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
Category: DESPONDENCY
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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 -
“The birds are always singing praises to the Lord. They begin their song early, at three o’clock in the morning, and don’t stop until nine. At nine they calm down a little bit—it’s only then that they go looking for food to feed their young. Then they start singing again. Nobody tells them to sing—they just do. And what about us? We’re always frowning, always pouting; we don’t feel like singing or doing anything else. We should follow the example of the birds. They’re always joyful whereas we’re always bothered by something.”
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica -
When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel.
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“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”
—Charles Bukowski -
“Joy and sadness are opposites. However, you can’t have one without the other.”
—Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis -
A man asked Abbot Antony, ‘What shall I keep, that I may please God?’ Antony said: “Wherever you go, have God ever before your eyes. In whatever you do, hold by the example of the Holy Scripture; and in whatever place you abide, don’t be swift to leave [out of restlessness]. These three things keep, and you will be saved.
