Noonday Demon, Again: Guest Blog, by Ron Christiansen

Had meant to read your new post after we visited Austin two weeks ago, but just now getting to it. As I think I mentioned to you, this line of thought reminds me (not surprisingly) of Andrew Solomon's book "The Noonday Demon: an Atlas of depression"--it's a much more engaging read than the title may suggest though it certainly does have an atlas-like feel. He is sometimes tedious but his intro chapter on depression and his chapter on the history of depression are quite good. 

In the history section Solomon cites the 5th century christian aesthetic as describing 6th combatant in the 19th Psalm as the noonday demon which "produces dislike of place where one is, disgust, disdain, and contempt for other men, and sluggishness." Cassian's description is a bit more active less indifferent than the one that you offer (though you do suggest the "sucking" of intellectual and spiritual energy). Solomon continues by saying that Cassian saw the noonday demon as the "thing that you can see clearly in the brightest part of the day but that nonetheless comes to wrench your soul away from God." That about gets it right I think--maybe it is the contrast between the light of day and the mood, a contradiction the mind and heart can't quite make sense of. 

Building on this idea, Solomon explains why he chose this as his title: "because it describes so exactly what one experiences in depression. The image serves to conjure the terrible feeling of invasion that attends...There is something brazen about depression. Most demons--most forms of anguish--rely on the cover of night; to see them clearly is to defeat them. Depression stands in full glare of the sun, unchallenged by recognition. You can know all the why and the wherefore and suffer just as much as if you were shrouded in ignorance." I love the thought of depression as brazen, as invasive, maybe because it is personified into something real. 

As you suggest here, action is in order. Cassian suggests manual labor. I like what you say here--meditation, routine, stimulation. It occurs to me that anything which can wet/water (in contrast to the emotional dryness you speak of) the soul is worthwhile. For me usually a show like Downton Abbey (btw Ali and I have knocked out 4 episodes since your/Cam's recommendation) or a good novel can help. But during times of extreme dryness and indifference, I have to rely on the tried and true, the ritualistic. This might be scripture for some; recently for me it is a few scenes from the LOTR or Moonstruck (learned this from Lora via you) or a long meditative hike. 

Thanks so much for the post. It found me today mid-fight with the noonday demon, having been all-out sick for two days, sun a shining, weekend hikes and plans ruined, soul needing some stirring and engagement. 

What is UP with DOWNton Abbey? Guest Blog, by Lora Clark

While living back east, I had the opportunity to visit the lovely Newport mansions in Rhode Island. The Breakers, the Vanderbilt Estate, is my favorite. As I walked through this magnificent mansion, and later on the expansive grounds, I wondered about the people that lived and breathed there. What were the relationships like between the servants? Between the Vanderbilts and servants?

The new PBS Masterpiece Classics "little darling" is Downton Abbey. Why not invite a group of aristocrats who live upstairs and the servants who live downstairs into your home every Sunday night? You'll witness their parallel lives unfold. You will find yourself loving both groups.

Who?

A strong professional cast. Every person is interesting and has a story. There are three in particular, who become verbs immediately: Pamuk, O'Brien, and Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

And who can forget the tacit Mr. Bates, with his iconic cane, from first episode to last? He speaks less but says more than any other character of the cast. Or the ever-wise hero, Lord Grantham?

Note the carefully-worded and intelligent script. Every word counts. For example, Lady Cora, "You married for money." Lord Grantham quietly asks, "And have you been happy all these years?" And they embrace. Time goes too fast, and you don't want it to end.

Contrast these finely honed lines to the "royal" Kardashians' reality TV show, where endless babble about nothing leaves you wondering why you just spent an hour waiting for it to end.

Why Watch?

• It provides a historical framework, ie, the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, etc.
• Each episode leaves you eager for the next. What will be Bates' fate? Who will marry Mary?
• Watching it with millions of others during prime time creates a feeling of community, not unlike South American novelas.
• There's something soothing about rhythm, continuity and problem resolution. The episodic structure helps us pace our week. Some of us watch The Good Wife for the same reasons.

The series raises a question about the shelf life of a place like Downton Abbey. Can a 300 room castle survive financially in the face of a changing economy? What is the equalizing effect of the war on Downton Abbey?

