Black Dog

There is a French saying ne pas être dans son assiete, which roughly translates as ‘to not be fully in one’s own plate’, as when pasta, badly served, overspills onto the table. It’s a great way of describing the general sense of being all over the place which I think many of us experience from time to time. It is not something we can easily ‘snap out of’, as sufferers of anxiety and depression, in all its manifestations, will know. Not being fully in one’s plate is a debilitating state of mind, especially if you are a writer, teacher, or someone tasked with preaching sermons or providing leadership.

There are other names for this state of mind, like ‘writer’s block’ or ‘black dog’, not that the two are identical, but they invariably feed on each other. I find they do the same in the course of the average day, since all days are potentially creative, whatever kind of work we do. Things get put off when we are blocked. We feel tired. We live for that cup of coffee, or something worse. We are not fully in control. There is something random and anarchic about the way we go about the day and the way we apply our thinking, if we are able to think at all. At the same time, we are absolutely static, inwardly ‘blocked’, so that there is not even the dubious thrill of the roller coaster effect, teetering on the creative high before plummeting to the depths.

The way we are feeling prevents us from doing anything specific. It paralyses, and makes it impossible to do what, theoretically, we should do in order to get back on track and motor forward. There are different methods for achieving this forward momentum. Personally, I find that methods only work for a while, and that when they no longer work you are back on your own, dealing with the black dog, or with writer’s block, or with the inability to dream up a sermon if that is what is required of you.

I have slowly learned that what is needed in all of these situations is a deep and inexhaustible energy in which we can trust, something which we can draw on simply by owning our desire and need for it. Whatever work we do, but especially if it is creative work, we must continually return to its creative source.

But this is impossible if we have not first learned to accept and believe in ourselves as gifted, or fruitful, full of life and hope even if, right now, it feels that we have ground to a complete halt. Knowing ourselves as fruitful is not the same as feeling reassured by relative success. Success will often come at the price of the work itself, because to be sure of success means being willing to think of one’s work as a commodity designed to satisfy consumers and fit the mood of the moment. This is as true in the context of preaching sermons as it is in any other creative work.  In our own low moments it is tempting to simply generate the kind of work, or preach the kind of sermons, which will satisfy the criteria for success or popularity. But we may end up hating ourselves for doing so, and then hate the work.

We are only fruitful when we write or say what gives people permission to flourish as the persons they were created to be. We are fruitful when we free others into their gifts so that they can use those gifts, and their lives, in the service of the truth which makes us free. For this to be possible, we have to trust our own giftedness enough to wait on it, even in the depths of depression and self doubt, because it is often there that we meet people and offer them hope in their own dark depths. We offer them hope because we have visited the depths ourselves.  We have learned to forgive and accept ourselves there, so we are in a position to help others do the same.

A good way to begin this process of self acceptance is to get into the habit of returning to any period, or even a single moment, in our life when we knew ourselves to be utterly valued, that our very existence was a blessing to someone else. It is important to re-own such moments without feeling guilty that we are doing so, because guilt is itself a denial of love.

Loving and forgiving one’s self is the hardest kind of loving there is, especially if you have not been equipped for it in early life. It is often much easier to remain in the depths of depression and self doubt, simply because they are familiar depths, whereas acceptance and forgiveness open up new horizons, new roads to travel into the unknown. The unknown is frightening because discovering it will inevitably involve getting to know ourselves as we really are, and accept our giftedness. We are gifted in and through the love of God from whom all energy for creative work, and life itself, proceeds.