on burn out and overwhelm

 

‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.’

Isaiah 43

Two years ago, I was burnt out. I had been covering two vacancies, in two neighbouring churches, for too long, and the fact that someone was providing cover meant that the processes for addressing the situation were not moving in the way that they ought to move. And I had reached the point where I was exhausted, emotionally, and had run out of hope that anything was going to change.

When I share this story, people share with me their experiences of burn-out, in the face of intractable challenges in their working lives or family circumstances. And when we are burnt out, we need someone to show us one small step that we can take.

I met with my archdeacon, and told him that, even though I had not lost my sense of vocation, I was seriously contemplating walking away from this, from holding these vacancies. He listened, and said, ‘You need a sabbatical.’ (three month’s paid leave). I replied, ‘I’ve been asking for a sabbatical for over two years now, and I just get pushed from pillar to post.’ He responded, ‘We’ll make it happen.’ One small step.

On my wife’s recommendation, I got in ouch with friends who live in Spain and arranged to go and spend a week with them. They live in a Roman walled city. Each day, I walked around the city wall, then found a café and drank coffee and read. Small steps.

The next small step was deciding that I would not go back to holding two vacancies but would leave the place where I had been based and concentrate on the place where some of my time had been loaned. Small step after small step. And at times what looked like a path forward vanished into thin air, inviting me to stop and wait and look around and find a next small step.

In this way, step by step, including not heading too far off the path, we rebuild hope.

Burn out is not uncommon. But being overwhelmed is very common. Overwhelm is the experience that life is unfolding too fast, faster than our bodies and minds can manage, faster than we are willing or able to keep up.

One of the common experiences of overwhelm is found in the wake of bereavement. The world rushes on, oblivious, as if it did not know that it had come to an end, as if people did not care that you had lost your very life when someone dear to you died. You might even have had it said to you, ‘Have you not moved on? It’s been six months.’ as if six months was anything at all.

We experience overwhelm when the demands placed upon us are too relentless.

And the experts tell us that the cure to overwhelm is play.

When children play, they are fully absorbed. Their parent might say, ‘Come on, it’s time to go.’ and it is as if the child has not heard them, because they have not heard, not because they are disobedient but because they are absorbed.

Through play, children learn cooperation and problem solving, but also and more fundamentally experience joy. As adults we assume that we have learnt the lessons of play (the skills of cooperation and problem solving) and so we leave play behind. And over time we forget how to play. We lose touch with joy.

Burn out is a long-term challenge. It takes more than a three-month sabbatical to return. But overwhelm, despite being a big emotion, can be smaller in scale, and a more frequent experience. The late modern world comes at us thick and fast. At times we might take out ten minutes just to play and that be enough; at times, a whole day.

And God does not say to his people, you will not walk through fire and the waves will not rise over your head. God says, when these things happen, because they will happen, when you are burnt out or overwhelmed, there you might discover me with you. In the revelation of a small step, or in the midst of play.

 

Faith, health, welfare and pensions

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with health, welfare and pensions. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Our first reading today, Genesis 3.8-15, is part of the mythic story with which the Bible opens. By myth, I mean a story that transcends the context in which it was first told, and that takes on new layers of meaning in subsequent contexts. We have such myths in our national history—stories of King Arthur, or Robin Hood, for example, retold, reimagined, and repurposed to speak to distant descendants facing crises of their own.

In this myth, God creates the human being—male and female—in God’s image. The world of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was a world of expanding empires. When an army besieged and defeated a city at distance from their own capital, they would erect a statue, an image of their king, to say though this king is not here in person, they are king here now. These representations expressed the ideal image of the time, to which others aspired. Look at statues of Roman emperors (a timeline that stretches beyond the New Testament) and you will see that the first thirteen, from Augustus to Trajan, are all clean-shaven. This changes in 117 CE with Hadrian: the next eight emperors all follow hirsute suit, sporting magnificently sculpted beards. But the Genesis myth presents us with something different: it is not a statue that represents the king in his absence, but living creatures, sculpted from clay, yes, but breathed into life.

God places the humans in a garden paradise, from which they are to go forth and multiply and fill the earth. But for now, there are boundaries: the limit of the garden walls, and a restriction on what they can eat—the fruit of any tree, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The purpose is not to keep them contained or ignorant, but in fact the very opposite: as we experience adolescence, as we navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood, we need space to explore, to take risks, to make mistakes and together with peers learn from them and decide on a way forward, to learn how to mend small ruptures in relationships, to take on progressively more responsibility, to spend longer periods away from our parents while having a secure base to return to and go out from.

In the garden, the serpent engages the woman in conversation. The humans, remember, are still learning, are facing the challenges that will help them grow. As the woman—with childlike impulse—attempts to help a fellow child grow in understanding, we discover that, whereas God has told them not to eat of the fruit of one tree, they are not yet brave enough even to touch that tree. But the serpent—whose motive is not childlike—claims that to eat its fruit will be good for them, making them like God. Children are predisposed to want to be like their parent—copying them, before we learn to obey, or disobey—and, together, the woman and the man eat. And in this moment, something changes. They see themselves with a heightened self-consciousness. And then, they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hide.