The Wolves: Guest Blog, by Donnell Hunter

The wolves who take up residence

in his lungs make their presence known

each time he breathes.  At first there is

only a solitary lament, so faint

he barely notices it slumping down

from the hills. Now it has grown

to a full pack.  He listens until sleep

overcomes him.  He tells no one,

not even his wife.  It is a secret

he must keep to himself.  By day

they are gone, coursing his veins, perhaps,

in search of game, but when it gets dark,

they come back with each expiring breath. 

He learns to distinguish their howls: 

the low-pitched one is Lobo, after

a story he read when just a child.

The mate’s voice is higher.  He calls

her Blanca.  That’s all the Spanish he knows,

so he gives the others names like Black Leg,

or Gray Wing.  Where the words come from,

he has no idea—no wolf  he’s ever known

in life or myth can fly.  They just sound good

to his ear.  He goes to the library,

checks out all the books he can find,

one by Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men. 

No illustration is even close

to the images his brain conceives. 

He stays up late, tries not to wake

his wife with the chorus he brings

to bed, the voices he has grown

to love.  He adjusts the counterpane,

takes a deep breath, lets it out slow.   

When the air is almost gone, the wolves

begin, as he knew they would.

He counts to see if someone new

has joined the pack, inhales again,

lets go.  Yes, there it is.  He can

see him, darker than all the rest,

stalking down.  No need to find a name. 

The name he’s heard since birth,

but never speaks aloud, crouches,

ready to leap with its taste of salt

from the tip of his tongue.

            —Donnell  Hunter

BYU Studies   Number 2, 1999

Three Women I Want to Meet in Heaven

Mother Teresa
At her death no one kicked up more passing commentary and insightful criticism than did Mother Teresa. Several books and even copies of her journal rolled off the press or digitalized themselves into Kindles. Everyone became an "expert" on her "doubts," her moments of darkness. Others found a hidden "political" agenda in her orchestrating of her world famous orphanage. Some accused her of arrogance and temper, as if Beethoven, Bach, and Patton were free of such emotions. But let the critics be praised for sleuthing research and damned for their cursory conclusions which led many to forget so much of what she had done. 

Yes, many forgot her good works. Had everyone forgotten the fruits of her labor? Myopic in their dissecting of her very human heart. I find great compassion for those who love and serve "in spite of" mixed motive or confusion or doubt. The little known film, Catholics, dramatizes an abbot, ruling a small monastery on an isle off Ireland, insisting on the Latin liturgy in spite of Vatican II. A young Martin Sheen, now sporting a turtle neck and assuming Buddhist postures as he prays, tries to bring the priest [Richard Harris] into the 20th century,

The heart of the drama, however, drives deeply into the doubting heart. The abbot suffered a nervous breakdown at Lourdes. No miracles, no Resurrected Christ, Nothing. Yet, like a persistent salmon, he swims upstream, driven paradoxically by doubt, finding not a liberating freedom but purpose in his work. For some that may be all organized religion can bring. The fruits, however, remain, as they do in Miguel Unamuno's short story about an exemplary doubting priest who does his job.

And then there is Graham Green's famous, The Power and the Glory. The whisky priest stumbles through the crowd-imposed demands for confession, for the blessing of children, for the sacrament. All of which he remains unworthy, amidst the tumult of the Mexican Revolution in 1920. He continues; they are comforted and he is finally apprehended and executed. A wasted life? 

I will embrace Mother Teresa for her works--and for her doubts. I'm a Kolob Standard Time believer, so I believe many doubts will transform into Faith and Acceptance. The Goodness will prevail. And for thousands of throw away babies in the streets of New Delhi who became adults, this occasion of embracing and giving thanks will be a festival of love. 

I want to be there. 

Ethel Waters

The opening of the Korean war began the closing of our Bishop years. The year we moved to the Paradise--Escondido, California--our lives changed forever. For my fragile mother, it meant that four restless children could play outside until after dark. We pretty much stayed within the five acre confines of Thompsonville, so  she felt assured we were safe.

