Tag: writing

Lucid Reunion

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.  – Stephen LaBerge

The sign on my office door says John Longfellow, PsyD – Individual and Family Counseling. I’ve been a psychologist for 20 years, helping people unravel their burdens and find resolution.

About three years ago, my enthusiasm flagged. Call it a midlife crisis, but listening to others grew tedious, especially with clients who took little responsibility for their healing. I nodded my head and kept appropriate eye contact, but I felt like a bobble-head toy. My wife noticed that I’d lost my lost my passion.

“You’re just not yourself,” she said, kindly but with an edge of exasperation. “I don’t have a prescription, but you need to find a way to connect with your old zest. You still have a lot of years ahead of you. We still have a lot of years ahead of us.”

She was right. I needed a new spark, a fresh avenue of exploration.

That direction came unexpectedly. I was listening to a podcast on my way to work called Wake Up Inside Your Dreams, a fascinating overview of lucid dreaming. The podcaster said, “It’s possible to step into our minds with our eyes open. We begin to see the architecture of our fears and our longings. We realize that we’ve built every wall and horizon ourselves.”

I’ve always had vivid dreams, but their meanings evaporate as I awaken. I knew a little about lucid dream theory, but the podcast spurred me to sharpen my research. I devoured everything I could find, from Jung’s Red Book to LaBerge, Bogzaran, Holziner, Aspy, and every article archived by The Lucidity Institute.

I began to experiment in my own life, keeping detailed dream journals and using practices like reality testing and mnemonic induction. It paid off. I could stay longer in my visions, understand more symbols, and even translate a few simple lessons into my waking world.

But still, something eluded me, something deeply connected to that sense of joy I’d been lacking for so long.

Gradually, I integrated this new focus into my practice, becoming a guide for others in their nightly walkabouts. Word got out through the therapeutic community. New referrals sought me out for release from night terrors, recurring guilt dreams, or lost loves who visited frequently like ghosts. I taught them to stay calm, to recognize the subtle distortions of the dream world: a light switch that doesn’t work, a clock whose hands refuse to move, words that rearrange themselves when you blink. These are the cues, I told them. The seams of the dream world. Pull at them, and you can wake up inside your own story.

I never imagined the fullness of what my own subconscious was preparing for me.

It began one winter night after an exhausting day of sessions. I’d just finished with Claire, a woman haunted by a recurring nightmare of drowning in a river that looked suspiciously like the one outside her childhood home. That night, perhaps still affected by her angst, I dreamed of a place I’d never been, an old train platform under a sky the color of brass.

It was still at first. No wind, no movement, just a suspended hush. The platform stretched endlessly in both directions, lined with benches and antique lamps that cast faint halos of light. A few people milled about, blurred, like they were painted in watercolor.

And then I saw him in sharp focus.

Across the tracks, on a bench opposite mine, sat a boy. He was swinging his legs and rolling a toy car from the palm of one hand to the other. I didn’t need to guess who he was. I knew instantly that I was looking at myself at eight years old.

The shock of recognition was almost physical. Inside the dream, I felt my chest tighten and my breath quicken. He looked exactly as I remembered myself. Thin, serious, with that same stubborn cowlick that refused to lie flat no matter how much my mother spat on her palm. He was wearing a red windbreaker I hadn’t thought about in decades.

I called out his name—my name—but even as the sound left my mouth, a train thundered between us, all smoke and screeching metal. When it passed, the bench was empty.

I woke up with my heart hammering. The clock read 3:14 a.m. My sheets were twisted around me, damp with sweat. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and tried to tell myself what I’d tell a patient: it’s just an image, a projection of memory, nothing more. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something in me had been waiting for this encounter.

The dream came again the next night.

This time the station looked older, like a faded photograph. The air shimmered with sunset light. The boy was there again, farther away, walking along the opposite platform. I shouted, but my voice came out thick, like a sound underwater. He turned his head slightly, enough for me to see his eyes. There was no surprise in them, only recognition and something else I couldn’t name.

