Shepherd Me, Oh, Lord: The Mentally Ill Youth

Update: The story is similar, the place is an elementary school in Connecticut. The gun violence is obvious, but maybe not so the illness prompting it.

The recent, tragic events in a Colorado movie theater elementary school brings the topic of the mentally ill yet again to fore. This most recent mass shooting brings the public face to face with the mentally ill once more. In American society it has been the norm to keep the chronically mentally ill out of institutions and in local communities since the late 1970's. Those afflicted with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, manic depression (now often referred to as Bi-Polar Depression), psychosis, certain personality disorders, paranoia, etc., are now commonly treated with scads of psychiatric medications. Thankfully for the many who suffer these illnesses, their "meds" and support from mental health professionals and loved ones, keeps them on an even keel. They can "function," as the medical community calls it. 

Update: The violence must not mask the need for medical attention for those suffering these types of illnesses.

Many of those affected work, study, hold advanced degrees, support families, and are friend to others. They are office mates, the person seated in the church pew next to us, the one inspecting produce at local farmers markets, walking dogs, attending their child's sporting events, our neighbor next door, the guy in the car stopped next to us, and most of the time we don't know they are ill. Quirky or moody--yes, but we do not think they are mentally ill. And that's the way it should be.

Many medical conditions are best left private. And since many of the mentally ill in our communities can function, that is to say that they can carry out most of their normal activities with little or no modifications on a normal day, it is right that they live at home, in their community, in our community. However things may go awry, and the public is reinvigorated, terrified even of the factors that cause mental illness and the fact that they just don't understand the low-functioning or non-functioning individual. Often for those who suffer various illnesses, their illness does not arise until the early adult years; some suffers have extremely high IQs. It may be more years until they arrive at treatment or appropriate support for their condition. And for some, the medications don't work, or they present terrible side effects such as diabetes or neurological damage, making their use perilous.

One famous Schizophrenic, John Nash, is a Mathematician and a Nobel Prize winner. In the book, A Beautiful Mind (later made into a movie by that title) the author, Sylvia Nasar, recounts his sad decline and descent into illness, the efforts to treat him and the striving of a community to accommodate him; when all failed, he dropped out, into the shadows for many years. Ahead of his time intellectually, it took just as many years for the world to recognize the genius of his "Game Theory" for which he received the Nobel Prize for Economic Theory.
Perhaps Nash's situation was ideal; it was not without grief and despair, failed and broken relationships, those who could not tolerate year in and year out of his quirky and unpredictable behavior.

And so it may be for the most recent perpetrator of the Aurora, Colorado Connecticut shootings. A killer he is alleged to be and possibly mentally ill, having slid into his current state over the past years.
 As a society is there not much else we might do to protect ourselves from these otherwise unprovoked attacks? We like to think cameras, doors, locks, security personnel will keep us safe; but they didn't here.
The man with the gun was heedless to it all. His weapons were acquired from home. His parent allowed their use on other occasions. She suffered the consequences for that. This family is also victimized.
 However, we may always hope that the Lord of All holds those afflicted and all those harmed by the weaknesses and failures of others in his sight.
"Shepherd me O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears" Psalm 23

Shepherd Me, O God; Those Who Suffer Mental Illnesses

The recent events in a Colorado movie theater brings the topic of the mentally ill yet again to fore. This most recent mass shooting brings the public face to face with the mentally ill once more. In American society it has been the norm to keep the chronically mentally ill out of institutions and in local communities since the late 1970's. Those afflicted with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, manic depression (now often referred to as Bi-Polar Depression), psychosis, certain personality disorders, paranoia, etc., are now commonly treated with scads of psychiatric medications. Thankfully for the many who suffer these illnesses, their "meds" and support from mental health professionals and loved ones, keeps them on an even keel. They can "function," as the medical community calls it.

Many of those affected work, study, hold advanced degrees, support families, and are friend to others. They are office mates, the person seated in the church pew next to us, the one inspecting produce at local farmers markets, walking dogs, attending their child's sporting events, our neighbor next door, the guy in the car stopped next to us, and most of the time we don't know they are ill. Quirky or moody--yes, but we do not think they are mentally ill. And that's the way it should be.

Many medical conditions are best left private. And since many of the mentally ill in our communities can function, that is to say that they can carry out most of their normal activities with little or no modifications on a normal day, it is right that they live at home, in their community, in our community. However things may go awry, and the public is reinvigorated, terrified even of the factors that cause mental illness and the fact that they just don't understand the low-functioning or non-functioning individual. Often for those who suffer various illnesses, their illness does not arise until the early adult years; some suffers have extremely high IQs. It may be more years until they arrive at treatment or appropriate support for their condition. And for some, the medications don't work, or they present terrible side effects such as diabetes or neurological damage, making their use perilous.

