There's a Trick of the Light I'm Learning to Do, a song

The second track from my latest release, a song about overcoming depression and discovering the grace of God on the way through.

 

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

The noonday demon dropped by just the other day

Kicking ass and taking names

I went out to greet him told him that he couldn't stay

But if he wanted I knew someone who could break his chains

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

And Candy stopped by to say hi the other day

Dressed to kill and all alone

I didn't have the heart to turn her away

So I blessed the child and helped her find her way home

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

And Billy fell from grace, O just the other day

Maybe he climbed a bit too high

But by your grace I know I might have gone that way

So now I'm calling him back into the blue sky

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Notes from the Ashes, Part VI: A Gift Wrapped in Barbed Wire

It was a dreary morning in December, only a few days after my doctor had put me on "reduced duties" because of symptoms related to work-place stress, and I was walking my then ten-year-old daughter to her bus stop.  I was miserable, with this weight of discouragement and defeat and despair hanging around my heart like a leaden albatross.  To paraphrase Augustine only a little bit: my soul was curved hopelessly in on itself.

As we walked, my daughter was saying something I was barely hearing about the song-writer's club at school. As I gradually came to and it sort of dawned on me that she was talking to me, I heard her say something about how she was looking forward to the day because the song-writer's club was happening at lunch. I asked a few questions and found out that her school had this group of kids that got together each week and, with the help of the teacher sponsors, learned how to write songs.

I write songs-- or I used to--but at that point, in the gloomy days right before Christmas 2013, it had been at least two years, maybe more, since I'd put pen to paper.  I never felt like I had the time. Or the energy.  Or the inspiration.  And anyways, what's the point?

One of the first things depression steals from you, I've since learned, is your ability to find joy in things that were, once-upon-a-time, joyful.  I've come to take this as a bit of a heart-barometer for me: when things that should be giving me joy feel like drudgery, it's time to take stock and/or a breather. But this is now, and that was then, and like I say, my daughter mentioned the songwriters club at school and I thought, "Man, it feels like ages since I've even wanted to write a song, let alone had something to write about."

And so I told my daughter that I'd be interested in volunteering at the club, if the teachers would let me.  She said she'd ask at school that day.

Things progressed for me pretty quickly from there, as far as my burnout was concerned.  My "reduced work duties" turned into a full-on stress leave. A lot of things came crashing down that I'd been clinging to, to keep me standing; some of my favorite masks to wear came off; and some of the emotional immaturity that I'd been trying hard to hide for a long time finally came out into the light.

But also: I started volunteering at the songwriter's club, where I found the energy, the time, and especially the inspiration to start writing songs again.  Not to sound too melodramatic, but in the midst of my defeat and despair--often because of my defeat and despair--I found something to sing about, and more importantly, the words to sing about it.

I didn't see it coming, but those three months, January to March, 2014, would turn out to be one of the most creative seasons of my life.  It was not a bright cheery kind of creativity, mind you.  It was often a raw, unpolished, haunted kind of creativity, but because of that, a more honest creativity than I'd ever really experienced before.  The songs didn't necessarily gush out of me--I was still very tired a lot of the time--but even so, I wrote at least twelve complete songs in three months, along with a number of arrangements that I worked on for the kids at my daughter's songwriter's club. Besides that, I also wrote a handful of poems, trying to process what I was going through, and, in the second half of my leave, as I felt my energy and optimism returning, four chapters of a novel that I'd been wanting to get to for years.

I'm sharing all this to illustrate one of the paradoxical truths I discovered about burnout.  I haven't done an quantitative study of it, of course, so I can't say if this is true for everyone who goes through it, but it was certainly true for me (and for the record, most of the books on pastoral burnout that I've read more or less bear out this simple observation):  burnout doesn't only steal; it also gives.

At least, if you take it seriously and get the help you need, it can. Burnout can be a profound gift-- a gift wrapped in barbed-wire, you might say, but a gift nonetheless.

