Acedia & Me: A Book Review
Browsing the shelves of wicked-cool used bookstore here in Nashville, McKay Books, I happened upon Kathleen Norris’s (The Cloister Walk, Dakota, Amazing Grace) latest, Acedia & Me. Though I had no idea she had a new book out, the cheap sticker price for a primo first edition (Note: you will recall from a previous post that I have a more than slight affinity for used bookstores and, especially, first editions) was an easy decision. The title itself was mildly intriguing since I was vaguely familiar with the word, “acedia”, but of which I knew very little. The subtitle, “A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life”, though hardly an enticing, round-em-up, gather-em-in slogan, is true to Ms. Norris’ midwestern style, neither flamboyant nor melodramatic.
Acedia, coined the “noonday demon” by the early monastics, is the absence of care when life becomes overly challenging, repetitious and boring, while engagement with other people is too demanding. In short, it is spiritual apathy, and is described as a weariness of soul. Though it is not readily a part of the modern scientific lexicon, acedia, in today’s culture, is generally lumped in with depression and the sin of sloth, one of the supposed seven deadly sins. We treat it with medication, just like everything else. But, as Norris continually illuminates, acedia possesses spiritual roots, and, thus, can ultimately only be treated with spiritual attention and resolve.
The tedium of daily routine, whether you are a writer, an athlete or a garbage collector, can grate on the westernized image of living life to the full, souring the tinseled concept in such a way that daily repetition of just about anything breeds in us contempt. After all, repetition is not very glamorous. We get bored and despair in the seemingly mundane task of being, wondering Why even bother?, seeking salvation from unromantic drudgery at those times when we see our lives as being anything but full and robust. Surely Jesus meant the “abundant” life to be more than this?, we think. As Norris points out through her experiences as a writer, Benedictine oblate, a wife and caretaker of her dying husband, it is that same daily repetition - the redundant, monotonous splendor - which holds the seeds of that very salvation. Learning the true name of the enemy gives us greater advantage, even granting a degree of freedom.
I, admittedly, am an undisciplined writer, writing whenever I feel like it, when inspiration strikes, or when the trees and skies themselves take to writing me their own message. In other words, I enable the acedia in me, by failing to embrace repetition - that “monotonous splendor” - and the creative discipline. Languishing with nothing to say, I lay the guitar aside for months at a time wanting nothing to do with its steel and wood language, because more often than not that language is as foreign to me as a lust for life itself. I lay aside pen and paper for a writer’s millenium, choosing instead to blame it on those familiar culprits, writer’s block or depression. As Ms. Norris states, like marriage and faith, writing is a mystery. The “person” you’re committed to spending life with is known, yet unknown. It is strange when, after years of being together, the one you thought you knew all too well seems a sudden and complete stranger. I am compelled “to either recommit to the relationship or get the hell out.” In my own torpor and despair, I seek to avoid both blunt writing instruments because, in a very real sense, it is my way of avoiding the physically manifest representations of spiritual mistrust, doubt and my failure to ultimately believe that the things God once declared about me as being good, actually and truly still are. Acedia, as the author observes, “always takes the path of least resistance and attempts to go around, rather than through, the demands that life makes of us.”
Throughout the book Norris continually draws from the early monastics as well as a slew of modern writers, both religious and secular. She often quotes fourth century monk and writer, Evagrius Ponticus, who states that “endurance cures listlessness, and so does everything done with much care and fear of God.” I can only hope Acedia & Me will serve and inform you, fellow hopeful despairer, in your own wobbling journey as it has given identity to that which has hounded me, personally, for many years. A Name is more than just a name.
A.S. Peterson has crafted a work of compelling historical fiction which begs the question, “Can this really be a debut novel?” With dogged fidelity, Peterson captures the spirit, manners, and social conditions present during the American Revolutionary War. We meet colorful, credible characters who navigate the high seas of life and love, dependence and independence, war and peace, truth and consequence, and despite forays into dark places, The Fiddler’s Gun is beautiful, lyrical, and redemptive.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.
I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).
A Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.
Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up.
I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul - my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder.
11-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute.
I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson.
Eric Peters’s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet, somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and security.
Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven.
Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson.
Allow me to preface this by telling you that I am a great despiser of gushing reviews. I’d much rather write (or read) a scathing dismemberment of the latest Brett Ratner film or Terry Goodkind book than suffer through four hundred words of overblown hyperbole about even the best of things. But when asked to write some thoughts on Frederick Buechner’s Godric, no amount of distaste for high praise was able to intervene. I hope you’ll take what I say with the understanding that I do not say it readily or lightly.
Eric, thank you. i have never quite been able to name this. For me it was once mingled with depression and now stands alone, at a distance … returning to haunt at times. In the past, even while loathing its presence, i think i came to develop a semi-embraceable dichotomy of acedia and faith. What it’s really an enemy to - is love. And for this we must fight. Thank you, again. i will certainly have to track down this book.
I, admittedly, am an undisciplined writer, writing whenever I feel like it, when inspiration strikes, or when the trees and skies themselves take to writing me their own message.
Eric, have you ever read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird? It’s got some good stuff in it on discipline and short projects. Also, it’s good to kill your muse.
