"To be whole, as many traditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world." So writes Mary Rose O'Reilly in The Barn at the End of the World, a beautiful memoir which traces her trajectory from Catholic novice to Quaker Buddhist shepherd-apprentice. I find that quote especially resonant as it relates to depression; if wholeness enables us to reflect God, then it makes sense that feelings of brokenness would make God feel further away.

Many of the writers whose work I most enjoy seem to have an interest in wholeness and in its opposite. Maybe that interest follows from the human condition, and arises in anyone leading an examined life? Lately I've also been rereading Jane Kenyon, and it occurs to me that the two writers have something to say to one another. (Jane has some stunning poems about depression: I especially recommend "Having It Out With Melancholy," from Constance.) Had Jane and Mary Rose met, I imagine they would have talked about rural life and faith, about God and work and poetry.

Madeleine L'Engle, too, might have enjoyed being in on that conversation. I've been reading her Crosswicks Journals, published thirty years ago and still marvelously relevant and resonant. I like getting a glimpse inside her life, her creative process, her wrestle with faith. There's a marvelous moment in the second Crosswicks journal (The Summer of the Great-Grandmother) where she observes that many people seem to believe that in order to be a person of faith, one must feel that faith all the time. If she manages to genuinely believe for two minutes out of the average month, she points out, she considers it a month well-spent.

It's fun to imagine the three of them sitting down for tea and theology, sharing favorite poems and koans. There was a meme going around the blogosphere for a while about the five people one would most wish to invite to dinner. (My answers today, for what it's worth: Rinde Eckert, Miriam the Prophet, Jane Kenyon, Annie Dillard, and John Jerome.) I like this new spin on the idea, though: if I could sit in on coffee klatsches between my favorite writers, or between magical embodiments of my favorite books, what would I overhear?