In Praise of Melancholy

It has begun.

My phone is ringing off the hook. Actually, that phrase dates me, doesn't it? Okay, so it's more like my cell phone is so busy, I can't keep a good charge on my battery.

Some people are already 'crashing and burning' before Christmas.

It's not just the stock market, fragile economic times and the unemployment rate, although they are certainly not helping.

I feel it, too. The pressure to get into "the Christmas spirit". The relentless pursuit of the illusive culturally defined sense of 'happiness' - 'peace and good will to all humankind' - and 'have a holy, jolly Christmas, it's the best time of the year.'

Blah, Blah, Blah.

As I read my last post to this blog, I know my sarcastic humor is a manifestation of the pressure to join the rest of the madding crowd and "don't worry, be happy."

Our Third Annual "Blue Christmas" service is scheduled for Saturday, December 20 at 6:30 PM. I've just written out the invitations to those in our community who have lost a loved one in the past 5 years.

Interestingly enough, none of them have called me because they are crashing and burning. They have a "reason" be sad. The folks who are calling me think they don't have a reason to be sad. That they SHOULD be happy. But, they're not. So, they think something is wrong with THEM. And, that makes them sad.

They are not sure what or why but they say to me, "There MUST be something wrong with me, Reverend Elizabeth, because I'm just not able to get into the 'Christmas spirit'. In fact, the harder I try, the more immobilized I become. I feel sad and tired a lot of the time. Sometimes, it just hurts to move. Am I depressed?"

Well, I'm not a doctor and I can't diagnose depression, but I think I recognize a line from a television ad for an anti-depressant when I hear one.

I have always thought that there is a difference between depression and melancholy. Furthermore, I think, sometimes, perhaps more often than not, it's absolutely appropriate - dare I say it? "NORMAL" - to feel one or the other.

I've just put this book on my Epiphany Wish List: "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy" by Eric G. Wilson.

I read a review of it in the blur that was my so-called day off - while I was working out on the elliptical machine in the gym, somewhere after my appointment with the dental hygienist and before my appointment with the accountant and in between all the phone calls from people who are not doing so very well.

Wilson argues that "Depression is a cocktail of angst and chronic sadness connected with apathy and numbness."

Melancholy, on the other hand "generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a 'turbulence of heart' that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing."

Wilson goes so far as to speculate that it was the "turbulent heats and minds of saturnine cave dwellers" that gave rise to the arts and crafts.

I was intrigued enough to wonder who the heck this Eric G. Wilson is, so I googled him on my iPhone (Wow, I even impressed myself with the last piece of that sentence!). Turns out he is the Thomas H. Prichard Professor of English at Wake University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He's apparently won several important awards and has written no less than five books on the relationship between literature and psychology. None too shabby credentialing.

Okay. I'm willing to give the guy a listen. I decided to stop at the Barnes and Noble on the way home from my accountant's office in Succasunna (Yes, NJ). I figured by then, I'd at least need a Latte (Decaf, low fat, grande - no foam. Hey, I haven't lived six years in blissful suburbia and not learned how to be neurotic about coffee. Besides, I still have money on my gift card from last Christmas.)

The book won't be on the shelves until January 20th, but I read another review and put in an order for my copy.

Wilson's book appears to be a veritable polemic against what he calls the 'American cult of happiness', a cult that medicalizes even the mildest forms of jangled nerves and malaise. He warns:

"I for one am afraid that our American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am wary in the face of this possibility: to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful over our society's efforts to expunge melancholia from the system. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificent yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?"

He also writes: "Happy types around the country seem bent on ironing out all the rough edges, not only the cragged corners of old houses and those weather-weary knots on old oaks . . .The same is true of faces these days; they're as unblemished as flat plastic. . . You catch these smooth and expressionless faces when you walk down a city street. You can find not a trace of existence in these frozen masks."

Here's the line that stopped me in mid-sip of my latte: "It's finally the smoothness that kills us."

Okay, I don't know Wilson's psychology credentials but clearly, the man knows a little something about the human condition.

"It's finally the smoothness that kills us."

It occurs to me that the message of Advent to enter into a time of 'quiet' and 'contemplation' might be heard as one of smoothness. It is not. Indeed, it is a time to 'hush the sounds' of the madding world in order to listen to the turbulence of your own soul.

It is, I believe, out of a nearer sense of the chaos of that turbulence that we come closer to the sound of Ruach who brooded over the chaos of the primordial stew and brought forth a new creation.

It's that same Ruach that troubles the waters of our soul and calls us from our complacency and into co-creative status with God.

But before all that, we must first be still and listen to the terrifying sound of that turbulence and let the melancholy take hold of your soul.

It is then that we enter into a holy time when those who are sad of heart can gain a new respect and appreciation for and relationship with their sadness.

Here's my new Advent mantra: "It's finally the smoothness that kills us."