When God calls to them, ‘Where are you?’ the man replies, I heard you, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid. Fear is a double-edged (s)word: it refers both to an elevated reverence for someone else, and to an elevated sense of threat to oneself. One biblical tradition asserts that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom (Psalm 111.10, Proverbs 1.7 and 9.10). This, then, is the birthplace of wisdom, of learning how to approach God and of learning how to bear God’s likeness. [This reminds me of the conversation in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Susan asks whether the lion Aslan is “quite safe” and Mr Beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”] But here we also see the birth of comparison: the humans compare their naked selves against the Lord God and feel threatened. They also see one another as a threat, to be pre-empted.

What has this to do with health, welfare and pensions? I would suggest, a great deal.

First, across the English-speaking Western world in particular, we have witnessed a spectacular breakdown in the mental health of our young adults. In his book The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the impact of the virtual world on girls and boys. As backstory, Haidt notes the loss of play-based childhood from the 1990s onward, as adults became overly protective of children within physical space, denying them the freedom to explore. Drawing on many research studies, he charts the impact of the growth of the internet, and the advent of the smart phone from around 2010. This trend has been bad for boys and disastrous for girls. We all experience motivation to agency—to growing competence and assertiveness—and motivation to communion with others—to cooperation and empathy. But in general terms, boys are encouraged more towards agency, and girls more towards communion. Business understands this, and so, in the virtual world, boys have been targeted by video games (increasingly massive multiplayer platforms) and pornography (increasingly hardcore) and girls have been targeted by social media platforms. Boys have withdrawn more and more from the physical world, losing confidence and competence there, while girls have experienced the devastating impact of manipulated visual social comparison, relational aggression, and wanting to fit in by copying influencers. Girls have elevated impossible and unreal expectations of beauty and, unable to live up to them, have hidden themselves deeper into the forest of anxiety. Boys are being taught to blame women for their woes, exacerbated by a shift from male-heavy industrial communities to service-based economies where women are better-equipped to excel.

All of this is almost entirely unchecked by society, which still tends to overfocus on physical safety. But the physical safety of our children has increased for several generations (in part, perhaps, due to a withdrawal from the physical world). In the UK we have seen a significant rise in knife-enabled crime over the past decade, though injuries and homicides have fallen. Where children are carrying knives, mostly for defence, it is because they perceive the world outside to be more dangerous than it actually is, arguably because it has become a more alien environment to them. Addressing this may involve putting more police officers on the ground (Con 20,000; Lab 13,000), adult-organised youth hubs with mental health provision (Lab), or a dedicated mental health professional in every school (LibDem); but we also need to address the loss of public space where children can play unsupervised (including hostile attitudes towards groups of young people) as well as holding online platform developers to a far greater level of accountability. Where parties want to extend fast broadband, so no community is left behind (Green, LibDem), what measures do they propose to protect our children online? We should pay close attention to the proposals of the different parties in addressing this mental health crisis—a crisis of adult making, but falling on children, who are not a problem to be solved. They are certainly not to be demonised. Which brings us nicely to Jesus’ observation, in the context of being misunderstood and demonised, that ‘if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand’ (Mark 3.20-35).

Health, welfare and pensions are major issues in the forthcoming General Election. They are issues that have an impact on all our lives, and they are issues that play deeply to any insecurity in our sense of identity, and to the sense of fear that springs from comparing ourselves to others—or, for those whose circumstances change, comparing ourselves as we see ourselves today against how we saw ourselves in the past.

Taken as a whole, the income and wealth of pensioners has increased over the past 30 years but is subject to widening inequality. 33% of Asian older people and 30% of Black older people live below the poverty line, compared to 16% of White older people; while17% of pensioners are in the top fifth of all household income. This has significant impact on health, on life-expectancy and quality of life. It has a bearing on hospital-based care, and on social care to support independent living; on how we fund the NHS and how that funding is shared. The Green Party’s proposal for modest tax rises for the wealthiest, and Reform UK’s proposal to remove the ‘free at the point of use’ principle for those who can afford to pay are two very different approaches on offer.

And how do we go about addressing the overwhelming levels of need, including waiting lists, in ways that honour those who work in health and social care, who, despite our claiming that the NHS is a national treasure, are often treated—badly—as our household servants? In Genesis 3, the Lord God moves to remove shame and restore dignity. In Mark 3, Jesus redefines our understanding of family, beyond self-interest, and aligned with God’s desire for a caring society. No one party has a monopoly on the best way forward; these issues deserve cross-party collaboration, not the trading of apportioning blame and deflecting responsibility we have seen so far in this Election campaign.

It is easy to write-off politicians for such human behaviour—as if we are any different. But while there are things best delivered nationally, or regionally, repairing a caring society cannot be left to government alone or to market forces. It requires of us all that we act as those who bear the image of God, and that we recognise our neighbour as bearing that same image. Weigh the party manifestos and exercise your vote. But also ask, how might we as a local community address some of these issues, whether by creating space for young people or through the Parish Nursing movement, by identifying need and working with others to meet it in sustainable ways.

