Shaped by Pain

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Genesis 2:15-17, Psalm 32
March 13, 2011 (Lent 1)

One thing I like about this story, about this first fling in the garden, is the fact that it doesn’t hide anything from us. We get it.

We don’t quite understand God making a whole world, and calling it good. We can understand making a delicious apple pie and calling it good…but a world? That’s a little beyond our grasp.

So when Adam and Eve take a bite of that fruit…yeah. We get it. That yearning. That seductive temptation. And like the ice cream to top off that apple pie, one of the first human emotions in the bible is scooped out for us. Shame. Shame which comes from guilt which leads to embarrassment-- melting into the crevices of our lives. The author of Genesis doesn’t even have to label it as such, just paint us a picture of two nearly naked humans hiding from God because of what they did, and…we know. In fact, just mention the word naked, and it’s enough to make us flush a bit with embarrassment.

So of course, it’s a logical story to start Lent. Lent is the season of penance, of self-reflection, of shining a light in our dark corners and seeing what needs to be swept clean. For all the negative associations around Lent, it can actually be fairly joyful, welcomed. That is, if you just see it as a season.

When the darkness and the confrontation with our demons are confined to Lent. After all, it’s only 40 days.

I wish that was the case for everyone.

But it’s not. For some-- for many-- the struggle with demons is not confined to a season. It is an ongoing reality. A constant struggle with shame. Pain, anxiety, self-loathing, confusion.

For some, the garden is not just a story about shame. It embodies the nakedness, and vulnerability that comes when we feel we’ve been placed beyond God’s reach: by events in our lives, by illness, by pain. So I’m tempted to tread into Lent lightly because for some, it is not a mere 40 days from the shame of the Garden to the Alleluias of Easter. For some it is a daily companion of spiritual and emotional nakedness.

Clinical depression will affect one in ten Americans in their lifetime. And more dramatically, one in four women will suffer from it. That means someone in this sanctuary has probably battled with it. That means one of us, likely more than one, currently lives with depression everyday. And if it’s not you, then you likely have loved, and been loved by, someone with depression. It might be the one sitting next to you, a few rows back from you, the one holding your hand right now.

Depression is not something we talk about openly in church. And I’m not surprised because the Christian church hasn’t been helpful when it comes to the topic. The great church father Augustine, labeled the characteristics of depression as a disease of the soul, and as a mark of God’s disfavor. And while such a theology hasn’t persisted in our contemporary world, the stigma we have against depression is alive and well. So many suffer…in silence.

Which is bizarre, if you look at scripture. Can we gloss over the pain of Job? Can we discount the deep laments of the psalmist? And today’s scripture is a perfect example: while I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Now I am hesitant to transfer present-day medical or psychological labels on people of other times and cultures, but what comes to me as I read this is a deep sense of despair. The psalmist even talks about being in a pit of despair. It’s not “shame,” – it’s a desire for fullness,while not knowing why the body wastes away. A physical feeling of heaviness, an oppression of the spirit. The reality of suffering…in silence. While I kept silence, my body wasted away.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I don’t believe I have walked that lonesome road of depression, of clinical depression. I have walked with others who experienced it. I have felt ill-equipped and confused, not knowing what to do. So I won’t pretend I can speak about the experience of depression from within.

Recently I heard an interview of three well-known authors who live with depression.
Andrew Solomon is the author of the book Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Anita Barrows is a psychologist and poet, And Parker Palmer, is a Quaker author and educator.

And while I haven’t lived with depression I found their thoughts illuminating to the ways depression affects the soul. And if you think you don’t need to hear what it’s like because it’s not something you struggle with, then perhaps that is exactly why you need to hear it. Remember” One in ten people. One in four women. In some way it does affect you because it will affect someone who needs your love and support.

Andrew Solomon describes his experience with depression. He says “It’s an experience…of finding the most ordinary parts of life incredibly difficult: finding it difficult to eat, finding it difficult to get out of bed, finding it difficult and painful to go outside, being afraid all the time and being overwhelmed all the time. These are the essential qualities of [depression]. It isn’t, I think, primarily an experience of sadness, but experiencing [the opposite of human vitality].

Anita Barrows echoes this: “Suddenly, in depression you are ripped from what felt like your life, from what felt right and familiar and ordinary and ordered, and you’re just thrown into this place where you’re ravaged, where the wind rips the leaves from the tress, …your soul in depression.”


When we were in seminary, Parker Palmer came to campus to speak . Palmer is considered a Quaker “guru,” and being at a Quaker seminary, you could just imagine the energy humming in anticipation of his visit. Being the spiritual giant that many see him to be, I was surprised to discover he, too, has struggled with depression. And because he was so revered-- he was someone who “shouldn’t be depressed”-- he felt ashamed.

He said “On one level you think ‘this is the least spiritual thing I’ve ever done.’ And the soul is absent, God is absent, faith is absent. All of the faculties that I depended on before I went into depression were now utterly useless….people would say, “Gosh Parker why are you sitting in here being depressed …you’re so successful and you’ve written so well, you’ve helped so many people’ and that would leave me feeling more depressed because I would think, ‘I’ve just defrauded another person. [ If] they really knew what a schmuck I was, [they] would cast me into the darkness where I already am.”

The opposite of human vitality. Ripped from what felt like your life. Cast into the darkness. Maybe more than shame, this is the fear that’s taking place in the garden.

Now take a moment. Still yourself. What is your experience with depression? Have you ever glimpsed into that pit of despair? How have you felt it in your body…your soul? How have you witnessed it affecting those around you? Those you love? (hold silence)

When I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then…then I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave [me].

Then… thank God for that “then.” That turning point, The place where it all shifts . Whether it is
then I confess my sin, or
then…I allowed someone to enter my pain or
then…I let go of pride and made my demons known to God.
Then… somehow, I stepped out of hiding to meet God in my nakedness—or maybe I didn’t even step out, but then God stepped into my silence.

It’s not just about sin and forgiveness, but about despair and redemption.

Then…“In a sense” says Andrew Solomon, “after you’ve been through a depression, it gives you a different relationship with the world.”

Then… ““I think depression sort of works on it the way you could work a piece of clay, so that it softens and it becomes more malleable” reflects Anita Barrows. It becomes wider. It becomes able to take in more. But that’s only afterward. In the fire, what you get is the fire.”

Then… Parker Palmer’s therapist offers him a thought, saying “Parker, you seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?”

That is why we should talk about depression. Here. In the church. Where I pray we have cultivated a ground on which it is safe to stand. Because it is one of the things that makes us more human.

In our pain, unwelcomed or not, understood or not, we become more human.

And that is the humanity that God has, and continues to, step into.

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Benediction – Rainer Maria Rilke
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
You have seen it growing
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power when you plucked the fruit,
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again are a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
and onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains
It is what you have.

Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under the sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.