Then the scene shifted, as dreams often do. The tracks vanished. I was standing in a field outside my grandparents’ farm, the one I hadn’t visited since childhood. The boy was near the tree line, still holding that toy car. I started toward him, but the ground turned to mud. I slogged forward, desperate to reach him, until the earth pulled at my ankles like quicksand. Just before I sank, I woke up gasping.

By the end of that week, the dreams were nightly appointments. Sometimes I’d find the boy in places I hadn’t thought about in years. The hallway of my elementary school, the corner of our old backyard where I set up battlefields for my toy soldiers, my childhood bedroom as sunlight streamed through the window. Each time, I was a step closer to him, but each time, something intervened.

The researcher in me cataloged every detail in a notebook: dates, colors, emotional tones. The therapist in me found it thrilling to be recording pure, personal data. But the man in me felt a form of grief. There was something I’d lost in the past, and it was still slipping through my fingers.

I began to see small echoes of those dreams in my waking life. A boy on the bus holding a toy car. A poster in a coffee shop showing a train steaming into the horizon. It was eerie enough that I called a colleague I trusted and explained what was happening.

“I hear you, John,” he said. “Do you know Jung’s theory of synchronicity?”

“A bit. Describe it to me.”

“He said that sometimes events coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, but they lack any real causal connection. That sounds like what’s happening to you.”

I muttered an agreement as we hung up, but I knew better. I knew that my subconscious was breaching the border between worlds. And I began to understand the exasperation of my patients. As one of them had said about his recurring nightmares, “If there’s a lesson here, just fucking teach it to me and get out of my mind! You’re driving me crazy!”

I tried all the techniques I taught others, but none of them stopped the dreams. If anything, the lucidity deepened. I could feel the texture of the air. I could smell dust and rain. I could hear my own heartbeat, quick and young, as if borrowed from the boy I pursued.

Three weeks in, the dream took a new turn.

I found myself in a park I knew intimately. It was where my father taught me to ride a bike. The grass was impossibly green, the air full of the smell of lilacs. My father wasn’t there, but the boy was sitting beneath a tree, his knees drawn up, that toy car in his hands.

For a moment I couldn’t move. After all my pursuing, it now felt wrong to approach him, like I was intruding on sacred ground. But the boy looked up, and I saw no confusion or fear in his face, just patience.

“You took long enough,” he said. His voice was clear and even, nothing ghostly about it.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” I said.

He smiled, my own smile softened by time. “No. You’ve been trying not to.”

Those words cut through me. I wanted to ask what he meant, but he stood and started walking toward the swings, motioning for me to follow. The scene wavered, colors bleeding at the edges. I fought to stay asleep, to hold the moment.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Because you finally are.” And then he walked right up to me and handed me the toy car. I looked down and recognized it instantly, a Matchbox green Camaro that had been one of my favorites. Our eyes locked and he smiled in a way that filled my body with light and warmth.

“I lost this years ago,” I said.

He shrugged and sighed. “You stopped looking.”

When I woke, my hand was open, my palm warm, as if I’d been holding something small and solid. There were tears on my cheeks. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel tired. I felt lighter, as though some long-frozen part of me had started to thaw.

Still, I’m a scientist at heart. I spent the morning journaling and cross-referencing symbols. The park. The train. The toy car. All anchors of memory, all pointing toward one obvious conclusion: the boy represented my unintegrated childhood self, the part I’d buried under professionalism and adult control. I regained my usual clinical detachment.

That afternoon, during a session, one of my patients—a middle-aged woman suffering grief after the loss of her mother—told me she’d dreamed of chasing her mom through endless corridors, never quite reaching her. Normally, I would have guided her toward strategies for confronting the dream figure. Instead, I said, “Maybe she’s not running from you. Maybe she’s leading you somewhere.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed, and nodded slowly, as if I’d just offered her a map.

In truth, I was offering one to myself.

The dreams didn’t stop after that, but they softened. The boy would appear beside me now instead of across some impassable barrier. Sometimes we’d sit quietly together on a curb, a hill, or the roof of a house. He never said much. It was like communion, and it lasted longer than any other dream experience I’d had, time rolling out ahead of us.      