I say this as someone who's been through it, and not at all to make light of the struggle, the darkness, the very real risk to your well-being that is burnout; but as someone who has been through it, I don't want to make light of the gift that's there, either.

What, in particular, did burnout give me?  I mentioned the renewed and deepened wells of creativity.  I'd add to that: greater authenticity and transparency in my ministry; better insight as a pastor into the spiritual and emotional struggles of others; greater wisdom in how to love and help and respond to people as they go through them; more real friendships; a deeper relationship with my wife; empirical evidence that God will be there still, on the other side of the dark night of the soul.

It may be that burnout is just a conceptual thing for you today, something you've only read about but never experienced.  It may be that you've come through burnout yourself, and what I'm saying is resonating with you here.  And, of course, it may be that you're right in the middle of something overwhelming today, like I was back in December 2013, and you're wondering if it could possibly get better.

If you're in that third place, let me say that it can.  It will mean taking it very seriously and getting the help you need, it will take honesty and discipline and, especially, God stepping in, but it can become, not just better, but, when you least expected it to be so, an unlikely and beautiful gift.

<< back

The Clock of the Long Now, a song

Here's another song from my recent album, inversions.  The "clock of the long now" is a project some scientists and engineers are working on in Nevada somewhere.  It's a clock that's designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years. The goal of the project is to inspire long-term thinking in a world where our whole sense of time is organized around increasingly ephemeral time-spans. I have trouble imagining the next ten years (sometimes 10 minutes is a stretch): this clock ticks once a year, with a "century hand" that advances every hundred years and a cuckoo that comes out every millenium.

From the first time I heard about it, I've always thought there was a song in there, somewhere, waiting to be sung.  And last year, when my heart sort of entered this surreal place where life itself seemed like an interminable now, it was very cathartic to finally find the time to sit down and write it.

Here's what I came up with:





World’s turning in a time lapse freeze frame
Capturing the moment on the face of the clock of the
Long now, ticking in the dark of the
Long night of the soul and

It’s of the essence it’s on our hands it
Heals all wounds it waits for no man
Somehow you got stuck in the middle of a
Long now (how time flies)

We had forever burning in our hearts
Warming our hands in the flickering light

There’s time to scatter stones
And to gather them again
Time to tear and time to mend
You know I’d turn back the hands if I knew how
To wind the clock of the long now

Yesterday, today tomorrow
Time slips by it’s running to a stand still
Life in beautiful motion
Pictures (thaw the freeze frame)
A day with you is like a thousand
Years are flying by like restless
Days ago I thought I saw
Eternity in your eyes

We had forever burning in our hearts
Warming our souls in the flickering light

There’s time to scatter stones
And to gather them again
Time to tear and time to mend
You know I’d turn back the hands if I knew how
To wind the clock of the long now
Ticking in the dark it’s ticking in the dark it’s
ticking in the dark of the night of the long now (x4)

I thought I heard a thief knocking on my door
I thought I saw the sky turn red last night
Powers shaking the stars were falling
An angel calling in my dreams last night

There’s time to scatter stones
And to gather them again
Time to tear and time to mend
You know I’d turn back the hands if I knew how
To wind the clock of the long now

The Uncanny Valley

And while I blog through thoughts, observations and lessons learned regarding pastoral burnout (see last week's post), I thought I'd also take some time to blog through my most recent musical project, inversions.  This is a collection of songs I wrote during the dark time, many of them efforts to process what I was going through, others expressing hope for healing on the other side.  You can check out the whole recording on Bandcamp [click here].  

In the field of aesthetics, "the uncanny valley" describes the vague repulsion that people experience when something "unreal" is extremely close to life-like, but not quite alive.  The idea is, if you could graph people's comfort level on the y-axis, with an object's life-likeness on the x, the line would ascend until it reached the just-about-but-not-quite-life-like point, at which point it would drop off sharply into the "uncanny valley."