 

demons

 

The Gospel reading set for this coming Sunday is Luke 8:26-39, in which we meet a man possessed by a legion of demons.

I note the ubiquity of alien life-forms, of gods and monsters, benevolent or malevolent, of the supernatural and paranormal, in the stories that capture our imaginations on screen and page. They can be projections of our inner selves, the battle between serving others for the common good or selfishly seeking to control others. Or ciphers of the clash of nations, cultures, proxy wars in which we find ourselves caught up. The strength of will to survive, in the face of challenges, perceived or real. And the recognition that these things, even as they are within us, are simultaneously out-with us, bigger than any individual, a shared experience. Awareness of demons might indicate that our mental health is out-of-kilter, or that our mental health is robust, in a world that is out-of-kilter. I note these things, and I take it as read that this man is possessed by demons; that we know perfectly well that demons are real; and that we know that demons must be wrestled with and overcome.

The man is weighed down by layers of stories, from which some part or other, or himself, erupt, from time to time. He lives in, or rather on the edge of, an Hellenistic city-state enjoying an autonomy guaranteed by Roman protection in the context of a surrounding Jewish culture. The Greeks, settling in the wake of Alexander the Great, brought their stories of Zeus of Olympus, and, seeing parallel universes, named local gods as multi-Zeus’s. Later, the Romans brought their own pantheon of gods in parallel with those of Greece, and with them the imperial cult, the emperor as the son of a god. The independence of the city-states of the Decapolis from Rome was protected by Rome, raising further cognitive dissonance. Caught in this is a man whose identity is shattered into countless, swirling parts, in search of resolution, wholeness, a singular story.

One might suggest that the way to be set free would be to throw off the shackles of every layer of story. And yet there is ample evidence to suggest that there is no such story-naked stance, only the search for a story to live by.

Into the story steps Jesus, the one who is possessed by love, which by its nature does not grasp but sets free. The one who desires neither to control, nor extract, but to make possible restored relationships.

And the people of the city-state are terrified. But the man who knew terror from the inside out was in his right mind.

Jesus sent him to tell his household—having been restored—what God had done for him. The man, recognising that what God had done for him was done in and through Jesus being with him, went and proclaimed through the entire city population what Jesus had done for him. It is one and the same, and the ripples spread from the one man to his family to his neighbours, from the domestic to the civic.

Such stories retain their cultural currency today, and those who have a story to tell of what God has done for them should tell them, humbly, but with confidence.

 

Lost, and found

 

Even though we know we need community, it is hard to take that first step. It takes a lot of courage to rock up to a church or a running club. And if we have become disconnected over the pandemic, it can feel twice as hard to come back.

You’ve lost confidence. But so, pretty much, has everyone else. So, while you imagine a gulf that has grown wider between you and others, it is perhaps more like a drop in water level when the tide goes out. And we can rise again, together.

You’ve lost appetite. But depression suppresses appetite, as does scarcity. Over successive lockdowns, our appetite for social connection has contracted, first as a necessity, a survival instinct, and in time a tipping from healthy to unhealthy. But we still need social contact, just as we still need food. The nature of our engagement might change. We might need to reconnect in a different capacity, carrying less responsibility or limiting the activities we re-engage with; but we do need to reconnect.

You’ve lost contact. And our mind games tell us that no-one has reached out to us, so no-one can have missed us, and if we aren’t missed, we aren’t wanted, and perhaps the friendships were not as real as we thought. But we haven’t reached out, because our capacity, our energy levels, have been depleted; and what is true for us is true for others. When we get together, we can look out for one another, but to keep looking out for those who stay away is a huge ask. Chances are, people have reached out to you, and you have reached out to others, but it is hard to sustain. When we come together, we find that people are glad to see us.

Yes, it feels hard to reconnect. But you have done it before, and you can do it again. Let’s do it together.

Mental Health Awareness Week

 

Loneliness

 

Today is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week (May is Mental Health Awareness month), and this year, the theme is loneliness.

Although it is perfectly possible to be lonely in a crowd, we tend to experience loneliness less deeply and less frequently when we are in regular face-to-face social contact with others. We know that the isolation of successive lockdowns saw an increase in reported loneliness, but since restrictions have been lifted many of us have continued to re-engage with the social and community contexts we were embedded in before the pandemic. In both my church congregation(s) and my running club, I have heard several people saying recently, with sadness, that it just isn’t what it was. And the reality is that they are right.

We may have come through the restrictions of the past two years, but the recovery is going to take a long time. Some experts are saying it will take a decade. And in the meantime, loneliness is its own pandemic, with attending depression and increased risk of attempted or completed suicide.

Loneliness is a mental health issue. And as with many health issues, loneliness in small doses can be positive, promoting us to reach out to others; but, at chronic levels, it flips into something that turns our bodies against ourselves. And loneliness is a public health issue: we share some degree of collective responsibility for one another's wellbeing.

