Under dark skies

How to navigate melancholy well? A subject that I sense may become a series (hence part 1.)

It took me a long time to recognise, accept and name my melancholy, my darkness, my weight. You know sings Van I’m talking ‘bout this weight...

Late 2009. We had just moved to South Devon, were in a house we loved and could call truly home, our family were all well, and our work was rewarding. One November morning I was driving to Exeter for a meeting, and as I drove I found myself in tears. They seemed to come from nowhere. And from everywhere.

I have come to recognise that this melancholy can be brought to the surface by particular circumstances - and the November date was one such. I sense that it has roots in early losses. And assorted assaults on grace, mercy and peace can bring it on.

But the melancholy seems to have an underlying reality independent of events and happenings. I imagine that it will, in some way, always be with me. I have a deep dark well of tears just below the surface.

The growing body of photographs and text in this Substack are, in part, my attempt to navigate it. To find the light still shining.

And, thankfully, wonderfully, graciously the light still shines. And how it shines!

Indeed, my experience of the brightness of the light shining may be the flip side of the darkness seeming so dark. The depth of the latter makes possible the height of the former. And I wouldn’t swap those extremes for a dulled okay-ness.

So, to navigating melancholy part 1.

This photograph is from a journey last month on the North Sea, and it was fascinating to watch the dark clouds rolling in.

I have found that the darkness needs to be faced, given space to roll in. The Carmelite tradition in which I am steeped suggests that the darkness is where God is to be encountered, where we may rediscover that we are beloved.

So I am not going to deny the darkness. But seek to let it roll in.

And to be prayerfully present to it and within it. To discover again and again that under dark skies, still the Light shines.