To me, the concept of the "uncanny valley"--being in an emotional valley because what you're experiencing is only life-like enough to cause distress--was a pretty vivid image for my burn-out experience.  It's like wandering this realm where things seem real, but the vitality and vividness is missing from it all, so it's only real enough to be vaguely disturbing.  I wrote "The Uncanny Valley" early on in my burn-out time, trying to get some handles on it all.

The Uncanny Valley

You’ve been wandering around the uncanny valley
Looking for a place to crash
Like a stolen purse in a blind back alley
Your story is out of cash
And it’s a long way up
Climbing straight to the top

There’s flooding down here in the uncanny valley
And the levee’s about to break
Like a cardboard sign in an occupy rally
The truth is hard to fake
And it’s a long way down
Better try not to drown

And if I had the choice I’d build on higher ground
Where you can see blue sky for days (and days and days)
And if I knew the way I’d bring you with me too
We’d stand there blinking blind beneath her sunny rays
But it’s a long way up
Climbing straight to the top

La la, la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la
Soon we’ll be standing in the the sun, singing
La la, la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la
Just one more ridge and we’ll be done

You’ve been hovering around the uncanny valley
Looking for a place to land
Like a Don Giovanni in his grand finale
You’re standing on sinking sand
And it’s a long way home
Fingers worn to the bone

And if I had the choice I’d build on level ground
Where there is room to spare for miles (and miles and miles)
And if I had a plan I’d build a room for you
Where you could hang your hat and rest there for a while
But it’s a long way home
Fingers worn to the bone

La la, la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la
Soon we’ll be standing in the the sun, singing
La la, la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la
Just one more ridge and we’ll be done

Notes from the Ashes (Part I): Some Reflections on Pastoral Burn-out

It was just over a year ago now that I went through one of the darkest periods of my ministry, if not my life.  It was a season that started after a long run of emotionally demanding ministry challenges, a few hard disappointments in a row, some big uncertainties looming up on the horizon, and my worst self getting the better of me one too many times.  Before long I was exhibiting all the classic signs of burn-out—severe depression, physical exhaustion, difficulty making even simple decisions, unexpected and uncontrollable bouts of anxiety, and what those in the biz call “escape thoughts.”

After a few months of being like this, it all came to a head one very dark Sunday evening, when an unexpected email from a well-meaning friend expressing some concerns about my ministry, launched me into a startlingly intense and disproportionate explosion of frustration, fear and despair.  I say “startling” because when the storm passed, the uncontrollable eruption of emotion was so alarming to me that I finally admitted to myself, and my wife, that I needed help.

About a month later I was off on stress leave for emotional and physical exhaustion.  About three months after that, after a good deal of self-work, some pretty serious work on my life with God, and some much-less serious but vitally needed rest, I was back at my ministry post, with fresh clarity on who I was as a pastor, renewed heart for the ministry, and new depths in my life with God.  I was, in the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “an older and wiser man.”

The medical term for what happened to me, I think, is “clinical depression.”  The corporate world calls it “burn-out” and the church sometimes calls it “compassion fatigue.”  I just call it “my dark time.”  It was very real, very raw, at times very scary, and, while I wouldn't wish it on anyone, God used it to help me become the pastor he has called me to be.

For the next few weeks here at terra incognita, I intend to share some practical and/or spiritual lessons I learned from my experience, some of the things God was doing in me through that time, and some of the things I wish people had told me about burn-out while I was going through it.  My purpose here is three-fold.  First, inasmuch as all this happened a year ago now, I think it would be personally helpful to review what I went through, to remind myself exactly how I got to a place I never want to be in again.  Second: one of the things that God said to me early on in my recovery time was that none of this would be wasted, that a deeper, more authentic ministry would grow out of the pain I was in; so perhaps sharing some of these spiritual insights is a way of humbly holding him to that promise, to redeem my burn-out by offering it as help and hope for others.  But most importantly, third: if you, or someone you know is now where I was then, or close, or on the way there, my hope is that these travel notes from someone who’s been down the path before may be of help to you.