What might you do to protect yourself, and those around you, from loneliness this week?

What help might you need? And who might partner with you?

 

You are not enough, and that is okay

 

There’s a thing you’ll see on social media, in relation to mental health and wellbeing, that tells you, You Are Enough.

That’s sweet an’ all, but if you need to hear that You Are Enough, you are already perfectly aware that you are Not enough. And that is actually the truth, and a good thing.

You were never meant to carry the burden of being Enough. And neither was some ‘soul mate’ waiting to be found.

The hope we have in God is that we don’t need to be enough. We are finite creatures. God is infinite, and God’s love never runs out. Wonder is infinite, the healing renewal of every sunrise, or looking into the eyes of a new-born child looking back at us.

Sometimes, God says to us, I am with you, and that, for now, in this moment, is enough.

Sometimes God says, lift up your eyes and look at the sunrise, or the ocean, or the mountains, or the stars; this, in this moment, is enough.

Sometimes God says, let’s go hear that symphony, or watch that match, and let’s go with friends, and be lost in a crowd bigger than ourselves; or get lost in a novel, if you prefer; that will be enough.

All of these things are bigger than us. The incredible thing is that all of these things are diminished without us, for, God loves to share the moment.

We are not enough, but we are a key part of whatever is enough. And that is enough. Especially when we come to the end of ourselves, and fall into the arms of Love.

 

Subdued

I’ve been loving the camaraderie on display at the Tokyo Olympics. It is a joy to behold. Behind every success, and, indeed, upholding athletes in disappointment, there’s a team.

In the epic poem that opens the Bible, human beings are invested with the dignity and purpose to be fruitful, and multiply, and subdue the earth—which, understood in context, is to draw out the conditions for flourishing from the chaos that threatens to overwhelm.

Also in the great myth, or meaning-full story, in which that poem is grounded, human beings are described as earth-lings, creatures made from clay, animated by the breath of God. The ground zero for subduing the earth is located within ourselves.

At the Olympic games, we see gold, silver and bronze, extracted from the ground, refined, shaped by the skill of human hands, and given back to the clay that is extracted, refined, and shaped by God's hand, so to speak.

We also see something of what it means to be fruitful and multiply, as belief breeds belief, and success liberates further successes. We’ve seen that in team GBs performances in the pool and on bikes, and in the double gold medals won by Italy on Sunday in the men’s high jump and 100m.

But this Olympics, perhaps on a platform like never before, we have also seen what it looks like to have to subdue the earth. To face the chaos that threatens to overwhelm. Sometimes we get to see the triumph over the chaos, only hearing after the event the tale of the scale of the internal struggle overcome (Max Whitlock, Adam Peaty). And sometimes, at these games, we have been given an insight into the stage before victory, the place where the earth is breached, the moment when the flood waters have rushed in (Simone Biles).

In another ancient epic text, the book of Job, we may discover great insight into such times. In Genesis, we are shown the moment when God speaks, declaring, ‘Let there be...’ But in Job, we join the action earlier on, witnessing God’s silence, God’s attentive listening to the cry of the overwhelmed clay, to the sound made by the breath, given by God, returning to God. Listening, honouring, until the breath returns to calm.

There is a time to triumph over adversity, and a time to listen to the body and bide your time. And those moments show no respect for whether it is the hours of unseen practice or the hour of the most public stage. If anything, the chaos that seeks to overwhelm life desires to do so at the moment of maximum humiliation, to destroy us, to bury us if it could, with critics piling in like Job’s friends of old.

It is sheer nonsense to claim that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but, the One who animates clay re-animates us, again and again. We are made to subdue the earth, in order that it may be fruitful.

Chances are, you are not and never will be an Olympian. But you are of clay. Listen to the clay, and, just as important, try to note where you find yourself right now, in relation to the waters and the darkness that break out against you. And know that, though it happens, you will emerge again into the day.

  

Those who live in houses of clay

At Morning Prayer at present, we are reading in the book of Job, a masterful piece of theatre exploring the tragi-comedy of existence. In the play’s prelude we witness the assembly of the council of the gods, before the sovereign Lord of the universe. The Lord engages one of the lesser, created, gods in conversation, the shadowy Satan (or, Accuser), a restless god who walks back and forth on the earth in agitation. They debate the righteous human, Job, and enter into a wager. Satan will test the limits of job’s righteousness; while the Lord will question the far corners of Satan’s agitation, for, we shall see, that the Lord is present and attentive to the pain of all creation.

The drama then shifts to Job and his friends. In his suffering, they are, at first, magnificent in their empathy, sitting with him in silence for seven full days. Then Job speaks (chapter 3), a heart-felt soliloquy giving voice to his pain, and the dam breaks. In turn, his friends offer their insight, conventional but deeply flawed wisdom. First to speak is Eliphaz (chapter 4), who recounts a vision he has had by night, in his fitful sleep as he keeps watch with his hurting friend. Eliphaz mistakes the spirit who appears before him for the Lord, when, in truth, it is the sly, sweet-talking Satan, insinuating seeds of doubt, of both human and divine nature: neither are to be trusted.