Changes seeped into my waking life. I started taking walks with my wife after dinner instead of falling asleep at my desk. One night she held my hand and said, “I like this new spring in your step.” I called my sister, whom I hadn’t spoken to in months. I even dug through an old storage box in the attic and found a Polaroid of myself at eight, sitting under that same tree in the park. My father had written on the back: To my brave boy. Keep going.

That night, the dream came again, but this time there was no boy. I was standing alone in the park, dusk settling around me, the air thick with that lilac scent. The toy car lay in the grass at my feet. I picked it up, turned it over, felt its weight. From somewhere distant, I heard laughter—mine, but younger. Then everything faded into light.

I woke before dawn, not startled this time, just awake. Truly awake.

Since then, my dreams have changed in tone. Sometimes the boy appears, older now, walking beside me through unfamiliar cities. On other nights, he’s absent entirely, but I feel his presence like a hand at my back. I no longer chase him. We’re walking in the same direction, a deep, lucid reunion between who I was and who I’ve become.

A few weeks ago, a patient asked me, “Dr. Longfellow, what happens when we master lucid dreaming and can control everything?”

I smiled. “I’ve learned in my own dreams that control isn’t the point. It’s more important to listen and let the dream speak its own strange language.”

She nodded and looked down with tears on her cheeks.

These nights, when I drift toward sleep, I feel an exciting flicker of anticipation. I know that somewhere in that vast theater of my mind, a child version of me might still be sitting beneath a tree, turning a toy car in his hands.

And he’s not waiting anymore.

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The Necessity of Wildness

(Click here to download my expanded compilation of text and photos called The Necessity of Wildness. Best viewed as a two-page spread in Adobe Acrobat)

John Muir once said that “wildness is a necessity.” I agree, and it’s a truth that stands as an indictment of our current society. We live in a culture that multiplies distractions. We confuse convenience with meaning. We mistake consumer goods for necessities. Against the backdrop of this noise, wild places call to us—not as optional luxuries, but as lifelines to our truest selves. This call has echoed through my life since childhood, sometimes quietly, sometimes like an alarm.

I grew up in the Los Angeles Basin, a hazy expanse of freeways, stucco homes, and constant motion. In those early years, before the Clean Air Act of 1970 curbed the worst pollution, Smog Alerts were frequent. Our teachers sometimes kept us indoors for recess, because the outside air literally burned our lungs.

My childhood could easily have been devoid of natural beauty. But my father, at the considerable sacrifice of commuting long hours, insisted on something different. He moved us to an area of the Los Angeles Basin that still held remnants of old Southern California: chapparal covered hills, orange and avocado orchards, creeks running through ravines.

My brothers and I roamed those hills as if they were our personal kingdom. We named special places, caught lizards and toads, and wandered stream beds that smelled deeply of loam. I can close my eyes even now and see the silhouette of a great horned owl gliding over our house at twilight, taking its place in the eucalyptus trees that bordered our property. I remember falling over backwards, not to make a snow angel, but to carve an outline of my body in a field of tall wild mustard, gazing at the blue sky above, listening to the buzz of pollinating bees.

As I grew older, Boy Scouting deepened my relationship with wildness. Our troop hiked the John Muir Trail, rafted the Colorado River, and camped in the Mojave Desert surrounded by Joshua trees. I began to understand Muir’s belief that these places were “fountains of life.” I felt that fountain rising in me. Still, as adulthood encroached with work, ambition, and responsibilities, I sometimes forgot to return to the source.

Years later, emerging from one of the most difficult periods of my life, a spiritual guide got my attention. “As you piece together this new beginning,” he told me, “reserve time alone in nature. This isn’t just nostalgia about your childhood. It’s a portal to the serenity your soul is seeking.” That simple truth rang like a bell. I listened. Since then, immersing myself in nature is no longer a casual hobby; it is woven into my schedule as an essential practice. If I neglect it, I feel the restlessness immediately, a tug from the wild reminding me of what I’ve forgotten.

Once I’m there, these three necessities impress themselves on my soul.