Mom's favorite hobby was reading aloud. The waning months of Bishop took on a meaning for me that surfaced only after I moved to Texas. Submerged in my unconscious is the memory of her walking up and down the living room floor, reading Ethel Water's autobiography, With his Eyes on the Sparrow. As she read, bits and pieces of this remarkable black woman filtered into my brain. 

I remember that she married at 12, that she worked a shift of cleaning [of course] and sang at night--anywhere they would allow her to belt the blues with an already burgeoning full warble that made her famous. Mom's empathy got the best of her occasionally. I would hear her say, "Oh, this is terrible." Gosh, or even "Damn, should things be so hard for other people we call Americans?"

In the third grade I had taken up the trumpet with gusto and soon knew who RC Handy was. Mom explained to me that it was Ethel Waters who sang that score and made it famous, not a trumpet player. I did try to make it famous by winning a talent contest in the 8th grade by playing that very "St. Louis Blues." Later, in high school, I would hear her full-throated blues, often followed by people I never SAW but could HEAR. Dinah Washington, for example. Of course Ethel Waters did go on and work in films, sometimes with white people. Now, over a 100 years since her birth and now her rebirth, I would love, in the spirit of my Mom, greet her and thank her for her voice and the way her music seemed to encapsulate moments in my life that were unfolding. Her music triggers the memories--even today, in my later winter years. I would say, hoping for a hug, "Thank you for your life, for the heartache you endured, for the isolation and the pain you sang your way through. I will never forget you."

Malinche

Few of you, unless you are a well read Hispanic, would know Malinche, the companion but not the wife of the reckless, infamous, blood-thirsty Cortez. As a 4th grader, I was chosen to draw Cortex in our California history class. I remember the imposing helmet and the ready sword he held over the bad guys--Montezuma and his people, those heart-wrenching, human sacrificing aliens in the jungles of Spain's Imaginary Kingdom.

Forty years later I developed a course in critical thinking built around some of the ethical implications embedded in Malinche's life. The mother of the first Mexican, she is the Mother of Mexico. Some Hispanic men call her the "Mexican Eve," the base Indian betrayer of her people, birthing a European Spanish child, Martin. She spoke four dialects and mastered Cortez' Spanish within weeks. Malinche "negotiated" the so-called treaty with a beguiled Montezuma. She translated from Cortez' Spanish into the Aztec [a Mayan linguistic cousin]. 

She trekked behind Cortez and his soldiers as they consolidated the enemies of Montezuma and watched the systematic destruction of the island kingdom of the Aztecs. Cortez brought "Catholic Christianity" to a benighted people. The bloody heart rip-outs stopped. The Ten Commandments took over. Well, sort of. What followed was the mission system that would extend along the California highway that lead to San Juan Capistrano, 21 miles away. 

I will speak my gratitude in broken Spanish. She will fill in the gaps. I won't be looking for Cortez. My eyes will be only on her, thanking her for her brilliance, her perseverance, for her greatness, as the Mother of the beautiful Mexican people.

3 People I Would Rather Not Meet in Heaven--But Maybe Later.

In an effort to be insightful but not mean spirited, I've chosen three people I would rather see--a little later. I know if you D-list 3 people, you think of the Stalins, the Hitlers, the now seemingly indestructible Robert Mugabe.  Help me, here. Why do bad people get the good genes? The man is nearly 90 and still able to kill a few dozen fellow citizens before breakfast.

Well, I've selected three men [are there no bad women in my history data base?] who reside in the interstices of human history. They remain the subject of historical and ethical debate. About the stock falls on, say, Robert E. Lee, someone "proves" "Bobby Lee" could have easily won the Civil War with another 50,000 men.

Here's my list: Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, Douglas MacArthur.


Robert E. Lee:
I do not approach Lee as a professional historian but as a fellow human with more questions than answers. I don't know if I would have the guts to enter into a conversation with him about any particular battle strategy. I would love to hear his response to Pickett's question, "Why did you send my cavalry group 'up the gut' at Gettysburg?" Pickett's broken charge did lead him once, years later, to say, "That old man killed my army."

I would wonder aloud why a man who contended he fought for his "country" and not for slavery did have a 100 slaves while running his father-in-law's plantation, and was known to always ask the man with the bull whip to "lay to." The skin had to fly, he believed, in order for people not to want to run from a situation "worse than death," as one slave put it--towards freedom.

