I very much like that you ask us to understand that depression is a big deal and to acknowledge that to those in our lives suffering. Most of us have people in our lives, so I thought of them when I read what you wrote.

When I've been injured or been really sick, but especially when injured, I've been amazed at the amount of concentration it requires just to hang on.

This is just an off-the-wall musing, I don't know a lot about depression. My sense is that the kind of concentration I've mustered when injured is one of the coping mechanisms for dealing with depression. But that concentration, or focus, can actually exacerbate the depression.

Listening to you, I heard: "trying to pull my thoughts out of a downward spiral." So my unfounded theory sort of springs from that. I mean that you feel the response like an injury, and the mind is working to to focus on safety and survival. But the danger is the focus turns to to a rather deadly logic of hopelessness. Reason is all very well and good, but not the solution for this. It's like searching for something missing, when you look in all the usual places and not finding it there, and you search all the usual places once again.

I heard you talk about finding something "to grab on to." One might have a reason to hold on, but less to hold on to a reason. When I'm in extremes, "holding on" is good way to say what I mean by concentration. What is it I'm holding on too? I guess it's "life" or "existence," something? And I think what's so frightening about depression is what there is to hold on to seems so hard to grasp.

I have heard that in in some Native American spiritual ideas there is a construct of The Great Spirit, and also a construct of The Great Mystery or Original Source. The joke is that The Great Mystery doesn't need to be solved.

As I understand it, The Great Spirit is the order of things created once the universe got rolling. The Great Spirit is "of creation" and The Great Mystery is before and beyond creation; yet the source of all creation. In Buddhism, especially Zen, the construct of Original Face seems somewhat similar.

I'm muttering, and I worry that such muttering only makes things weird for others. Dear Linda, I don't mean to do that. What I'm meaning to do is to try to understand; and to sympathize. So you can see the reason to worry about sympathizing imagining a complete misunderstanding!

But my wacky theory here is the strange notion that "holding on" is exactly what it feels like it's so important to do, but when you think enough, what's to hold on to is emptiness or the void.

That sounds depressing! And yet The Great Mystery is that mystery which needs no solution. The grasping for the order of things, now that's important to do. But when we really need to concentrate, when we really need to hold on, that's not what we need to hold on to. We need not what is mutable and in creation, but to grasp the source: once there before and there long after. Us but not us, not a result of psychology or experience, but the essence of all experience.

I know that you are a Christian. I love so much about Christianity; for example I love so very much The Lord's Prayer: God as "Thou." There is also within this sprawling religious tradition running through the Abrahamic religions, God whose name cannot be said. In Alcoholics Anonymous it seems to me that "A Higher Power" is part of this stream.

I think where to look for something to hold on to; well first to say your prayers, but then to contemplate God whose name cannot be said. To be then a part of something bigger, longer, older, younger, not understood, and there always.

For not religious people finding a way to accommodate A Higher Power is a big problem sometimes. I've heard people call their higher power Bernice, or Ralph or some name. Usually it some name chosen because they don't associate the name with a particular person. It's chosen as a deliberate joke to remind them not to pay too much attention to the name so they can take seriously the Higher Power.

It's very good to pray, it's very good to think of a quiet place you like to be in mind. But when you are concentrating trying to grab hold, I think there's wisdom in the traditions I've mentioned: Great Mystery, Original Face, God whose name cannot be said, Higher Power. Obviously I cannot tell you what to grab there, still that's where to grab.

I am here. I have such affection for you. I send warm thoughts your way.