Hope in Dark Places: Poems about Depression and the Christian
Ebook
The deeper darkness,
that smear you only just see out of the corner of your mind’s eye as
you contemplate ending it all,
that not-so-much-no-go area
as a darkness-he’s-gone-further-into-than-anyone-else,
is where Christ is.
Hope in Dark Places explores the depths of depression through the poetry of David Grieve. You will be moved to tears and laugh unexpectedly. You will feel the raw reality of suffering and feel Christ’s presence in its midst.
Grieve’s confrontation of what he considers a taboo subject is brave and direct … even when God’s response to suicide is imagined.
David Grieve’s faithful honesty offers a compassionate, and daringly hopeful, guide to all who encounter depression.
Like the best hymn-writing, this is poetry that does not disown either the craft of its making or the faith that ultimately informs it, and keeps it buoyant.
In this collection David Grieve bravely offers fresh light on an age-old experience. These moving and perceptive poems will help those both inside and outside the darkness they so eloquently describe.
David expresses in these poems not only how the human mind can feel totally ravaged by depression, but also how such authentic creativity and spirituality can be born from the sufferer’s despair. This poetry is brave and raw—it often makes for uncomfortable reading but is all the more important for this.
In these brave poems, David, deeply conscious that he is a loved child of God, never flinches from, nor spares us from, the reality of the Depression that he lives with and in so doing he leads us all into a deeper awareness both of the experience of Depression and how, for him, Christ is found as a companion within it. These are poems to be taken slowly and lived with. They will be a real gift to many of us.
- Title: Hope in Dark Places: Poems about Depression and the Christian
- Authors: David Grieve, Chris Cook
- Publisher: Sacristy Press
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781910519691, 9781910519677, 1910519677, 9781910519684, 1910519685, 1910519693
- Resource ID: LLS:9781910519691
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-06-15T01:05:25Z
David Grieve is an Anglican priest, married with three grown-up children, who retired in 1989 at the age of 37 due to a breakdown. He writes poetry as both therapy and vocation.