He does, however, come out with one of the most incredible descriptions of the human being ever spoken: ‘those who live in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,’—speaking not of domestic architecture, but of the body, crafted from the clay of the earth, to which it shall return, and animated by the breath of God. For, contrary to Satan’s accusation, the Lord does not only put trust in human beings, but entrusts his very breath.

What impact does it have, what questions does it raise, for us to be those who live in houses of clay?

 

‘Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

‘If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?
But who can keep from speaking?
See, you have instructed many;
you have strengthened the weak hands.
Your words have supported those who were stumbling,
and you have made firm the feeble knees.
But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;
it touches you, and you are dismayed.
Is not your fear of God your confidence,
and the integrity of your ways your hope?

‘Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off?
As I have seen, those who plough iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion,
and the teeth of the young lions are broken.
The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

‘Now a word came stealing to me,
my ear received the whisper of it.
Amid thoughts from visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on mortals,
dread came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones shake.
A spirit glided past my face;
the hair of my flesh bristled.
It stood still,
but I could not discern its appearance.
A form was before my eyes;
there was silence, then I heard a voice:
“Can mortals be righteous before God?
Can human beings be pure before their Maker?
Even in his servants he puts no trust,
and his angels he charges with error;
how much more those who live in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like a moth.
Between morning and evening they are destroyed;
they perish for ever without any regarding it.
Their tent-cord is plucked up within them,
and they die devoid of wisdom.”

 

Deep darkness

 

At least as powerful as any Shakespeare soliloquy, this speech from the mouth of Job is as raw an articulation of human experience as you will find. It is not the final word. Ultimately, the deep darkness is found to be claimed by God, in love, as is Job, and every troubled soul—even Satan! And there may come a time when you, also, embrace that love, for yourself, and showered on others. These words might, however, find you where you are today. And it might be enough to know that you are not alone.

‘After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job said:

‘Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said,
“A man-child is conceived.”
Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
or light shine on it.
Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds settle upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That night—let thick darkness seize it!
let it not rejoice among the days of the year;
let it not come into the number of the months.
Yes, let that night be barren;
let no joyful cry be heard in it.
Let those curse it who curse the Sea,
those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none;
may it not see the eyelids of the morning—
because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,
and hide trouble from my eyes.

‘Why did I not die at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?
Why were there knees to receive me,
or breasts for me to suck?
Now I would be lying down and quiet;
I would be asleep; then I would be at rest
with kings and counsellors of the earth
who rebuild ruins for themselves,
or with princes who have gold,
who fill their houses with silver.
Or why was I not buried like a stillborn child,
like an infant that never sees the light?
There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
There the prisoners are at ease together;
they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.
The small and the great are there,
and the slaves are free from their masters.

‘Why is light given to one in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
who long for death, but it does not come,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures;
who rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad when they find the grave?
Why is light given to one who cannot see the way,
whom God has fenced in?
For my sighing comes like my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest; but trouble comes.’

 

Deep waters

 

I’m baptising some folk at the weekend. They asked me to include the well-known religious poem Footprints, which speaks of Jesus walking alongside us throughout our lives, and carrying us in the hardest times. I’m happy to, but I shall also be retelling an account from the gospels, where Jesus tells his fishermen friends to put out into deep the water, and there, their empty nets—for they had fished all night without a catch—are miraculously filled.

Much of the gospels are centred on Lake Tiberius, the Sea of Galilee. And the lake functions in the stories of Jesus in at least three ways.

It is, firstly, the compass of the everyday lived experience of Jesus’ fishermen friends.

However, throughout the Bible, the sea, contrasted against the gift of the land, often represents the chaos that routinely threatens to overwhelm our lives—the shore, then, being where the gift of life and the possible destruction of life meet.

And yet, the lake is also the place where the disciples are given a deeper insight into who Jesus is—calming the wind and the waves, walking on water, directing miraculous catches of fish. Into the mystery of who God is, in and through this neighbour who is, in some undefinable sense, more than the boy next door. Here, then, the shore is the meeting-place of the fully human and fully divine.

This week is Mental Health Awareness week, and it pertains to all of us, in our everyday lives: the things we do, the places we go, the people we live alongside.

It is possible to live with underlying mental health issues that are well-managed, enabling us to experience life fully, and, broadly speaking, positively—just as it is possible to live well with underlying physical health issues.

It is possible to have no underlying mental health issues, and yet, at times, feel overwhelmed, even to the point of great danger, the threat of losing (or, indeed, the consequence of having lost) what we hold dear.

It is possible to know both gift and danger in our personal makeup—and to encounter God in both the gift side and the danger side. To grow deeper into the blessing of the particular clay—with its unique properties—God has fashioned me, or you, from, breathing life into us. And to put out deeper into the mystery of the God who has created us, and invites us into friendship.

Don’t be afraid of your mental health, and don’t be afraid to speak about mental health. Put out into the deep water. You might be surprised by what happens.

