Kathleen Norris has a wonderful new essay in The Porch: "Acedia, Today." It's available to read at that link whether or not you are a subscriber. About ten or so years ago, Norris wrote a book on acedia, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. She then offered multiple definitions for the ancient word: absence or lack of care, sloth; spiritual torpor and apathy; listlessness, carelessness, melancholia. A reporter called her months into the Covid pandemic and asked for her thoughts about acedia now, and she told him that "acedia is as opportunistic as a virus." She admitted to being in a daze at the beginning of the pandemic's lockdown, but then she found her way by remembering what she'd learned about combating acedia, mostly from the hard-earned wisdom of the desert mothers and fathers for whom acedia was the "worst and most devastating temptation."
"They learned how to combat it and fortunately they passed that wisdom on: cling to your trust in God that acedia is determined to erode; cling to prayer, even though it is warfare to the last breath; go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything; pray the psalms, pray the psalms, pray the psalms."
To this, Norris added reading scripture in a leisurely thoughtful way; taking walks; reading good books; streaming good films; writing; talking to her neighbors (from a distance) and thanking the postal carriers, garbage collectors, and bus drivers; signing up for online seminar and talks; attending church online; praying for people including the people on her church's prayer chain; joining with others to ask and answer the important question of who can we help and how. Norris attributes the stop of acedia's "deadly spiral of self-absorption and despair" during the time of Covid to all these things, particularly choosing to care and choosing to love.
She included in her essay this beautiful prayer from the 13th century by Gertrude the Great. It's an appropriate prayer not just in the time of Covid but now also at the start of the season of Lent.
Be my honor, Lord,
My joy,
My beauty,
My consolation in sorrows,
My counsel in uncertainty,
My defense in everything unfair,
My patience in problems,
My abundance in poverty,
My food in fasting,
My sleep in vigilance,
And my healing in weakness.
~~~
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