If Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett had waited a few years to perform their chart-topping hit so that they could first read Kathleen Norris’ new book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, they might have described more insightfully the “half-past twelve” tedium they were escaping for a “five-o’clock somewhere” drink. And country music aficionados like me might have understood better why we seek diversions from the daily tasks that seem so mind-numbingly routine.
Ever since Norris first encountered the word acedia in early monastic writings twenty years ago, she has been mulling it over, wiping the dust off this forgotten concept. In the book that grew out of that preoccupation, she examines her life””and her marriage in particular””in order to illustrate acedia’s characteristics, dangers, and cures, contemplating the many facets of this vice with the help of monks, psychologists, philosophers, poets, novelists, and pharmacologists. (Huxley, Kierkegaard, Dante, Bunyan, and Andrew Solomon are some who figure prominently among the nonmonastics. Her reflections on the lives of writers who misconstrue what kind of life must accompany creativity may resonate with artists and authors.) The result is a beautifully woven treatment braided together of these various strands, concluding with a chapter of illuminating quotations on her subject, ranging from the ancients to our contemporaries.
The Greek word acedia simply means “a lack of care.” But as Norris excavates the concept we find that it is deeper and richer. She rightly traces the Christian discussion to the 4th-century ascetic Evagrius Ponticus and his list of eight “thoughts” that characterize the human condition. One of the eight””acedia””was the “noonday demon” (Ps. 91:6) that attacked the monk who kept checking the angle of the sun to see if it was time for the afternoon meal as he languished in the tedium of what seemed like a 50-hour day. John Cassian (5th century) carried forward the list of eight to Gregory the Great (6th century), who transposed acedia (along with tristitia) into “sloth” as he reconfigured the list into the “seven deadly sins.”
I’m glad to see this highlighted. I think this is [i]the[/i] sin that afflicts many Christians in the west. It gives rise to so many other self-destructive impulses and actions. ‘The sorrow of the world worketh death…’
One of my favorite Dorothy Sayers quotes:
[blockquote]The Church names the sixth deadly Sin [i]Acedia[/i] or Sloth. In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in Hell it is called Despair. . . It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.[/blockquote]
– Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Other Six Deadly Sins,” republished in a collection titled Creed or Chaos?
In addition to turning the deadly sin of “Sloth” into the “virute” of “tolerance”, the world has turned the deadly sin of “envy” into the “virtue” of fairness.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
The way I heard it (from a monk, actually) puts acedia closer to despair than sloth, or, perhaps, a spiritual affliction leading to sloth. The reviewer touchs on this further in the “read it all” section.
So this makes acedia sound rather like nihilism, essentially the sin committed by the fool, who says in his heart, “No God”, and who thus inevitably sinks into inward despair or outward rage.
I submit tht for America, acedia is the Latin word for boredom, that colorless tasteless state so like death that those who suffer from it will do practically anything to escape it. America thinks that if one lives fast and hot, smokes strong, brews hungers, and copulates often and hard, boredom will never touch them, when in fact, their “escape” is the fever that the disease runs. Only the search for meaning refuses acedia room in the garden. Larry
I have heard Kathleen Norris before (she helped to author the wonderful recent book of Advent and Christmas reflections, “God With Us, Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas,” which I would highly recommend for family devotions).
Based on that, and early reviews, I’m ordering this book.
Yet I think we miss her point, and more importantly, opportunities to grow in holiness, if we think the problem is only “out there” and not in us too. I suspect this book would make a terrific focus for small group discussion.
I have commented on Acedia before, after hearing a humble priest in a traditional church in a liberal diocese discuss it in one of his sermons. He treated it more as spiritual sloth, our tendency not to do those things that we ought to do. I felt strongly then, as I do now, that in many ways it is the complement of Pride. The two taken together epitomize our failure to obey the two Great Commandments. Through Pride, we set ourselves up against God and seek to deny Him his absolute Lordship over us, and through Acedia, we limit our participation in His mission on Earth.
In the past, I tended to see reasserters as people who identified more with the First Great Commandment, and reappraisers as people who identified more with the Second. A better understanding of my own Acedia (the Pride was never in question!) has made me suspect our failures may be more balanced than we might think.
Of course no discussion of the seven deadly sins is complete without the diagram of the intersection of the sins:
http://indexed.blogspot.com/2007/01/were-all-going-to-hell.html