Would someone please ask him what he really meant about Virginia as a "country?" I know the argument about secession, state's rights, etc., but I sometimes wonder, recently, for example, after watching a documentary on Lee, if his own acquired aristocratic roots through marriage added to his perception of Virginia as a country--a piece of real estate that had bragging rights on Jefferson, Adams, Washington, etc. Was pride a factor?

And why the painful slaughter of his troops, now boys, endured the last two weeks before calling it quits and going to Appomattox to turn over his sword to a more common, blue collar Grant, the embodiment of the ethos that I admit I admire more than spangles, mint juleps under the mangroves, served by enslaved human beings.

George McClellan:
Had I written this 3 weeks ago, I would have happily described George McClellan as the worst general in the history of the US army. Recent research rescues him as someone who brought order and obedience to the Army of the Potomac. For me, however, he remains a metaphor--someone who can get ready, plan carefully, put a lot of talk and spit and polish, as we used to say, into a project.  He knew how to dress for a ball, but he couldn't dance.  And though his men respected him, he had no respect for President Lincoln, whom he called a "Gorilla," in a letter to his wife.

But he could never deliver.

I had a collegue years ago who spent more time talking about his credentials than about the art of teaching. He read books with such care that he refused to fully open the book for fear the spine would pop. He never annotated because he feared marring the pages. And he was genius enough not to have to annotate. He never finished his degree, no matter how many leaves he said he needed and how many more research assistants he demanded to finally deliver the Great American Dissertation. But nothing ever happened---especially in the classroom. I once suggested, out of administrative fiat, that "There is more to teaching than sitting on the edge of the desk and talking randomly about 'ideas' and meandering speculations." Torro Ballistics! He remained the McClellan of the classroom.

Douglas MacArthur:

To lead an army of men into battle, a general must obviously have an abundance of ego. My so-called "personal" encounter with MacArthur came through the papers during the Korean War. I knew of the famous promise to the Philippines: "I shall return." And he did--in a carefully staged "action" photo sequence. I know, it's not the first time the military has "photoshopped" a so-called "scene" of military success in order to pull yet more money into the Military Industrial Complex. After all, it's one of the few viable manufacturing businesses left in America.

It takes a lot of Ford cars to equal the profit on the sale of one F-15 fighter to Saudi Arabia. The glitz and  fudging aside, that, by the way, continues in Afghanistan. General Be-tray-us taught an unlearned Obama the art of smoke and mirrors in the name of "surge." And it continues.

My disenchantment with MacArthur started during the Korean War. He seemed like another military savior in khaki, dark glasses, the storming of Inchon and the systematic push of the overrated North Korean army from Pusan all the way to the frozen Chosen Reservoir. He and Ridgeway seemed incomparable.

Then came the Chinese. MacArthur, forgetting who leads the armed forces in our country, opted openly for an atomic bomb attack on Chinese forces. He tried to ride over Truman, the least understood and least appreciated president in our history. No, he was not Lincoln, but he understood the Constitution and could see the dark specter of the military thrusting its fist into the Executive Office. He also ignored demographics. Mao, in response, said, "we can afford 3 million soldiers."

Later, it became clear, once the Wall collapsed that secret records revealed Stalin's willingness to join China and go to war with the US. It's common knowledge today that most of the so-called North Korean air force was comprised of Russian pilots.

My approach would be quiet and courteous. I have not forgotten what such men have done to try and keep us free. And now that MacArthur lives where there is no war, I can only wonder whether "Old Soldiers" really are willing to "fade away."

In the Other World we remain essentially what we are here. True, the softening continues; the love for others increases; and finally, our perspective changes.

Given the Other Worldly context, I am perplexed to know what doctors and generals spend their time doing there.

Three People I Want to Meet in Heaven

Most of you have heard of Mitch Albom's little pot boiler, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  Albom's study of a place most of us believe in and all would like to visit ["if only it existed they sigh"], brings an amusement park operator into contact with five people who impacted his life. If you believe in such a place, whom would you like to meet? More importantly and frightening is the question, what would you ask them? Or tell them?

