Welcome to Issue #65 of Biblia Luna, the weekly newsletter about the intersection of mental illness and faith, written by a pastor who lives with depression. I put the holy back in melancholy!
Have a Happy and Holy New Year!
Your Humble Author Featured in the SF Examiner
I’m thrilled to let you know that I’ve been featured in an article on “Ten Great Suggestions for Book Lovers” in the San Francisco Examiner. Check it out! If you haven’t picked up a copy of Darkwater yet, please do so here! If you have bought a copy, and found it helpful or meaningful, then please suggest it to a friend!
Hopefully Tomorrow: The Light Still Shines
Liturgically speaking, we are in the middle of the Christmas season right now. (In the church year, Christmas is a twelve-day season lasting from December 25 through January 5.) This short season falls during what used to be the darkest and coldest time of year in northern latitudes. In recent years, at least in the northeastern US, the coldest time of year has shifted toward January and February. And certainly darkness isn’t the same as it used to be. There’s electric light everywhere now. Have you seen satellite images of the world at night? It’s lit up like a Christmas tree. But for centuries, our ancestors knew this time of year as a dangerous, cold, dark time. A time when food was scarce, when hypothermia was a real danger, when you couldn’t see the back of your hand for many hours of the day.
So our ancestors in their wisdom created festivals of light at this time of year. Just about every culture north of the equator has a holiday around the winter solstice, and most of them involve light. It’s no wonder that the early church decided that this would be a good time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ. The church had no evidence that Jesus was born in December (or at any other particular time of year), but the idea that his birth brought light into the world, that he himself was the light of the world, was enough to make the solstice the right time for Christmas (literally, “the feast of Christ”). So many traditions have grown around Christmas over the centuries, and so many of them reflect our old anxieties about darkness, scarcity, and cold – the abundance of lights, the abundance of food, the warmth of fireplaces and family gatherings.
We don’t really need a holiday at the beginning of winter anymore for these same reasons – electric light and various forms of heating have made it unnecessary. However, we still feel cold inside so often. We still feel the darkness creeping up inside us so often. And for those reasons, a holiday of light and warmth is still quite welcome today. We still need to be reminded so often that the light shines inside us as well. That the warmth is for us inside as well.
Did people centuries ago deal with mental illness the way we do now? I don’t know. Perhaps they were too busy trying to stay alive to notice things like that. Or perhaps they noticed it and attributed it to something else. But the good news of Christmas is that the same light that shone to keep our ancestors warm and safe shines still – and now we feel it shining within. Look for the light – it’s there. It’s always there.
Over on the Blog:
I’ve done a complete overhaul on Scholtes-Blog. It’s much more streamlined and attractive. There are still a few kinks to work out, but it is much better than it was. Particularly my Podcast Interview page – that looked rather shabby before.
Some new things there include sermons for the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve; the final Advent Light post; and a really fascinating post about a labyrinth I walked yesterday.
Mental Health in the News:
Ten Ways to Support your Mental Health in 2024 (from New York Times)
Senator John Fetterman opens up about his mental health struggles (from NBC News)
Helpful Resources at Very Well Mind:
Living With Existential Depression
How to Cope With the Fear of the Unknown
Biblia Blessing:
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:5, New Revised Standard Version