To start it all off, let me offer four simple things I learned about burn-out that were very important first-steps—not to my recovery itself, necessarily, but to my getting to a place where I could begin to recover.  In a way similar to how acceptance is the first step to recovery of other kinds, these are four things I needed to hear someone I trusted say to me, before I could begin to heal.

1.  Burn-out is not a sign of failure but of strength. 

I know that sounds like the nonsense motivational speakers say when they want you to believe that "obstacles" are really "opportunities in disguise," but the thing is, when someone burns out, it’s because they've been doing too-well for too-long what other people would have given up on long ago.  Or think about it like the fuse in a car.  When the fuse blows, it’s not because the fuse failed, but because it worked: there was an overload on the system and by “blowing” the fuse did its job and protected the system from frying.  The burned-out pastor is like that fuse, inasmuch as he or she “blew” to keep the emotional load from frying the whole system (the local church or ministry context).  Refusing to “blow” and letting the emotional load fry the system would have been the real failure.

2.   You are not alone. 

Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Peter Scazzero, Bill Hybels, Rob Bell and, as far as I can gather, the Apostle Paul himself, have all been through what you’re going through.  One of the lies I believed early on in my experience, a lie that was keeping me from seeking the help I needed, went like this: “if you do ‘burn-out,’ your credibility as a pastor (such as it was) will be shot.”  So imagine my surprise, as I began reading about burn out, and I discovered that almost every contemporary church leader I’ve ever admired, respected, taken cures from or tried to model my ministry after, have themselves been through this thing called burn-out.  Knowing they’d come out the other side older and wiser helped me to believe I could, too.

3.  This is not "just in your head." 

Burn-out is as much a physical thing as it is an intellectual or emotional.  This was huge for me to realize because it forced me to accept that I could not "keep pushing" by sheer mental exertion alone, anymore than a guy with a broken femur can just "walk it off."  

(I’ll share more about this later, but here’s how it was explained to me:  your brain is built to run naturally on "feel-good-hormones" like endorphins, oxytocin and what not.  These chemicals are produced naturally by things like rest, sleep, physical exercise, good nutrition, making love to your spouse, enjoying the company of good friends, and so on.  If you deplete your system of these hormones because you’re running it too hard without doing the things that replenish them, your body will start producing adrenaline—a stress hormone—to keep it running instead.  This is like if you run out of gas for the car, so you use some high octane rocket fuel because it’s all you’ve got; it’ll run for a while, but eventually it will destroy your engine.  If you’ve been running for months on adrenaline, eventually the system will shut down, and no matter how hard you turn the key, it ain't gonna start anymore.  The only way to heal is to do those things—rest, exercise, recreation, friendship, nutrition—that replenishes the tank.)

4.  Depression is real. 

I would have "said" this before my dark time, of course, but after the dark time, I actually "get it." People who have experienced depression have different terms for it—the noon-day demon, the black dog, and so on—that try to put their finger on what it’s like to be depressed.  I often describe it like this: “It’s like, the sun’s shining.  You can feel the light on your face, feel the warmth on your skin, see the blue sky, and yet your brain tells you with all seriousness, ‘nope.  It’s another cloudy day.’”  I never thought I stigmatized people with depression before, until I faced my visceral resistance to seeking help for my own depression, and suddenly I realized all the prejudices and stereotypes and judgement I subconsciously harbored about “cloudy Dee,” that I never realized or admitted before.  It could be that exorcising those things—judgment, prejudice and stereotypes about depression—was one of  the things God was doing through my burn out.

If any of this is resonating with you today, let me encourage you to take it seriously.  One of the other things I learned about burn-out is that there's sort of a lag-time with it—that is, often we are burned out months before the "running on adrenaline" catches up to us and we finally have to admit that the tank is empty, so the sooner we're honest with ourselves, the better.

Burn-out is not the end of the world, but it is the end of some things—a false kind of self-sufficiency, an unrealistic perception of yourself and your limits, in-authenticity and dishonesty about where you're really at with God. But as someone who's been through it, let me humbly suggest that for us to grow in the ways of Jesus, the sooner those things come to an end, the better.

next >>