All of us probably have a dream list of the Greats. That list has changed over the years hasn't it? When I was 14 I wanted to see Ted Williams and ask him if was true that he could really smell the faint odor of smoke as the ball singed the bat when he foul tipped it. Later, I thought about Shakespeare or even Faulkner or Hemingway. By the time I was 30 only Shakespeare remained on my wish list. Yet today he remains too daunting for me. I don't have enough arcane, scholarly questions such as, "Why in Henry IV, Part 1, why did you take so long getting young Hal to battle? That's not even a good question, folks. I would like to hear others ask better questions, but would choose the back row, a seat on the aisle, if you please. Bathroom exit, you know. Even in Heaven?

Given my reservations, I have a better idea. What do you think about this possibility for you as well?  Think about, say, three people you might want to thank for their lives, their personal contribution to your life.


Sorry, no loved ones, close friends, or divine figures allowed. I happened on this idea this afternoon, resting in bed, reading a thick book very slowly, my mind wandering back to my mother. One of her famous last statements before a killer stroke she told me in the rest home. "I want to hug and kiss your dad--and then I want to find John and Abigail Adams." Here a high school graduate who had read fewer than a dozen books on the Adams family, wanted to see them. I think she just wanted to thank them for the texture they brought to her life. She loved them for who they were and because they, as she said, "made my life more meaningful." 


So, here we go. My gratitude simply echoes my mother's. A giant thank you to the following three:

1. Henry and Hester Thrale.  Henry, a brewer, not a man of books and his sprightly wife, Hester, found Samuel Johnson kneeling at the feet of a bewildered minister. He was in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Johnson was  the greatest conversationalist in the known world of his day and famous essayist and poet. They bundled him off to their rolling estate, Streatham Park, where he began to heal. W. Jackson Bate says of this moment in time: "The Thrales did more than contribute to the restoration of Johnson's health. They made it possible." 

They saved  Samuel Johnson for all of us who love him and continue to read him today [many by assignment only]. He survived to produce nearly 20 years more of writing and famous conversations, recorded in James Boswell's famous Life of Johnson. My brothers and I always have a "Johnson" quote for the occasion. We love him.

2. Lev and Sophia Tolstoy. Both endured what critics call the "worst marriage in history." When Sophia read Anna Karenina [perhaps the greatest novel ever written], she said, this "thing is spotty--incomplete. Where are you in this novel?" He put himself in as Levin and added his sister-in-law, as Kitty and wrote the masterpiece. 


When he began throwing successive drafts of War and Peace [perhaps the greatest novel ever written. I know, I know] into trash barrels, she picked them out, sorted them, and then rewrote each subsequent draft because she was the only one on earth who could read his handwriting. 

When Tolstoy wanted to turn over all publication rights to his collected works, she fought--and they knew how to fight. She won. Stalin, in the only fit of compassion he ever revealed in his life, assented and turned the publication rights over to the Tolstoy Trust. Thank you for enduring the world's worst marriage, Tolstoys. Because of your guts and stubbornness, Sophia, we have, YES, the two greatest novels ever written. [See The Last Train Station, starring Christopher Plummer and the great Helen Mirren on Netflix.]

3. Abraham Lincoln. Where does one begin with this man? Yes, he was a politician; he wanted to be President of the country and he wanted to unite that country at all costs. When 7,000 Union Blue went down in 20 minutes at Shiloh, he paced the War Room, saying, "what will the people say!" Leave the convoluted arguments to historians, especially the revisionists; many of them the cadre of new black historians who peck at Lincoln's motives and slowness in emancipating the slaves. My love and thanks is purely personal. Here was a man who lived out his life with a bipolar wife, a man whose face shows the affliction of such battles as Shiloh [though the Union lost at a cost of only 24,000 men], Cold Harbor, the loss of Willie, his son, the distain and abuse of an ignorant father, the nagging darkness of melancholy, etc.

When talk in Sunday school wanders to those "perfect" bodies we all long for, I think of Lincoln's "sacred scars." He paid for every wrinkle with pain. And all those so-called "presidents" who followed? And those guys who "run" today away from one single concrete  solution to our real problems? None of them ever did or will, now, hold a candle to Father Abraham Lincoln.


Do you think there are only three in your life?  Let's talk about this again sometime.