 

A tragedy in the making

On Friday, a 28-year old Sudanese asylum-seeker was shot dead by armed response police officers in Glasgow, after stabbing six people. I don’t doubt the bravery of those police officers, nor that this was their last, not first, resort. This is a tragedy for all concerned, and for my hometown. And at the centre of the tragedy is a young man whose hopes of a new life were cut short. His name was Badreddin Abadlla Adam.

I am not a journalist, and I have not researched his background. But until last year, Sudan had lived under a 30-year long dictatorship, that had imprisoned and tortured opponents and practiced ethnic genocide in Darfur. This young man never knew what it was to live in a society at peace. He was precisely the kind of person who should qualify for asylum, having made it to the UK, most likely through the exploitation of people traffickers.

Before any facts were established, Nigel Farage had tweeted that this was precisely the danger to our citizens we face for allowing illegal immigrants. To be clear, this man was not an illegal immigrant, he was an asylum-seeker. But Farage is not entirely wrong, in as much as we do treat asylum-seekers as criminals. From the moment they arrive, they experience the ‘hostile environment’, official government policy (only just acknowledged and now to be reviewed) of making their life so miserable that they will choose, at any point in the process, to voluntarily return home. Preferring to take their chances with a genocidal dictator than in a democracy. Let that sink in.

Then, rather than direct resources to provide essential, expert mental health support for people suffering from PTSD, money is given to private companies to provide the most basic accommodation. Asylum-seekers being an income stream for unscrupulous landlords. In effect, they become property.

And so, yes, it is perhaps inevitable that sooner or later some such young man might just break, with devastating consequences for those who happen to be around him.

And it is easier to blame immigrants than to take responsibility for our own actions.

According to the most recent statistics I could find, two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner every week in England and Wales; and a further two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner every week in Scotland. As Scotland has a much smaller population, I can only assume that it is an even greater problem there than south of the border, that the men of the long-term, predominantly white, British population cannot control themselves and are a danger to those around them, especially British women.

And the silence is deafening.

So, don’t give me your bullshit about how we are civilised men of honour, taking a principled stand to protect our communities from those who would betray us with their bleeding hearts.

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 6

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 6.

The wind is wild today, whistling tunelessly through the fixtures and fittings of the house. Part of me wants to hunker down until it blows itself out; part of me has already had enough of hunkering down.

The wind makes my wife feel anxious, she says; reminding her of all those camping holidays when we have wondered whether the tent would be torn away from us*. It makes me feel sad, though I cannot put my finger on why, and perhaps I am mistaking anxiety for sadness; but while clarity can be helpful, sometimes it is more helpful to resist the temptation to probe deeper.

Mental health includes the full range of (basic) emotions and (in response) feelings and thoughts, in the present moment and tapping into our shared histories, some fleeting and others more enduring. This is mystery, both universal and of great diversity, that draws us out from ourselves and closer together with our neighbour, and our Creator.

I cannot stop the wind from blowing. I cannot even, by direct effort, rewrite the script of how I respond. But I can choose to foster—by degrees, and as much as I am able—a reverent wonder for that response, and for that of others. You are a miracle, a holy mystery; and so am I. Wild; and, sometimes, tuneless.

*Including the time when she spent a sleepless night in Aviemore while I slept, having seen a vision of Jesus or an angel sitting in the tent, but failing to tell Jo ... the time at Clachtoll when the site manager came to ask if we would like to spend the night in an empty static caravan ... the time, taking down our trailer tent at Dunstanburgh when the wind filled the great sail of canvas and twisted and snapped the metal frame beyond repair ... and other times, none of which have prevented us from going camping again.

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 5

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 5.

The car hasn’t been out much since Jo started working from home, though, whenever it has been possible, she has ferried me to and from the crem. On one outing, to drop off donations at the food bank, on turning the ignition a warning came up on the dash display: the pressure in the front right-hand tyre was about half what it should be. We got a quick and dirty fix at a garage. It didn’t hold. More than once, Jo pumped the tyre with air: outside the crem, using the onboard pump, as we waited for the hearse; and at the machine at the petrol station. Each trip we made, the tyre pressure had dropped again. In the end, we had it and the valve replaced, by a different mechanic.

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a friend. It went like this:

“I’m struggling with motivation to work ...”

“Hmm, motivation (or loss thereof) is hard, isn’t it? ... What would, ordinarily, motivate you?”

“That’s just it. I feel like a leaking tyre ... Not sure what would work.”

I was struck by his choice of words: like a leaking tyre. On reflection, that feeling seems to me to describe grief. And all the more-so because there is no ‘obvious’ bereavement.

On Monday, I wrote:

“Grief is an active process that involves engagement with the tasks of accepting the reality of our loss; processing the pain; adjusting to a world without what we have lost; and finding an enduring connection with what has been lost in the midst of embarking on a new life.”

