Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life | Kathleen Norris

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life | Kathleen Norris | ancient wisdom for contemporary pilgrims

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Acedia & Me: A Mar...

	Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life Kathleen Norris Riverhead Hardcover, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Kathleen Norris?s masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its relevancy to the modern individual and culture.

Kathleen Norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn?t drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldn?t summon the energy for daily tasks. Even as she struggled, Norris recognized her familiar battle with acedia. She had discovered the word in an early Church text when she was in her thirties. Having endured times of deep soul-weariness since she was a teenager, she immediately recognized that this passage described her affliction: sinking into a state of being unable to care. Fascinated by this ?noonday demon,? so familiar to those in the early and medieval Church, Norris read intensively and knew she must restore this forgotten but utterly relevant and important concept to the modern world?s vernacular.

Like Norris?s bestselling The Cloister Walk, Acedia & me is part memoir and part meditation. As in her bestselling Amazing Grace, here Norris explicates and demystifies a spiritual concept, exploring acedia through the geography of her life as a writer; her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness; and her keen interest in the monastic tradition. Unlike her earlier books, this one features a poignant narrative throughout of Norris?s and her husband?s bouts with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression. Moreover, her analysis of acedia reveals its burden not just on individuals but on whole societies? and that the ?restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that we struggle with today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.?

An examination of acedia in the light of theology, psychology, monastic spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norris?s own experience, Acedia & me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important.

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Elegant, inspiring, and helpful reflections

This is a really stunning book, poised on the boundary between psychology and religion. What to do about that stuporous state of motionless that is not quite severe depression but is also more than just a temporary sadness or bad mood? It seems to be a problem that afflicts writers in particular, and Norris writes eloquently about it. I felt like she described what therapists have described as dysthymia and my parents see as lack of discipline precisely, insightfully, and helpfully. The interweaving of her exploration of literary and religious sources with her own personal narrative is fascinating and enlightening for the reader. Reading this book gave me hope and courage to face my own difficulties.

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ancient wisdom for contemporary pilgrims

It's been fifteen years since Kathleen Norris captured the spiritual imagination of readers with memoirs about leaving New York City for Lemmon, South Dakota (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, 1993), and drinking deep at the well of monastic spirituality (Cloister Walk, 1996). Having passed her sixtieth birthday, her latest book reflects a maturing vision of what authentic Christian identity might look like for the contemporary pilgrim. Partly a story of love and lament for her husband David who died of cancer in 2003 at the age of fifty-seven, part historical and theological inquiry, and part psychological analysis, Norris weaves these themes around a singular plot about what the early desert monastics called the "noonday demon" of acedia.

The Greek word acedia has a semantic range that is broad, complex, and elastic. Translators pile up the synonyms: torpor, malaise, ennui, listlessness, apathy and even sloth. Acedia figures prominently in the lives and literature of the early monastics who fled the chaos and clamor of the cities, only to discover a cacophony of voices in the human heart. Norris relates how she too has battled acedia since her teenage years, although she did not always know what it was. Trying to identify with precision just what this ancient and arcane experience really is proves elusive.

Is acedia an external attack by the devil? Interior bad thoughts? A temptation you can resist? How do personality types, your inherited neurobiology, family of origin, and developmental psychology inform the analysis? Most important of all is the similarity between acedia and clinical depression. Is acedia a spiritual sin or a medical sickness? Maybe both at the same time? Is this a matter of "do not," "will not" or "cannot" (204)? Norris is acutely aware of this dangerous territory; she knows that in our contemporary culture to distinguish between acedia and depression "can make one suspicious of being in denial, or worse, of judging people who are ill as being morally deficient." She admits that teasing out distinctions is murky and wants to avoid the "false assurances of either/or thinking" (268; cf. 35). But she draws upon her own experiences and the reflections of writers like Evagrius, Kierkegaard, Dante, and contemporary psychiatrists to maintain that whatever their many similarities, acedia and depression are not the same.

Readers can judge for themselves whether Norris succeeds in her task. At times I thought of the joke that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For example, her final chapter is called "Acedia: A Commonplace Book" (289-329); it simply quotes without comment about 125 authors across four thousand years who speak broadly about her theme. A related problem is that the subject dies the death of a thousand qualifications, resulting in a distinction without a clear difference. Norris herself is a wise spiritual pilgrim, but an unintended consequence of her book might be that it encourages popular self-analysis of a complicated phenomenon by sufferers who are far less adept than she is, and who ought to seek professional help (whether spiritual or medical).

Let the scholars howl, says Norris (47). She knows her own story, she knows the early monastics and modern studies, and she's done her homework. She points us toward genuine human wholeness, to greater self-knowledge and less self-consciousness, and to the deep longing of Sarapion of Thmuis (4th century), "Lord! We entreat you, make us truly alive." Acedia and Me might be Norris's most controversial book; it also might be her best one.

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Whatever your path

Whatever your spiritual path, or your curiosity about things spiritual, Kathleen Norris is a worthy guide. She chooses a discursive path through her own life. She's honest,frank and remarkably open.

Acedia may be an unfamiliar word, but from the moment Norris first describes it, you will recognize it. The vice of "not caring" is familiar to us all at least occasionally. The effect of acedia on Norris' marriage, prayer, writing, life helps us to understand how relevant her portrayal is for us today.

Her forays into explanations of acedia, its causes and effects are just deep enough. We return to her story with a renewed sense of her life's struggle.

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