Something which can help a person who is depressed is work, interest in life. The garden, plants, flowers, trees, the countryside, a walk in the open air - all these things tear a person away from a state of inactivity and awake other interests. They act like medicines. To occupy oneself with the arts, with music and so on, is very beneficial. The thing that I place top of the list, however, is interest in the Church, in reading Holy Scripture and attending services. As you study the words of God you are cured without being aware of it.... in our Church a cure is to be found through love for God and prayer, provided this is done with all the heart.
Porphyrios of KafsokalyviaRelated topics
act air attending beneficial church countryside cure done found garden heart help holy inactivity interest life list love music open person place prayer reading scripture something state study tear thing top walk work words arts things services interestsRelated quotes
God has permitted and does permit us to be shaken by adversity. Difficult times lie ahead. We will be greatly tested. We have to take this warning seriously and live spiritually... Many saints would have loved to have lived in our times and have had our chance to struggle for Christ... Our struggle matters because it is not a struggle against an Ali Pasha, or a Hitler and a Mussolini, but a struggle against the devil himself. For this reason, our wages will be heavenly... The saints will become more holy and the vile will become more vile. Yet I feel great consolation inside. This is only a storm; like past storms, it will pass. May the Good God take evil and turn it into good. Amen.
Paisios of Mount Athos
Do everything simply and meekly. Do nothing with an ulterior motive. Don't say, I'll do this in order to have that result, but do it naturally, without taking cognizance of it. That is, pray simply and don't think about what God will bestow on your soul. Don't make any calculations. You know, of course, what God bestows when you enter into communion with Him, but it is as if you don't know. Don't discuss the matter even with yourself. So when you repeat the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”, say it simply and ingenuously and think of nothing other than the prayer. These are very delicate matters and the intervention of the grace of God is required.
Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia
Social work as a profession is of relatively recent origin. The first social welfare agencies appeared in urban areas in the early 1800s. These agencies, or services, were private and were developed primarily at the initiation of the clergy and religious groups. Until the early 1900s, these services were provided exclusively by the clergy and affluent "do-gooders” who had no formal training and little understanding of human behavior or of how to help people. The focus of these private services was on meeting such basic physical needs as food and shelter and on attempting to cure emotional and personal difficulties with religious admonitions.
Charles Zastrow
The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arm still thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last. I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly very depressed.
Tennessee Williams
The following week, when he Toulmouche passed in front of me, he sat down and squarely positioned on my chair, looked at my piece. I could then see him turn around, inclining his serious face with a satisfied air and I heard him say to me while smiling: "Not bad, not at all bad this, but it is too much like the real model. You have a stocky man and you depict him as stocky.. .Nature, my friend, serves well as a means to study but offers no real interest. Style is the only thing that matters." I was flabbergasted. The truth, life, nature - all that provoked emotions in me - all that constituted for me the real essence and the unique "raison d'être" of art, did not exist for this man!
Claude Monet
