A Ministry of Compassion for the Depressed

Depression is so insidious as to wreak havoc with our sense for sensibility. We begin to second guess even our surest thoughts. Confidence runs to a plummet. Energy is ravaged. Sleep is chequered. Enjoyment is fleeting. And motivation to achieve vanishes.

A ministry of compassion is needed to assist the depressed.

Such a base of compassion runs cross grain to the sense that humanity has. Compassion has an eternal sense about it that never needs to judge or condemn. It seems to understand even things that are incomprehensible.

What the depressed person needs is compassion – a self-enrolled compassion as well as a compassion that’s given by others.

Compassion always lives for the other person, allowing them to be just what and who they want; no questions asked. Faith is a given.

The depressed person who comes face to face with someone who’s safe can finally rest, safe and with essential vulnerabilities intact. What a gift it is for the depressed person to have the freedom and space. There is no need of judgment or condemnation or ostricisation. In fact, with compassion there is empathy, warmth, and genuine care given. Compassion has no need of itself; it is totally other focused.

And this is crucial if healing is to take place; indeed, get started.

Compassion makes the path to healing an eventual destination through peace. When the depressed person has no fear competing for their focus or attention, the path of healing may be seen.

Compassion is the missing link with regard to what we feel is never more needed. When we are depressed, when our whole world has imploded on us, with our perspective shrunken, we still need perspective.

Compassion is perspective, given that any time we left and expected things to turn out nicely, we had perspective, whether they turned out or not. Where we went with others into the making of a study into the genealogy of our fear we knew that we were finally on the right track.

***

We need to reconcile that the world is changing.

And, because the world changing is not necessarily a good thing, that leaves us with a dogmatic choice. But, held in tension with studying about depression, and skilling ourselves up, is the reality that things aren’t changing. That can be a huge annoyance in people; those who are even just coming aboard a self-understanding that they need to change when they feel they can’t. We need to understand that all these colliding forces are a mystery that don’t need to be explained, just held and accepted with compassion.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.