September brings a change of season, from summer to fall. Dead leaves swirl in the driveway and there is a chill in the air. Opposite the Rectory, major repairs to the roof to the church offices continue. Workmen arrive at 6:00 am and leave in the early afternoon. Soon they won’t need to worry about avoiding the heat of the day.

The nights are drawing in and the warm days of summer are behind us, to be replaced by autumnal colors and clear evenings. There is a distinctive mood to the fall season, which is sometimes described as “melancholic”. Our natural resistance to change shifts something inside us. For a time it is possible to detect the soul’s shadows moving in the background of our lives. 

Melancholia is sometimes equated to depression, but I am using it in a different sense: as an indistinct memory of an unspecified loss. In literature I first encountered this condition in the character of Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Antonio laments, “In sooth I know not why I am so sad.” Part of Shakespeare’s greatness lies in creating ambiguity: the cause of Antonio’s sadness is never properly explained or identified. 

The Biblical home for those of a melancholic disposition is the book of Psalms. The psalms contain most of our human emotions, with the lamenting voice usually tempered by hope and trust in God. The one exception is psalm 88, which is unrelentingly gloomy and pessimistic. I knew a monk who compared psalm 88 to an old blues song. Once I read it aloud in Jerusalem to a group of pilgrims, many of whom cried when they heard it.

After the crucifixion, we can imagine the mood of the disciples as being one of profound melancholy. They had lost their teacher, savior and friend. Their own sadness would have been compounded by their failure to prevent Jesus’ from being executed. They stayed together, however, and were around to witness the resurrected Jesus. Doubtless they were overjoyed, but that earlier, desolate time would have remained in their memory.

A temptation is for the melancholic soul to luxuriate in sadness. Feeling at home with that sense of undefinable loss can be comforting, and every piece of bad news confirms what you thought the world was like anyway. “Hello darkness, my old friend,” is a great way to begin a song, which could have been about melancholia, but wasn’t. Fortunately, there are plenty of other songs that touch on the inherent sadness of the human soul. While such songs reinforce one’s melancholy mood, they can also be cathartic.

Antonio self-diagnosed himself and came to this conclusion, “That I have much ado to know myself.” Self-knowledge may help, but it won’t necessarily make a sad feeling go away. You can take a pill, which is a way of dealing with the symptoms, but not the causes. You can spend a small fortune on therapists and psychologists and, if you’re lucky, you will get a good one who will help you to identify the root cause(s). At best, you will know yourself a little better. However, being self-absorbed is not the way to happiness.

The Book of Proverbs offers an alternative prescription: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, put no faith in your own insight.” (Proverbs 3:5) Human beings aren’t always the best judge of themselves. God knows who we are, even if we don’t know ourselves fully. Perhaps what matters more is how we live in relation to God and to others. God examines the human heart above all else - what is happening there?

There is much that can be said about the melancholy condition. In some ways, it is a reminder of our fragility as human beings. In the meantime, if melancholia has a theme tune, it may well be September Song by Kurt Weill. There is a version of this song recorded by Django Reinhardt in 1947. Django’s guitar dances around the melody played by clarinetist Hubert Rostaing, and together they create a mood that sits well amidst the cool evenings and fallen leaves.

Father David