These tasks aren’t strictly sequential, but, to be clear, none of us have really even begun to make a start on the fourth. It is too soon. But, we are all experiencing bereavement. The loss of physically present co-workers. The loss of personal space, if we are living 24/7 with children who are not going out to school (or even, outside the house). The loss of a host of conveniences we took for granted. The loss of assumed certainties. This, to name but a few.

And accepting, processing, and adjusting are exhausting. But, often, they exhale us like a slow leak. We aren’t conscious of the tiny cracks, but each time we go to set out on some activity or other, we find ourselves deflated.

People are not tyres; but, by way of the analogy, quick and dirty fixes won’t hold. Moreover, we can inject air—can receive support from others, and enjoy life-giving moments—but even that won’t be lasting. Eventually, we can expect to emerge from the process with a new tyre, an adjusted life. But it takes time.

In the meantime, we are where we are. And that will be lacking in motivation (as I have to keep reminding myself, as I watch my sons’ lack of motivation). Motivation is in part concerned with productivity, and you are not a machine: you were made to be fruitful, but only in time with the seasons of your life. It is also, in part, concerned with legacy, and you might need to find new bearings in a new world before you can offer that.

But, for now, lack of motivation might mean that at times we need to say, “Please forgive me, I have not been able to do what is expected of me.” And that at times we need to reply, “Of course we forgive you. Now, how might we bear this burden together?” In other words, as we collectively experience multiple bereavements, we need to be kind, to ourselves and to one another.

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 4

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 4.

The mask. I am taking another funeral today, and, while I won’t be wearing a mask while I do, I shall be wearing it while taking a taxi to the crematorium.

On my twelfth birthday, I had an encounter with a demonic presence, external to myself, that tried to control me to take my life with a jungle knife hanging on the wall of the room in which I found myself, alone. Clearly, it was a struggle I won. But the old adage ‘whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger’ is merely wishful thinking. The encounter broke me, and my mental health was not great throughout my teenage years. I suffered from a depression that was particularly bleak around the time of my birthday. Seasonal, cyclical.

When I was seventeen, in a hostel in the middle of a forest on a church youth fellowship weekend, I had a second breakdown experience. This one precipitated a two-year journey of recovery of mental health, a process that involved the support of some wonderful friends, a child psychologist, my GP and the medication she prescribed, and finally a vision of Jesus.

In the vision, I was curled in a tight ball on my knees, confined in a space only just big enough for me, in a darkness so black I could not see. After a while, I became aware of the presence of Jesus, sitting, cross-legged, beside me. Just sitting there. After a long time, he got up, reached out his hand, and said, “Come on, let's walk out of here.” And we did, together. As I got up, I discovered that the cage that had held me was not there. Whether it had only ever existed in my imagination, or whether it had fled in the presence of Jesus, I do not know.

I would not wish my experiences on anyone else, and yet, I would not trade them, because, as a result of what I have experienced, I have been able to be used by God to bring hope and healing to many others. And this is my testimony: that shit happens, but that God uses it as fertiliser to grow beautiful roses.

There have been other times in my life when I have experienced low mood. One such time was when I went through the discernment process for ordination. I was open about my history of teenage depression—why should I be ashamed?—and of the ways in which God had used that to help others—for, as I discovered, mental health issues are extremely common. For my pains, I was sent for assessment at The Priory, a private clinic in London and famous rehab centre for celebrities. They gave me a clean bill of health (indeed, they apologised that my time had been wasted in being sent to them).

I don’t need to talk about my history that much. It isn’t that I wear a mask to conceal it, but that, being well, I do not need to wear a mask. I am not going to infect you, nor am I fearful that your potential mental ill health will infect me. Mental health isn’t like the novel coronavirus. So, while I shall be wearing a cotton mask in the taxi today, I would simply say, it is so much easier to breathe without one.

UPDATE:

I have been both honoured and humbled today (the two were always intended to go together, and in their true form, do) by the ways in which my story has given hope to others.

But I want to make a plea about the language we use: honesty, yes; integrity, amen; but, it is not brave to tell your story, just as it is not cowardice to not be ready to tell your story.

We all tell our story to the extent to which we have received a measure of healing and wholeness, and no further.

In the context of mental health, that might mean remission, or even cure; or, it might mean that you have found a level of genuine acceptance and been able to tell an integrated story of your identity.

I have not always been able to tell the story that I told today. And there are parts of my story that I am still not prepared to tell, because I am not prepared to deal with the consequences for myself or for others. This is not dishonesty, but, I trust, discernment. Perhaps one day I will be able to tell those stories. Perhaps I won’t; and, at the end of the day, I don’t think it will matter. My story is known to God—indeed more fully and honestly than it is known to myself—and it is God who will tell all our stories with perfect mercy and justice.

But there is no shame in still being in the process of being healed—and where we feel shame, there is cleansing to be found in the compassion of Jesus.

The mask I wore today covered my nose and my mouth, but left my eyes (and my increasingly Rowan Williams-esque eyebrows) visible to the world. So it is with our stories. Tell your story as fully and honestly as you are able. But don’t apologise for where it is for the best for all concerned that, for now, your face is partially hidden.

Be wise. Be kind, to yourself and others.

