Tag: ministry-of-presence

But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again? – from “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath

Throughout my career, I walked with the wounded. I communed with those suffering grief, addiction, disease, and mental illness. I’m certain that my personal struggles, so close to the surface, helped me become what Henri Nouwen called a “wounded healer.” It was a privilege to share sacramental moments with fellow human beings.

There’s an incident seared in my memory. Bob, a member of a church I served, had reached the end of what he could tolerate. He took a pistol, walked out to his driveway around midnight, and shot himself. I lived two blocks away, where I was awoken by my phone jangling. It was a police officer. An ambulance was on its way, he said, but Bob, somehow still conscious, was asking for Pastor Krin to come to his side. I got there quickly, where I kneeled next to him, his head haloed by blood. Under the bell jar, our eyes met. I assured him that both his Creator and I loved him, and that nothing could separate him from that reality. I believed it then; I still do.

Miraculously, he survived without brain damage and went on to heal the underlying depression that drew him into the abyss.

My empathy for those who suffer has never subsided. Recently it extended to Esther Greenwood, the main character of Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar, published just before she committed suicide. Set during a single summer, it’s the story of a young woman’s descent into depression. Beginning with a writer’s internship in New York, she plummets through a series of mental asylums, enduring primitive shock treatments along the way.

The novel had been on my radar for years, one of those “must reads” for students of serious literature. I knew about Sylvia’s tumultuous relationship with poet Ted Hughes. I had read some of her poems which really didn’t speak to me, but this novel was both lyrical and terrifying. I will never forget it.

The bell jar becomes a metaphor, a symbol of the pressures Esther faces to conform to societal norms. The conventional paths of marriage and motherhood, held up as ultimate goals for women, feel like chains to her, stifling her ambitions and suffocating her spirit. She yearns for freedom, for the ability to define her own life, yet every attempt to assert control pushes her further into despair.

Esther speaks of this inner turmoil. “I was supposed to be the author of my own life.” “I wanted to be intelligent and popular.” “I wanted to be a perfect person.” “I always believed that if I did or said the right thing, then everything would turn out all right.” “What is the point of this life if we are not living it to the fullest?”

Increasingly, depression dictates her thoughts. “It was as if I were always wearing a mask.” “I felt like I was drowning.” “The world was a big, dark ball, and I was all alone.” “The only thing I could do was stay quiet and let the shadows take me.” “I wanted to disappear.”

Seen through the bell jar’s distortion, Esther’s urge to vanish means ending her life. She contemplates multiple methods. Jumping off a roof. Drowning in the ocean. Then, in her most dedicated effort, taking an overdose of pills.

That final attempt still chills me. Esther makes her way to the family cellar, then to a dugout tucked in its furthest recess. She crawls inside, pulls some firewood against the entrance, and takes every pill in her bottle.

It’s hard to describe how that affected me. I was right there, sitting next to her in the damp darkness, powerless to banish her despair, bearing witness to a life that mattered as preciously as any of ours.

My colleagues and I call it the “ministry of presence.” Simply being with another person during their trials. Refraining from trite platitudes. Offering only love and grace. Over the years, it led me to sit beneath the bell jar with so many people, enduring their pressures with them, believing that the necessary remedies would emerge but that love and empathy come first.

Admittedly, I took this further than many. I remember being at the bedside of an elderly woman in her final days. She had no family left, and her failing heart would soon stop beating. I had been walking with her through all of this like a surrogate son.

She looked up at me, and in a weak voice said, “Pastor Krin, will you lie down next to me?”

Frankly, I didn’t care what the hospital staff felt. There was enough space next to her frail body, so I stretched out alongside her. She turned, laid her head against my shoulder, and softly fell asleep.

As I looked up at the ceiling of the hospital room, listening to her shallow breathing and the echo of voices in the hallway, something transcendent happened. The distortions of the bell jar completely cleared. There was only the present, the connection of two lives, and the omnipresent love that embraces all of us if we let it.