Almighty God, you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. Collect for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost.[1]
I think this prayer just about sums up the conflicting emotions and the general depressive low that is hanging over us all with the latest surge in Covid spikes. Sometimes we have to be brought to a point where we realise that ‘we have no power to help ourselves’ which is not to say that serious medical advice and hope for a vaccine in the near future should simply be abandoned in favour of throwing ourselves on the mercy of God. I often think being told to throw yourself on the mercy of God sounds a little hysterical. We are not called to give in to panic and collective hysteria, tempting as it sometimes is to do just that. Or, if not panic and hysteria, to disappearing back under the duvet when the alarm goes off and staying there. Sooner or later the dog will need feeding, or someone will come to the door. The day will be thrown off kilter which makes depression even harder to deal with, or so I have found, and we are left worse off than when we started, ‘with no power to help ourselves’.
Mental health is greatly helped by routine because routine gives us a sense of being in control, especially when going through a period of depression. And this is where throwing ourselves on the mercy of God does have a part to play.
I badly need the sense of purpose that comes with knowing that the first hour of the day will be dedicated to silent prayer, even though I often only just about manage the hour. But the hour is a blessing because it supplies the energy and motivation needed to stick to the structure I’m used to, which is to write for two to three hours in the morning. I think writers are particularly in need of the Collect quoted above because we are in the habit of believing that our work is all down to us and that if we don’t sit down at the accustomed hour and produce something reasonably coherent and, we hope, meaningful for at least some people, then we have failed, not only as writers but, in a sense, in life as a whole.
It is so easy to give in to the belief that we have failed and then wallow in it to the point of nearly drowning. Wallowing in failure and going back over old rejections constitute the kind of adversities which the writer of this Collect must have had in mind. They are the ‘evil thoughts that assault the soul’. They are also directly linked to the ‘adversities which may happen to the body’. We are all experiencing these adversities. Thousands of people have caught the corona virus and still more of us experience the physical adversities that both feed and are fed by depression – insomnia, headaches, problems with food and often illness that resembles the virus itself, or is possibly symptomatic of it.
Here is where some kind of meditation or prayer routine helps. However you go about your meditation, you are calling on grace in some form, not as a passive recipient, but as someone to whom it is given to engage with the world in its suffering right now. You have work to do and it matters that you do it. It helps, then, to see ourselves in the wider picture, as individuals who belong to a family, or community but, most importantly, to the world in this present time of travail. We are in it together. I think this is a helpful thing to keep in mind when struggling to get out of bed in the morning, especially if you are facing more weeks of isolation. We belong together and, yes, it’s fine to throw ourselves together on the power and mercy of God.
[1] Celebrating Common Prayer: A Version of the Daily Office SSF