This sounds like a book that I need to read, immediately.
Me sloth. Need book.
But seriously, this will be my next read. I just finished Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” and this seems like a fitting follow-up. I first read “Dakota” quite a few years back and was completely blindsided by its quiet brilliance. Norris is a superstar. I read “Cloister Walk” after that and again, wow. So thanks for this review — I’ll be visiting the very same wicked-cool bookstore this afternoon in hopes of finding another copy lurking on those crammed shelves.
I’ve read most of Acedia and Me. It’s one of those books for which highlighting the good parts ecame almost useless: page after page was highlighted. I was going to write a RR review, but I’m glad you did, Eric. I didn’t know where to start. For me, the starting point for understanding acedia is the idea of rejecting the gift of time. Whatever else God has given or withheld, the one thing you can be sure he will give you is time–every day until the day you die. To throw that time away is to rebel against God-to say, ‘Keep your gift; I wanted something else.’ Those are stark terms, but for me, at least, it helps to put things in those terms–to acknowledge what I’m choosing when I choose to waste another day. That doesn’t mean I always choose correctly…
To waste time is, to borrow Kathleen Norris’s phrase, is to “spin gold into straw.” That’s a very felicitous phrase…
You made me want to read it, Eric. Thanks for the recommendation. My music maven is now my book maven too. Thank you, good sir.
“Acedia, coined the “noonday demon” by the early monastics, is the absence of care when life becomes overly challenging, repetitious and boring, while engagement with other people is too demanding. In short, it is spiritual apathy, and is described as a weariness of soul.”
I immediately connected with this definition. My life is very challenging at the moment, and engaging with other people is always a struggle for me. I tend to be a hermit, especially when something is bothering me. I find myself not feeling very much of anything a lot of the time. I think I need to find this book.
“…daily repetition of just about anything breeds in us contempt. After all, repetition is not very glamorous. We get bored and despair in the seemingly mundane task of being, wondering Why even bother?, seeking salvation from unromantic drudgery at those times when we see our lives as being anything but full and robust.”
These lines reminded me of a sermon my pastor preached about Jesus’ life on ordinary days. We only have a record of a few extraordinary days of Jesus’ life before he began his ministry–a few days during the first two or three years, and one day when he was twelve. But his sinlessness during those 30 years of ordinary days is just as vital for our salvation as the day of his death or resurrection. Boring, unromantic days of drudgery matter.
I think Kathleen Norris (NOTE: not to be confused with another writer by the same name, but of a different era) would laugh at being called a “superstar”, Evie. But you’re right, she is. “Dakota” remains one of my favorites.
P.S. Search the Biography section of your local wicked-cool used bookstores for Norris.
Jonathan, I KNEW you should have been the one to write this book review, not me.
“It’s one of those books for which highlighting the good parts became almost useless: page after page was highlighted.” Dead on, sir.
Loren, I have read “Bird by Bird” and loved it. But my retention ability is admittedly not so good. That needs to be a re-read for me.
Bird by Bird deserves its own RR review. I haven’t read a whole lot of books about writing, but of the ones I’ve read, I think that’s my favorite. My favorite takeaway from that one is when Lamott likens writing a book to driving by headlights. You can’t see around the next curve, but you don’t have to; when you get there, the headlights will illuminate to the next curve. You just take it take it one curve at a time and trust that the way will be lit when you get there. That applies to a lot more of life than writing.
Sounds like a very interesting concept. I have often experienced ‘acedia’, even though I have never heard it termed thus. I have found it the most prominent, really, not when I was actually performing the repetitious nature of life and work and duty, but when I extracted myself from my work and let myself laze around and allow a feeling of lethargy creep in, telling myself I didn’t want to work. Fulfilling one’s duty creates happiness and creativity, essentially––and, as Chesterton talks about in ‘Orthodoxy’, repetition is not something that should be avoided, but rather the divine pattern that copies the ecstasy in the sun’s daily rising and the mote nature of the seasons. I’ll definitely have to look up the book. Thanks for taking the time to write about it!
Eric, thank you. The name of this malaise makes it a visible target in my mind. And its commonality among us all gives me the hope that only a fellow sinner can possess.
Bird by Bird was the first writing book I ever read, and is still one of my favorites.
Thanks for this review, Eric. I’ve been reading Acedia & Me off and on, when the weariness and busyness of life allow (obviously she wrote this with me in mind).
One of Ms. Norris’ books not yet mentioned above is Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. This is another one you should look for in that used bookstore. When she came back to the Christian faith, she encountered what she called “a word bombardment” of all the religious terms (”scary words,” she calls them) with which she’d lost touch. The book is the result of her attempt to define these words for herself. Here’s a taste from a piece in the book called “Belief, Doubt, and Sacred Ambiguity”: “Perhaps my most important breakthrough with regard to belief came when I learned to be as consciously skeptical and questioning of my disbelief and my doubts as I was of my burgeoning faith.”
Thanks to all for keeping two of my favorites, Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamott, out of the shadows.
I first learned of Acedia through LeAnne Payne at her PCM School at Wheaton. It opened up a new world to me and helped me understand much of what was taking place in my life. Thank you for this review, it provided a refreshing reminder of truth.