Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Preventing Grace

Home
Evangelical
7 Sane Takes

7 Sane Takes

Last updated on: October 20, 2017 at 8:59 am by Anne Kennedy

7 Sane Takes 2017-10-20T08:59:03-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

How bout some Takes since it’s Friday.
One
This is charming–a really nice example of Deep Work, if you are out looking for some, which I sometimes am. I am fascinated by the very idea of concentration, of really being able to focus the mind for more than five minutes. It sounds like such an interesting and curious idea. I hope I get to do it before I die. I probably have at least another fifteen or twenty years of wait though.

Two
Although maybe this guy could help me. Seriously, watch the video a couple of times at least, and then enjoy a deep and loud and long laugh. Because seriously, it has to be the winner of the Internet this week. What a fantastic time to be alive.

Makes me want to try it myself. Instead of responding verbally to any kind of request, I will just turn the power of my healing gaze onto the screaming child and will just gaze and gaze and gaze and gaze until one or both of us starts crying.

Three
Spent the whole day yesterday thinking about mental health, both past and present. Not my own, necessarily, but everybody else’s. Of course the past wasn’t all rainbows and sunshines of mental health–as long as you’re really poor and have a terribly difficult material life you’ll be really happy. That is most assuredly a ridiculous idea. Just as ridiculous as thinking that if you have everything you want and never suffer you’ll also be perfectly happy.

I think there are two kinds of mental health issues to consider as I look into the past and then turn my piercing and healing gaze to the present. One, every culture and every time and every place has its own measure of mental health and has its own way of categorizing those who don’t quite, as it were, make the grade. It might have been called madness, or that horribly idea of hysteria, or any number of ways of talking about it.

Where I grew up, in fact, there was a social category for the mental ill. If you went “crazy” as some did, you would sort of wander off into the bush, and maybe dress in a certain way. In cities, the “crazy” were given social leeway to break all the rules and do whatever they liked. In fact, they had room to mock, to be funny, to provide social commentary where it might be dangerous for someone in the sane category to tread. My dad did some interesting research in our village of how the crazy go about becoming sane. If someone wanted to “return” to their right mind they could go become a clown. Not our kind of clown but something quite different. In many cases the cure “worked.”*

In some sense, it seemed, looking in from the outside, the category of being crazy offered that person a lot of leeway, one might say even grace. And the surrounding community would offer what care they could. That person wouldn’t starve and go hungry because he couldn’t farm, for instance.

So that’s one thought.

Four
The other is that, of course, happiness and mental health are not the same but I think I often conflate them. Lots of people are unhappy but they don’t suffer from diagnosable mental illness. And this is true of every age. Not everyone in the past was happy. Of course.

But I do think our pursuit of “happiness” as a culture has produced a kind of cultural madness, a losing of our collective mind, an inability to think properly and behave rationally. The sharp rise of diagnosed narcissism, for instance, and the alarm with which many ordinary people look over the scope of their days and come to the conclusion that they can’t cope and there’s no hope. This is a kind of sickness, an unmooring of the person from transcendent meaning, an untethering of the rational mind that produces deep unhappiness and maybe even trauma. This, I think, is a sickness of our own devising. And if those of the past who saw what we had, and then saw how unhappy we were, they would probably not understand why we are like this, just as we ourselves so often don’t.

Five
What is it that the psalmist says? The fool says in his heart that there is no God. And then what does he have? Only himself and the terror of his own mind. And if he has good health and a comfortable home, nothing to distract him from his deep delusion, he is going to go mad.

Six
He will then turn to the power of the healing gaze, or the Internet, to twitter, to computer games, to more self indulgence, more pursuing of himself to find happiness, which will just make him more and more “crazy.” He will keep doing the thing that never works, that perfect definition of madness. He will never stop and deeply consider the only thing that will produce ultimate healing and sanity.

Seven
Go check out more Takes! I’m going off to try not to lose my mind.

*These are vague, westernizing scare quotes, such as someone who doesn’t really know what she is talking about uses to indicate that she doesn’t really have any business blogging about this.

Previous Post

October 19, 2017

A Theory of Mental Health

Next Post

October 21, 2017 Book Notes: Its Not That Terrible A Time

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

A woman who had suffered bleeding for twelve years was healed by touching Jesus' what?

Select your answer to see how you score.

His hand The hairs of his head His feet His cloak

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »