(Image: AAP Image/James Ross)

Lockdowns, living in fear of easily communicated infections, rules and regulations for social engagement that are oppressive — these are frustrations common to many of us right now. They induce boredom, anger and resentment, and their open-endedness underline how much of our lives are out of our control in this time of the pandemic.

My experience in this time is intensified by the recurrent acute mood swings that followed surgery — the amputation of my left leg at the knee in a life-threatening situation just over 12 months ago. The most difficult thing I find in managing my personal and spiritual life is dealing with these mood swings every day — sometimes several times a day.

It’s not my first experience of such constraints — 50-some years ago I learnt a very important lesson which has stood me in good stead.

It was early 1971 and I had only recently joined the Jesuit novitiate. The novitiate was what a social psychologist would call a “total institution” — like an asylum, a boarding school or a prison, where every detail of life is scripted and controlled. At the time of joining the order, I had been inspired by some young Jesuits who sought to renew the church and the order in the spirit of the second Vatican Council, then recently concluded.

Fifty years ago, I had an adolescent belief in ideals that I thought should be supported, endorsed and fulfilled by all sensible people. I now realise that this is the way adolescent minds and hearts operate.

So imagine my dismay and grief when I witnessed the negative, dismissive and even abusive way in which some older Jesuits — some among them were ones who had taught me and attracted me to the order! — brushed off the creative and enterprising responses being proposed and enacted by my contemporaries who wanted to bring the post-conciliar church alive.

I was 18. It didn’t take me too long in life to appreciate that 18-year-olds think and react that way and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. We did stupid things at that age. For example, one young man I went to school with had volunteered to join the Australian army and go to Vietnam where he was killed.

We did stupid things like volunteering for that useless war back in those days. Why? The best explanation I’ve heard is that we were innocent, idealistic, naïve and simplistic. We were the post World War II generation, much simpler and very much more moralistic than we later became — with experience.

There was good and bad, right and wrong, and if people we trusted told us what was right and good, we were likely to trust that judgment and follow the advice.

But just how stupid I was became clearer to me only when I spent time with some of the older Jesuits who had taught me as a school student. Their reactions to these challenging times were negative, dismissive and judgmental. I was bewildered by the cynicism of people I thought had generously given their lives to God and the service of God’s people, only to find they were anxious, insecure and self-interested.

I spoke to someone about it — to a senior Jesuit I thought was wise, pragmatic and balanced. What he said to me brought me no relief. He said I would be “a strange sort of Christian if I allowed the sinfulness of another Christian to surprise or discourage [me] from seeking God’s loving way”.

That was an arresting comment. I was basically being told to grow up. But I didn’t think I was doing anything that justified being told I was a strange sort of Christian and expecting of others something I wouldn’t ask of myself.

But a moment’s silence led me to see that I was punishing others because they were not living up to my expectations or to my standards of perfection. I realised quickly that I had isolated myself, leaving me only to wallow in my own self-righteousness — until I saw it as an invitation to stop being self-engrossed and self-pitying. It really was an invitation to grow up as an adult Christian.

I accepted that I’d dug this hole for myself and was on the edge of falling into it. And if I fell into it, I realised I might never get out.

Perhaps the worst thing about how I was reacting to these circumstances was the way in which I had become someone whose leading characteristic I actually despised in others: a moody anger and resentment of what was happening about me, and depression triggered by having no real appreciation of the causes and resolution of the circumstances afflicting me.

Resentment, anger and depression just crept up on me and made their way into me unseen. But worse, they made their way through me unchallenged.

I had done the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. The exercises are really a spirituality of mood swings that allow one following their dynamic to read and appreciate and act to correct the mood swings that naturally occur.

In mood swings, we have experiences that can lead to deeper frustration and greater rage or to clarity, unencumbered focus on ways out of emotional corners and to peace.

That reading of the mood swings is what Ignatius called the “discernment of spirits” — some spirits lead to joy, life gratitude and peace; some lead to darkness, confusion and emotional and spiritual death.

What happened was that I stopped, started listening to the voices in my soul, opened my heart to what the spirit might be whispering to me in the hubbub of my confusion. Curiously I found myself in a place I knew well, and where I began these reflections: that I wouldn’t find my way out of resentment and depression by an escape to ideals but only in a surrender to the mystery I found myself in, and mistakenly believed I could come to control.

Surrendering to the loving hands of God didn’t answer my questions but it did allow me to accept the pain of my bewilderment. That was the first step to a mature acceptance of where I was, what had become of me and what the best next steps were.

Michael Kelly is Jesuit priest who works as a chaplain at Sydney’s Mater Hospital.