Snakes and Ladders

Professor Abacus will be pleased that for once I have taken up one of his suggestions and bought the ladder that he recommended to me a couple of years ago. It's a tall, splayed-legged tripod ladder in aluminium, designed in Japan but imported, funnily enough, by a company in Shaftesbury. And I must say it is a delight, allowing me safely to butcher plants on a higher level than ever before. I took down a gigantic limb, which was threatening my neighbours' gardens, from the hazel you can see in this photo, and the rampaging bay has had reason to regret the purchase, too. 

St John Climacus saw the spiritual life in terms of a ladder: The Ladder of Divine Ascent was his masterwork, hence his Latin nickname. I haven't read it, so I don't know whether he includes the possibility that you might descend the ladder as well as fall off it entirely, his main concern. 

This morning I went to see Lillian, our former Lay Reader and now exercising other responsibilities including being a spiritual director. She has a depressive tendency and said that at the moment 'I go to bed rather hoping I won't wake up again'. 'I can tell you', she went on 'because I know you won't just tell me to cheer up.' Indeed I won't, because I have been feeling similar things. I wondered whether I could blame particular tasks of the day for thinking 'Oh no' the moment I woke up, but it didn't seem to dissipate once those tasks were done. Instead it seemed to be another of my periodic cloudbanks of misery and I know there's not much I can do to disperse it: I can only hope and pray that it doesn't interfere with work too much. I think I am emerging from this particular episode: certainly this morning there was a moment where, just after my absolutely lowest trough, a switch seemed to be thrown. My experience is often as sudden as that. What follows is not joy, but at least a change of direction, getting to the bottom of the snake, as it were.

This morning the switch was partly the dawning thought that some of my akedia might relate to the strange sense of living a kind of afterlife which has come on turning 50, as though I really shouldn't be here, and an accompanying purging of certain comforting habits of mind. Perhaps, I thought, this is a further bit of detachment that God is working in me (St John Climacus would approve that idea), and once it is done I will be able to understand those who are going through the same sort of withdrawal better. Then on the BBC website I happened to read about Hevrin Khalaf, a Future Syria Party activist who was butchered in the Autumn by a Turkish-backed militia. I was struck by this young woman's dogged work for a free, non-sectarian future for her country in contrast to my own exhaustion at my not-very-demanding duties. If she could carry on until they shot her, I thought, I probably can as well. 

Lillian and I agreed that being convinced of the purpose of what you're doing is helpful in avoiding akedia. The trouble is that it requires a sort of blinkeredness which in other circumstances can be a very damaging trait but which does allow those who have it to persist undaunted against adversity and actually achieve things, and possessing it is a matter of personality rather than choice.