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 3

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 3.

Today is a breathing space for me, and this morning I went for a run. Running has been good for my mental health in many ways, including spiritually, physically, and socially.

Yesterday I noted that we can speak of each human being as having three Selves. This, I believe, is part of what it is to be made in the likeness of a triune God: the Father, I AM, eternally dwelling in the present and inviting us to be with him there; Jesus, the Son, who has an embodied history, from birth through childhood and adolescence to adulthood, suffering, death, and beyond; and the Holy Spirit, whose harmonising activity in the world is socially dispersed.

When I run, there are times when I find myself—Self 1—caught up in the present moment. Whatever concerns I took with me, whatever problems I turned over in my mind, attempting to multi-task, fall away. Not every time. And in this present moment, I know that I am, and that, whatever state I am in right now, I am beheld by the loving gaze of Yahweh, I AM.

When I run, I find myself—Self 2—aware of my body. I am not as young as I once was, nor as old as I hope to become. Today, my back is moving more freely than it has for several days, but not yet as freely as I have known it and hope to know it again. Having been unable to run for a week, to get out today and move, to feel the warmth of the sun on my back and the sting of sweat in my eyes, has been good for me. A blessing, to give thanks for--and to share in greeting others out for a walk in the sunshine.

When I run, I find myself—Self 3—a part of a community of runners. At present, we are unable to run together, as we would like. But I have been so very blessed by the ways in which fellow Strollers have taken to connecting via Facebook and Messenger. When I run, even if I do not cross paths with another member of the club, I do not run alone. We run, for one another as well as for ourselves, holding on to the times we have run together and to the hope that we shall do so again. And on some days, any given one of us is not up to holding on to such hope, and so we are held by one another. Mental health—indeed all health—is social, because it is personal, and persons only exist in relation to one another.

Of course, running is not a magic talisman. There have been times when I have had to put it down, because my head has been broken. It has been there, my friends waiting for me, when I have been able to pick it up again. Nonetheless, I am thankful for the Sunderland Strollers, the best running club in the world (possibly best equal, but I could not say). They have been and are one of the ways in which God is saving my life, right now.

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 2

Mental Health Awareness Week, day 2.

There are three interconnected Selves.

Self 1 is the recognition that I am, in the present moment (and, if I am not alone, that I am not the other). It is expressed by words like ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘mine’ (and ‘you’ and ‘your’) and remains intact, even if we forget our personal histories, as when a woman with dementia says to the man she married sixty years earlier, “You are not my husband!”

Self 2 pertains to our characteristics and attributes, and our perception of these. Self 2 is susceptible to disillusionment, and, in fact, this is a good thing. Disillusionment is the stripping away of illusions. A baby, and even a toddler, is the centre of their universe, and any healthy growth to adulthood involves the discovery that this is a false perception. Overgrown toddlers do not make good adults. But unchecked disillusionment can pitch us into a new illusion, that we have lost value in one way or another. I am not as wise or as needed as I thought; but that does not mean that I lack wisdom (quite the opposite: in this very recognition, I have grown in wisdom) or that I am useless. But Self 2 can swing rapidly. One day, I see my wrinkles in the mirror and embrace the privilege of aging; the next, I feel haggard. It may depend on as little as the difference between a sunny and an overcast sky; or on repeatedly rehearsed cultural scripts, that need re-writing.

Self 3 is social, and, unlike the other Selves, can only ever exist in relation to other people. It is not possible to be a loyal friend without friends, to be a faithful spouse without having or having had a spouse, a loving parent without having children, a much-loved teacher without students. And here it is clear that our identity is found both within ourselves and distributed between many other persons, both in the present and in our shared recall of past moments (which we will each remember differently).

Mental health concerns our personhood, and, therefore, our interconnected Selves.

Self 1 can feel isolated, and its agency can be turned against itself, as in the violence of attempted or completed suicide. But it exists in the present moment only. Hence, it cannot see a future, nor take into account a past that may have been genuinely positive in many ways. Hard though it is, we must learn to accept Self 1 for what it is.

Self 2 has a longer memory, although of course this can be lost. I am the same person and not the same person I was yesterday, let alone in my teenage years. Some days my health is robust, and some days it suffers, but I may regain health, or I may reconstruct my world to a new normal.

Self 3—which, potentially, has a memory that is wide and networked—is where we can really support one another, for we each have a role to play in the construction of robust Self 3s, and their profound bearing on Self 2. If I am kind to others, if I honour them with loving actions motivated by warm affection, then their Self is nurtured, including, potentially, a healthy disillusionment of their self-centredness or self-despair. And their kindness towards me may dispel my own illusions. Together, such kindness can re-write cultural scripts which have tended to admire competition and victory over others.

In as much as you are able, be kind, not only to your friends but also to your enemies, to those who wrong you. For in this we are like God, and participate in the remaking of the world anew. Together, let us be kind in response to the mental health burdens that are these days endemic, the anxieties and depression. The alternative is that we respond in shame or anger, and tear one another and ourselves apart.