This site focuses on awakening the spiritual life. Frankly that's easier said that done. Sometimes there are forces at work in us that make awakening on our own pretty damn tough, if not downright impossible. Holy Saturday seems an apt time to reflect on the nature of depression and the spiritual life. We live most of our lives somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. And for millions of people clinical depression can make us feel so far from Easter that it's announcement of life's triumph over death seems little more than whistling in the dark.

The recent and tragic death of a cherished friend has made me more more aware and sensitive to the effects of depression, as well as the dangerous and debilitating stigma we still attach for mental illness. We must work much harder to remove this stigma, and find ways to stand with and support suffers and their families so that clinical depression is no longer a hidden and isolating disease.

Here's a link to a remarkably candid and healing interview on Speaking of Faith---one of my favorites podcasts (you can download the MP3 or just listen to in on your computer; see the links under the photo banner; it reads like this: SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:18) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:00) ¦ » Podcast). If you prefer, here's a link to the written transcript.

In it Krista Tippet not only engages a few remarkable people who explore their own experiences with depression from a spiritual perspective, but she shares her own journey through the darkness.

I commend it to all with the prayer that a thin ray of Easter's light may break in upon us and help us find healing---both in us and through us.