“Prayer is the remedy for gloom and despondency.”
—Evagrius Pontikos
Category: DESPONDENCY
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I discovered this trick when I was coming to terms with the fact that much of my despondency is rooted in pride, rooted in an idealized view I had of myself. I become angry with myself when I don’t live up to this, frankly, unrealistic self image I have.
—Fr. Michael Gillis, The Least I Can Do -
i was afraid to actually live because the fear of something happening to make me unhappy was greater than the desire to actually try to be happy
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People feel unhappy and they don’t know why. They feel that something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on what. They feel uneasy in the world, confused and frustrated, alienated and estranged, and they can’t explain it. They have everything and yet they want more. And when they get it, they are still left empty and dissatisfied. They want happiness and peace, and nothing seems to bring it. They want fulfillment, and it never seems to come. Everything is fine, and yet everything is wrong. In America this is almost a national disease. It is covered over by frantic activity and endless running around. It is buried in activities and events. It is drowned out by television programs and games. But when the movement stops and the dial is turned off and everything is quiet …then the dread sets in, and the meaninglessness of it all, and the boredom, and the fear. Why is this so? Because, the Church tells us, we are really not at home. We are in exile. We are alienated and estranged from our true country. We are not with God our Father in the land of the living. We are spiritually sick. And some of us are already dead.
Our hearts are made for God, St. Augustine has said, and we will be forever restless until we rest in Him. Our lives are made for God, and we will be unfulfilled and dissatisfied and frustrated until we go to Him. All of God’s creatures, as Francis Thompson said in his poem The Hound of Heaven, are His “loyal betrayers.” They do not satisfy His children and cannot bring them peace. He alone can do that, because He alone is our home. And we are His.
The Lenten Spring
Thomas Hopko -
“Sad are only those who understand.”
— Arab Proverb (via fyp-philosophy) -
“When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. […] I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and of the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness.”
—Albert Camus -
Desperately, many of us search for happiness anywhere we can find it – especially those who suffer from despair. We claw and grasp at nearly anything that can give us a fix and alleviate the pain of soul that we feel, and yet how hard it is for us when the thought comes to us that we should turn to God, Who alone can satisfy us? Suddenly, when one is inclined to pray and turn to God for comfort, it is as though the soul and body become deadlocked. Anything and everything comes to mind, offering a multitude of distractions, quick fixes, and easy solutions. If these do not work, despair and frustration set in again, gripping the soul in a kind of frozen grasp, rendering it nearly incapable of doing anything but giving up. How easy it is for the dog to return to its vomit (cf. Prov. 26:11).
—Anthony N, It’s Easy to Give Up and Give In -
Jesus loved agricultural metaphors. He sure used a lot of them. A sower sows, farmer plants and the crop grows. The farmer labors in hope, in expectation. Even though there is nothing he can do to hurry the crop along, the farmer knows that if he keeps at it, eventually he will have more fruit than he will know what to do with it all. But he has to hang in there. There is a delay, as St. Isaac tells us, between the beginning of our efforts in spiritual growth, between our desire to enter into the hidden things of our heart, and the time when we do actually begin to enjoy the fruit of our labor, what St. Isaac calls the witness of true spiritual health. And the meat, you might say, that we have to sustain us during this long growing seasons, through the tedium of weeding and through the droughts of despondency, the food that will sustain us during these sometimes dry and sometimes boring times, this food is expectation, expectation that we will indeed, if we do not give up, come to see and know the hidden things of our hearts, the hidden things of God and His kingdom.
—Archpriest Michael Gillis, Fighting Boredom and Despondency -
‘Despondency’ refers to my own downward spirals, my own inability to motivate myself, my own struggle with bad days or weeks or months. When I am despondent, I just cannot motivate myself to do what I need to do, nor even, sometimes, what I want to do. When I struggle with despondency, it seems like it takes a herculean effort for me just to get my Bible open and to read the same few verses over and over again, as though my mind has been greased and every word slides right off. Or I have to force myself with all my might just to light the vigil lamp in my icon corner, open my prayer book and stand there just whimpering for a few minutes. In times like these when I struggle with despondency, a saying from my days of athletic training has helped me a great deal: “Something is always better than nothing.” To open my Bible is itself a prayer. To read the same verses over and over again making no sense out of it: this too is prayer. To light a vigil lamp is a prayer. To stand before an icon and just whimper, that too is prayer. Something is always better than nothing.
—Archpriest Michael Gillis, Fighting Boredom and Despondency -
“It’s really only in that moment when you’re about to die that you realize whether you’re someone who wants to live or someone who wants to just throw it all out.”
—Natalie De Segonzac
SO GOOD QUOTES 