The Necessity of Stillness

Stillness in nature is not the absence of sound. Anyone who has walked in a forest knows its constant music. Stillness is the presence of something deeper, a rootedness. Nature invites us into this realm, and if we let it work its magic, it loosens the grip that multitasking and digital overload exert on our spirits.

I once took a group of inner-city boys from Los Angeles on a backpacking trip into the San Gorgonio Wilderness. It required days of preparation just to get them ready. We had to borrow gear, teach some basic skills, and coax parental signatures from families who had rarely ventured beyond their barrios.

On the trail, the boys kept up a steady stream of macho joking until I stopped them with a challenge. “For the next half hour,” I said, “let’s walk like the Serrano People, the earliest inhabitants of this area. No talking. Just listen.”

They were skeptical, but they fell silent to indulge me. Almost immediately, the forest honored our reverence. Soft wind whispered through the Ponderosa pines. Scrub jays chattered nearby. We saw a family of mule deer browsing in the undergrowth.

Then, a rabbit emerged on the trail ahead. I held up my hand and we paused. Suddenly—almost mythic in its timing—a huge red-tailed hawk swooped down, seized the hare, and lifted it into the sky. We could hear the flapping of its strong wings.

The boys gasped. These hardened kids who had seen too much violence and too little beauty now stood in awe of something vast, powerful, and humbling. In their eyes I saw something I will never forget. Wonder. Pure, undiluted wonder.

The Necessity of Wonder

Wonder expands us. It loosens the grip of our egos, reminding us that we are a small but precious part of a vast, intricate universe. Though I’ve often shown the Hubble Telescope’s eXtreme Deep Field photo to illustrate this point, it’s far better to experience it firsthand. Find a dark sky preserve and lie on your back beneath the Milky Way. Let your eyes drift across the heavens, realizing that some of the “stars” above you are entire galaxies, each holding billions of suns.

So often, when our minds stretch, our spirits follow.

And wonder isn’t reserved for the cosmic. It pulses through ordinary experiences when we pay attention: the scent of creosote after desert rain, the echo of thunder over a plateau, the iridescent shimmer of a dragonfly’s wings. I once awoke in a bamboo hut on Maui to a series of booming sounds. Only later did I learn that it was humpback whales, joyfully slapping their tails in the dark waters of the bay. Wonder like that stays with you, a quiet ember you can relight repeatedly.

The Necessity of Gratitude

If we stay with it, wonder evolves naturally into gratitude, one of the most stabilizing forces in human life. Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever said was ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

Gratitude opens our eyes not only to the gifts we receive but to the responsibility these gifts confer upon us. When we understand that wildness is a necessity, we feel compelled to protect it, to become stewards of the land and advocates for species that cannot speak for themselves.

This can begin simply with recycling, conserving energy, or planting a pollinator garden. And for some of us, it goes much further. As a Texas Master Naturalist, I have seen ordinary people become extraordinary guardians of the earth. They clean the rivers, remove invasive plant species, and help restore native trees and prairies. They remind me of my own responsibility to help protect the fragile web of life.

Returning to the Wild

A few years ago, on the Pinnacles Trail in Big Bend National Park, I sat beside some ancient rock spires. The noise of modern life, engrained in my chattering thoughts, faded away. Technology, politics, identity, worry, all of it dissolved in the beauty of that place. What remained was a profound stillness. It was an epiphany, both humbling and energizing, connecting me not only with the earth, but with all human beings who have transcended their conditioning and embraced the natural world.

And so, I will always return to the trail, because Muir was right: wildness is not optional. It is a necessity for stillness, for wonder, for gratitude, and ultimately, for becoming whole.

Happy trails to all of you!

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Victor Benavides and the Power of Words

Welcome back to our series of interviews with authors in the Story Sanctum family. As I said in the first installment—a conversation with Soter Lucio—it’s a privilege to connect with these writers and learn the backstories to their artistry. This is especially true since they come from vastly different countries and experiences.

This time, meet Victor Benavides, a Texas-based author whose debut short story Carrier the Fisherman appeared on our site on July 1, 2025. It’s a piece dedicated to his grandfather that evokes vivid scenes of war, a brawl in New Orleans, and life along the southern coast of Texas. At the center of it all is Carrier, a larger-than-life presence with an unexpected fate. Take a few moments to read it!

