Death of Spouse Summoned Depression's Dark Shadows Until Spiritual Light Was Invited to Shine

By Bob Doenges

The knock on the door to my new awakening in the spiritual life would have been easy for me to miss, if I had not had Sister Pascaline of the Osage Monastery as my friend and mentor to guide me and help me re-awaken. My wife of 30-plus years, Liddy, had died of cancer two years before, when I descended into a clinical/suicidal depression of complete darkness that lasted for over a year.

Several months after descending into the depths of the depression, I was over- medicated and unable to sleep at all. On the coldest morning of the year in late January, 1997, I went to the bottom. That afternoon, I somehow ended up in Sister Pascaline’s presence. She said a short prayer and asked me to say a prayer and I was unable to do so.

She then asked me to simply open her Bible and read. I did. I opened to Isaiah 43:1-2: “I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through the rivers, they will not swallow you up.”

Little did she know I had been standing in the middle of the Eleventh Street bridge above the Arkansas River that morning at 5 a.m. ready to jump in, when a woman appeared on the bridge. I did not go through with the suicide attempt. Later that morning, I lied to my psychiatrist, my son and my brother when asked if I had any thoughts of suicide during the past week. After I told Sister Pascaline my story, she skillfully and firmly took charge.

It would be a few months more before any light came back into my life. In that time, I spent long periods of time at the Monastery and had regular spiritual direction sessions with Sister Pascaline.

She kept telling me: “Bob, just surrender,” and my male ego and judgmental mind just couldn’t go there because they were fighting for their lives. Finally, my psyche could take no more of the dark and the struggle, and I let go and just surrendered. That started my long, slow journey back into the light and the knowing that I had been in the arms of Christ the whole time.

I was raised in a fairly strict Methodist family. My grandfather, Rudolph Doenges, had been a pioneer Methodist minister in the towns of Collinsville and Blackwell in the early Oklahoma days after statehood. He died in 1918. His widow, my grandmother Lulu, had a big influence on my religious life as well as both my parents’ lives. The presence of Christ spoke in and through their daily lives of prayer and giving to their church and their communities. For over 20 years, my father was the Oklahoma Methodist Conference Lay Leader.

I had a spiritual awakening as a Navy officer while living in Japan from 1963-1966. I was quite taken by the Japanese people, their culture and Zen Buddhism. Living there and experiencing another people, culture and different beliefs opened me up to a new search for God. When Liddy and I returned to Oklahoma we rejoined the Methodist Church and then after several years went to the Unitarian Church. We were there for almost 20 years.

 The Unitarian Church is very stimulating intellectually and has a very strong social outreach in the Tulsa community. However, there was something missing for us and particularly for our children. Our youngest daughter, Elizabeth, at the age of 13 joined the Presbyterian Church on her own.

In the summer of 1990, a Benedictine Oblate and good friend of ours, Virginia Atwood, invited us to go with her to the Osage Monastery to hear Father Bede Griffiths talk. Father Bede was an English Benedictine who had his own monastery/ashram in India and had helped Sister Pascaline found Osage. The moment I opened the car door and set foot on the grounds at Osage, I knew I’d found the spiritual home I had been searching for since my days as a Navy officer in Japan.

The Osage Monastery is a contemplative community in the Benedictine monastic tradition celebrating a life of simplicity and joy. The sisters are a part of the Benedictine

Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of Clyde, Missouri and through continuous prayer bring the wisdom and compassion of Christ into every aspect of their daily lives. Each activity in the Monastery is seen as an opportunity to discover and contemplate the sacrament of Christ’s risen presence.

I am now 64 years old and have been a businessman all my adult life in Oklahoma. Since coming out of my depression, I have been moving out of my daily business activities and have been drawn into the work of health and healing. My depression and darkness experiences have helped me to recognize and know that experience in others and help them where they are. I walk and talk with them from a place without judgment, just as Sister Pascaline did with me. She taught me that asking the right question is more important than having the right answer. How long does it take to be happy? How long does it take to be free? How long does it take to love? How long does it take to surrender?

Sister Pascaline and the Osage community are the greatest influence at this time in my life. I joined the Catholic Church at Easter 1995 and became a Benedictine Oblate five years ago. Sister Pascaline is now my spiritual director and I meet with her weekly on

Thursdays and attend Mass there regularly on Sunday mornings. During the past two years I have been able to have two separate hermitage experiences in silence at Osage that have deepened my work and my journey.

My greatest hope for the Church lies in an inclusive vision that sees truth, value and unity in all traditions. In Pope Paul VI’s Declaration on the Relation of Church to Non-Christian Religions in 1965 he declared: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions ... The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.”