in the wake of this assault on our community, our nation.

But, there are simple truths, and deep perspectives we can gain, if we are willing to not turn away, if we will look over the edge. And for our sake, and for our children’s sake, I hope we will not turn away. At the end of the reading Karen Burns and I pulled out for today’s service, of Yourcenar’s The Abyss, I think we find a deeper truth about ourselves, and what can be learned from the depths of depression, beyond seeing the shattering reality of our fragility and transience.

At first she had been describing the path as like ascending or descending a mountain. But, now she abandons the metaphor, and takes us just a little closer to the bone. “(T)he notion of ascension or descent was wrong,” she tells us. “For stars burn below as on high; he (she, each of us) was neither at the bottom of the gulf nor at its center.

“The abyss was both beyond the celestial sphere and within the human skull.” This is so important I want to repeat it: The abyss was both beyond the celestial sphere and within the human skull. Then she concludes, “Everything seemed to be taking place within an infinite series of curves closing in on themselves.”

This is it. The whole cosmos, including you and me, our minds and hearts: an infinite series of curves closing in on themselves. This is the shape of the universe. It is the reality we find as we discover we are not contained by our skins. This is the rarified air, the vision of distant peaks. It is the deep intimation of our sacred knowing. Here is an amazing truth we’ve hidden from ourselves, but can know.

At such a moment we find the yet larger realities of our lives. From these moments of the dark we all experience, we can turn again, finding, knowing we are fully part of the cosmos, birthed out, precious and unique, children of the universe itself. We are all connected, we all have the same family name. Here, in this larger discovery found only from our knowing the abyss, is the perspective that gives us moral choice. Here beyond the celestial spheres and our own skulls, we find ourselves, and what we can be when knowing both in part and from the whole.

I know this is hard to understand. And as I frequently assert, poets are usually the best teachers at such moments. Certainly, I find myself recalling another of Rilke’s Duino elegies, my personal favorite, the Ninth. In Stephen Mitchell’s translation we find ourselves at the moment of discovery, of the space beyond seeing our fragmented and contingent thingness, composed as it is of parts that we know will inevitably come apart. Here we come to another knowing.

Rilke sings of that knowing and where it situates us in the great schemes of things. “Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,/you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe/where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him/something simple which, formed over generations,/lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.

“Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood/by the rope-maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile./Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,/how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,/serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing--, and blissfully/escapes far beyond the violin.

“—And these Things,/which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,/they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all./They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,/within—oh endlessly—within us! Whoever we may be at last.”

This is what we can find in these darkest moments when we see we are just things in a field of things. Here, in fact, lies our salvation. We climb that mountain; we see it in part, and quickly we forget as we pass around the edge. But, we come back, and again we glimpse it. And even though we will forget again, we have been forever gifted by that dark knowing; and will continue to be gifted with that vision until we the most transient of all, will by our constant witnessing, simply our witnessing, reveal the saving knowing that is our heritage from before the creation of the heavens themselves.

And it is simply this: We have the eyes of God. We can know ourselves in our transience, and we can know the whole that informs each part. We, the most transient things of all, can see the holy, can see the holy in all the things of the world. With this seeing, with this knowing, we can step out into the world, spreading blessings everywhere we go.

May we all come out of these dark times, to see with those eyes. The peace of the world, the salvation of the cosmos, lies in the balance. So, don’t stop, keep on the path, continue ahead, up that mountain, until it and you each disappears, and in that rarified air find your true self, the one that is our heritage, our birthright, the one that is the hope of the world.

Amen.