One famous Schizophrenic, John Nash, is a Mathematician and a Nobel Prize winner. In the book, A Beautiful Mind (later made into a movie by that title) the author, Sylvia Nasar, recounts his sad decline and descent into illness, the efforts to treat him and the striving of a community to accommodate him; when all failed, he dropped out, into the shadows for many years. Ahead of his time intellectually, it took just as many years for the world to recognize the genius of his "Game Theory" for which he received the Nobel Prize for Economic Theory.
Perhaps Nash's situation was ideal; it was not without grief and despair, failed and broken relationships, those who could not tolerate year in and year out of his quirky and unpredictable behavior.

And so it may be for the most recent perpetrator of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. A killer he is alleged to be and possibly mentally ill, having slid into his current state over the last few years. However, we may always hope that the Lord of All holds those afflicted and all those harmed by the weaknesses and failures of others in his sight.
"Shepherd me O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears" Psalm 23

Reclaiming Our Innate Happiness

"We are made to seek happiness." The Art of Happiness by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
"The basic, underlying nature of the human being is gentleness," so writes His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. In his book on the subject of happiness, The Art of Happiness, His Holiness writes poetically that "if we look at the very pattern of our existence from an early age until our death, we can see the way in which we are fundamentally nurtured by others' affection. It begins at birth." He asserts that a calm, composed mind is benefical to health and well being.

Yet if this be true, how then may aggression and hostility endemic to the human species be accounted for? His Holiness replies that "unbalanced human intelligence, misuse of our intelligence, our imaginative faculty" are the principle causes of such behavior. His Holiness adds that if the intelligence innate to humans is not formed in a balanced, constructive manner, then the end result is often conflict and violence.

Thus, His Holiness concludes we must use our minds in a way that leads to respect, compassion and understanding if we are to prosper in the modern, complex world.

All Human Problems are Spiritual

"Then all of them together, crying loudly, moved to the malevolent shore that awaits anyone who has no fear of God." -- Inferno, Canto III by Dante

In his belief, born of experience first as a cloistered monk and then as a Jungian therapist, Thomas Moore comes now to realize that "what was really at the root of those unsettled lives was religion... I didn't always realize the extent to which spiritual issues were playing a central role... The obvious spiritual problems had to do with disturbing experiences surrounding religion in childhood." In his book, The Soul's Religion, Moore writes "in these ordinary, troubled lives, spirit and psyche were closely connected. In other cases, spiritual issues were more subtle and required a broadening of the idea of spirituality."

Today, society to the extent that it acknowledges religion at all, sees itself "in relation to an image of a "gentleman God," the grandfather and patriarch." This pushes the feminine into the shadows, hidden beneath the surface of everyday life. Neglected feminine nature in the world is often felt in oppressive and mysterious forces that may make living an everyday life almost impossible. For the feminine energy, like her balance, masculine energy, needs recognition for a balance in daily living. Many today neglect, even deny the feminine nature; they are hostile to its alleged weak frailty. Yet many seek its balance in a professional life that includes care-taking in fields like nursing, elementary school teaching, social work; merely doing this everyday, external work doesn't solve an interior, spiritual lack or need for the feminine energy. There are, Moore notes, countless females who mother and nurture all those they contact almost to death. We often seek to escape them. Allowing the feminine, the marian into daily life as a spiritual role or guide "is an effective way to heal" the lack of a divine mother in a man or woman's life. She takes her proper place as an 'avatar' rather than a lived out female image. Then here she is spirit; she is soul.

"In matters of soul and spirit, things are not always what they might seem." Moore observes, "I have come to understand sexism and violence against women as a spiritual issue, as a failure to appreciate the feminine mysteries" which no amount of nudity, ogling, looking or voyeuristic regard will alleviate. The deepest interior, which cannot be seen, can only be sensed with the soul-heart is at issue. "Today many spiritual passions are disguised in politics, war, money, sex or athletics." Even so, most secular, enlightenment, outlets for spiritual passion are inadequate because they address merely a surface issue, meaning that recognition is viewed only indirectly, often unconsciously, so we don't often even admit they are religious. These modern, secular, indirect forms "siphon off spiritual steam, leaving unsatisfied religious needs."

This loss of recognition of the spiritual, the religious, as an attitude, a way of life, a lifestyle, leads to great degrees of loss, of illness, of alienation in modern life. Some have written of the "sick soul." Many relationships, families and marriages fail "because we now treat them as sociological constructions or psychological arrangements, partnerships, rather than as holy mysteries. As a result we continue to crave religion of the deepest kind, often in disguised form; yet so much of what we try is inadequate, "only increasing the craving and emptiness" of our deepest selves, writes Moore.

In maturity, spiritual growth, like growth in any other area of our life, renders to us a "quest and search." What we discover is a deepening and a broadening of ourself; we are not obliged to a single path, our perceptions deepen, wisdom accrues. We often discover paradoxes at work. How to combine apparent opposites into one coherent whole is our challenge, and our grace. In doing so, we find the gifts of our life.