KVT: First, Victor, thank you for taking the time to share with us. I see that you grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (RGV). As a fellow Texan, I’ve spent a lot of time on both sides of the American/Mexican border. Does your family have historic roots in that area?

VB: My father moved here in 1943 when he was fourteen years old. I remember him sharing a story about his first day here—how his brother gave him a pair of canvas shoes that he cherished. He began his career as a radio personality and DJ in the Valley, and later became a writer, producer, director, and actor in several hit films shot locally, such as Treinta Segundos Para Morir and La Banda del Carro Rojo. My mother was born at Mercy Hospital in Brownsville, Texas, and grew up in Port Isabel. She met my father in 1979.

KVT: Your father sounds like a creative character. Do you remember any specific advice he gave you?

VB (chuckling): My dad gave me advice about everything and anything. When it came to writing, he said to write about something that I find truly inspiring. If I get excited with my own words and feel a sense of wonderment and connection, then I have something worthwhile to share with the world. He also told me that whenever I write fiction, add a bit of truth because it will then become greater. Lastly, he told me to write while in the moment. If I feel inspired in the moment and write something down, even if it’s incomplete, I know that one day I will revisit that piece of writing and finish it when inspiration strikes again. 

KVT: Your bio also says that after earning a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, you are now working on a master’s in English. What prompted this shift?

VB: I’m an English teacher here in the RGV, and I decided to pursue a master’s in English Studies to strengthen my skills and broaden my knowledge of the field. I felt that deepening my understanding of rhetoric, literacy, and composition would make me a more effective and impactful teacher for my students.

KVT: I love this quote from you: “I have always been fascinated with the power of words and how they can stir emotions and help a reader transcend into different literary worlds.” Do you have some favorite authors who influenced you?

VB: Authors who have influenced me deeply include Américo Paredes, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, John Berger, Rudolfo Anaya, Margarita Longoria, Sandra Cisneros, and many others. I’m also drawn to science fiction and admire writers like George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and others for their ability to expand the imagination and reflect on society.

KVT: Can you share any anecdotes from your teaching when you saw students whose emotions were stirred by the power of words?

VB: There’s a famous story I read to my students called The Appointment in Samarra. It’s about a wealthy merchant who sends his servant to get provisions in the bustling marketplace of Baghdad. The servant returns full of fear. When the merchant asks him why, he says that he saw Death in the image of a cloaked woman and she seemed to make a threatening gesture. The servant asks to borrow the merchant’s horse, then gallops to the faraway city of Samarra to hide and escape from her. Later, the merchant goes down to the marketplace and sees the same cloaked figure “Why did you make a threatening gesture towards my servant?” he asks her. “That was not a threatening gesture,” she says. “I was simply startled to see him in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” After reading this, I get a lot of wide-eyed epiphany-induced looks from my students. They realize that the story elicits an emotional response from them because they can identify with the servant’s feelings. No young student really takes into account their own mortality. At that age, they feel invincible. However, the story helps them realize that death is inevitable and that time is a precious resource. Although it’s a bleak story, it helps students appreciate the power of words.

KVT: What are some of your plans for using your writing and your new degree?

VB: I’ve always seen education as a lifelong journey; we’re constantly learning and growing. With my writing, I hope to create literary works that forge emotional connections with readers. I also want to offer more diverse “mirrors” in my work—stories and characters that allow readers from all backgrounds to see themselves reflected and to connect personally with what they read.

KVT: Well, I look forward to reading your work in the future, and I thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

VB: You’re very welcome!

You can find Victor Benavides on Facebook here.

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Meet Soter Lucio: Grandmother, Ironer, Horror Fiction Writer

Stories are a communal currency of humanity. – Tahir Shah

As Fiction Editor at Story Sanctum Publishing, I have the privilege of reading submissions from around the world. We have featured stories by writers from India, Indonesia, Scotland, Taiwan, and England among others. Through my email correspondence with them, as well as deep dives into their work online, I have broadened my appreciation for Story Sanctum’s diverse family of authors.