Indifference

The writer-poet Kathleen Norris, who had lived in both Hawaii and New York, left both havens and moved to the western Dakotas because her husband, a bi-polar disordered poet himself needed rest and simplicity. They moved into a small town where his parents owned an old farmhouse. The simplicity, yes the redundancy of the Dakota plains of wheat, provided balance and order in a once disordered life. But she had to reorder her life to match her husband's.

In her book Acedia and Me, she charts her own journey through the few years together in a town the size of Rigby, Idaho, and discusses her own coping mechanisms making that adjustment from the sea-smells and sounds of the ebb and flow of Pacific to the endless plains. 

She chose the word "acedia" because of its original use among early Christian monks, living for the most part in the Egyptian desert. Let me give you a laundry list of synonyms for this fancy Latin word, which the monks described as an almost daily attack of the "noonday demon." That mid-afternoon attack of weariness, boredom, even a kind of anxiety. My daughter, Lora, calls the later 4-7 evening hours, the "witching hours" every housewife/mother faces. I have to add that living alone as a newly crowned widower, the same witch found me during the same hours. Mornings were often joyous and always productive. Late afternoon always threatened, as my grandson says, to "suck," which, harsh as it sounds, just might be appropriate because that "sucking" sound seemed to pull vital intellectual and spiritual energy down some hidden drain. See if you have ever met one of these demons on a wintry afternoon in Rexburg [not Austin, where it is 5:00 p.m. and 67 degrees].

1. Poisoning of the will: a kind of paralysis of the emotions.

2. Indifference: "I couldn't care less."

3. A dangerous acquiescence to "evil:" Broaden "evil" to mean anything from what most of us call the opposite of righteousness. Could it be that weak impulse something  like surrendering to that last piece of cake you were saving for your husband? Note: I am averse to calling diet-breaking as "evil," however.

4. Disillusionment: This is the shifting or even sliding away from Your Center. One poet called it "spiritual/emotional drift. If you watch more than two reality shows, one of which is Jersey Shore or anything about the Kardashians, the demons are in your house. No matter how you define "demons."

5. Emotional "dryness:" This is the shriveling of the mind or soul and is close to "drift." This leads to paging through mindless magazines, playing solitaire on the computer for more than 30 minutes and simply surfing or texting. "What are you doing now?" "Help me decide what to eat." "Eat a chicken sandwich." [16 responses]. Garbage in, garbage out. And a whole generation of our children is quietly and assiduously rewiring their brains.

6. Ennui: This French word defies a sharp English definition, but malaise, restlessness, or even misdirected energy try to get close. This kind of unconcern the Germans call Gleichgueltigkeit, a word that seemed to haunt most of the Germans I met when I wanted to talk about Mormonism.

So we dissect the problem. What are a few possible solutions?

1. Such weariness with life often flies into your windows on dark clouds and dark, cold days. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said, "it is your soul you need to change, not the climate."  Remember weather is a state of mind.  After 45 years in Rexburg I was still working on this one. And now I'm in Austin, Texas. Try a SAD special light. It helps.

2. Seek an inner life. For me this has always been meditation. The mixing of a rich religious imagination with sacred texts. The monks read [Lectio] and then questioned themselves where they stood with respect to divine counsel. This could mean turning off the computer and talking to yourself in a room alone. 

3. Lively, thought-provoking visual stimulation. Watch films that stimulate your mind! For me and Lora, Downton Abbey [PBS] lately.

 

4. Exercise: For Lora, yoga, for Alison and Heather, break-a-sweat cardio. For Marcus and me, walking [for me very slowly].

5. Work or hobbies. When my wife was ill and I could not leave the house, I spent several hours each day polishing furniture, vacuuming, etc. 

6. Music that soothes and enlivens. For me that's Pandora Radio online playing classical/religious music.

7. And finally, if necessary, take medication if the depression takes you into an abyss you can't climb out of.

8. Routine. For me it's meditation and reading my scriptures, then Garrison Keillor's daily poem on the Net [Minnesota Public Radio], stretching exercises, then breakfast.

There are additional ways of breaking the barrier of the "noonday demon." One of the very best is to call a friend, write an e-mail, ask a friend to lunch. 

Or,  post a blog.