Recently, I interviewed Soter Lucio from the Island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. We published her short story The Contract on June 1 of this year. Soter’s background, her chosen genre, and her path to discovering her gift fascinate me.

KVT: Soter, tell me something about your family, past and present.

SL: I have always lived in Trinidad, and my family and ancestors have aways been gardeners. We plant and sell in the market on Fridays and Saturdays. We plant chive, thyme, parsley, and short crops like sweet peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, and ochres. I have four children and six grandchildren, all of whom live on Trinidad.

KVT: The main character of The Contract is a woman who washes clothes along the river. I understand that laundering is a part of your past as well.

SL: I worked as a maid until my girls completed Form 5 so that I could be home in the morning before they left for school and home in the afternoons when they returned. Then I started ironing because we needed more money for university and ironing paid better. That was in 1997. I put advertisements in the newspapers and got enough clients to fill my days. So I ironed from 6.30 am to 8.30 pm, Monday through Saturday, and Sunday between 7 am and 1 pm. I did this from 1997 to 2023. I still iron, but not as much anymore.

KVT: How did you first get interested in writing?

SL: Someone read an essay I’d written in primary school and said, “You know, you could be a writer.” I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know one could even be a writer. Then I read an advertisement in our newspaper about an aptitude test from The Writing School of London. It was a challenge to compose a story based on a photo they supplied. I did. I sent it, passed it, and took their correspondence course. I followed that up with their diploma in writing in 1983. By then I had four children, so writing had to take a backseat until my youngest got her degree in Pharmacy. Then she bought me a laptop and said “Mother go write!”

KVT: Why have you chosen the horror genre?

SL: I think horror chose me. We are from a superstitious community, immersed in a way of life that I now understand to be horror. I grew up with no electricity or indoor plumbing.  I washed and bathed by the river, and I toted water from a spring for all our household duties. Stories about soucouyant, lougaroo, La Diablesse, Papa Bois, and douen were part of our daily fare. Soucouyant are females who suck the blood of women and roll on men in their sleep. Lougaroo shape shift into animals, carrying chains and running about the country scaring people. La Diablesse is a woman who made a deal with the Devil in exchange for eternal beauty. She lures young boys to follow her until they are lost, then she beats them with her razor-sharp hair until they die. Papa Bois protects the animals in the forest. Douen are the babies who die before getting baptized. Stories and characters like these are the root of my horror orientation.

KVT: Wow, those are some scary images to introduce to children. Do you remember an incident from your youth where one of the superstitions seemed to take on a life of its own?

SL: As a child I was told that only devils are in the city. Then, at eleven years old, I passed the Common Entrance Exam for an Intermediate Girl school in Port-of-Spain. I moved there and was scared every day. I was sure my parents hated me because they sent me among the “devils.” I spent my days looking for horns and tails. Where were they hiding them? I never found the answer. I was also told that only devils go to the cinema. When I was about 21 years old, some friends invited me to see a movie. When I got home that night, I actually tried washing away the sin. That shows you how long those superstitions lasted.

KVT: When did you publish your first story? What are some of your writing credits since then?

SL: My first story was published in 2015 by Dark Chapter Press. Then I had others that appeared in Sirens Call Publications, Weird Mask, Wicked Shadow Press, Story Sanctum, and Migla Press.

KVT: If you look back on your work, what is your favorite piece you’ve written?

SL: My favorite is The Last Request of Gladimus McCarran for the simple reason that it was imagined, written, and submitted within a few hours after a long day of ironing.  For me that was quite an accomplishment.  It was published by the now defunct Sirens Call.  A reprint of that story along with others can be found at Metastellar.

KVT: What upcoming projects do you have in the works?

SL: At present, I’m writing a 30,000-word horror novella for Dark Holme Publishing and a short story for Wicked Shadow Press. I’m also attempting a full-length novel that will be based on my life but is not autobiographical.

KVT: Well, I certainly think your fascinating life is worthy of a book. Thanks so much for taking the time to spend with us.

SL: You’re very welcome!

In addition to the links above, you can find Soter on Facebook here.

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Under the Bell Jar with Sylvia

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.

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