The word acedia has a curious history — most words that become obsolete stay obsolete, but acedia keeps disappearing from our lexicon and reappearing when we need it again. The best insights into acedia remain those of the desert fathers and mothers, especially Evagrius, in the fourth century. Then the word more or less vanished; Thomas Aquinas reflected on acedia in the 13th century and its use soared the 14th, during the plague that killed more than a third of Europe’s population. Early in the 20th century the Oxford English Dictionary deemed the word acedia obsolete, but it returned after the horrors of World War II. And last year, as people faced the new reality of isolation at home due to COVID, I experienced the supreme irony of acedia landing me on the front page of the National Catholic Reporter.
With customary activities suddenly brought to a halt, and people being asked to live like more like monastics, in stripped down circumstances, a journalist remembered my book Acedia & Me, and thought I might have something to say. I told him I’d noticed friends posting laments on Facebook, asking: is anyone else suffering from this weird mixture of inertia, restlessness, and despair? And in response people I didn’t know posted photos of the cover of my book.
I told the reporter it helps to remember that acedia is as opportunistic as a virus, and the pandemic offered it an opportunity to grab hold of millions of people who won’t know what hit them. Sure enough, many people reported bouts of insomnia, ennui, and panic attacks. They were drinking and eating too much, and neglecting physical exercise.
I was in a daze myself during the first week of the lockdown, contemplating a loss of income and disruption of my travel plans. But I knew I had to keep acedia at bay, and was glad that I could turn to the wisdom of those 4th century monastic men and women. By choosing a life in the desert, without the distractions of their former lives, they had opened the door for acedia, and quickly recognized it as their 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.
Being isolated in my cell — a small but pleasant urban apartment — with no travel for work or family visits to anticipate, I knew that acedia would suggest that without such things life lacks meaning. Acedia can convince us that the daily struggle is futile, and we find ourselves lamenting, along with the 19th century French poet Baudelaire: “Oh how weary I am…of this need to live 24 hours a day!” That’s acedia speaking.
But the weeks of quarantine went on, I was surprised to find myself coping fairly well, sleeping soundly without bad dreams. An inner voice told me — this could be because you’re just too dumb to notice what’s really going on — but I thought that having researched acedia for over 20 years, I might be more prepared to handle it. There’s some truth in that, but just knowing what acedia is, and what it does, doesn’t mean that I don’t still experience it. Like anger, pride, and all the other bad thoughts, it’s part of who I am.
I took small steps to keep my balance in the new, strange world of COVID. I became more steady in my daily prayers, using the publication “Give Us This Day” in a more thoughtful way, taking more time than usual to read the scripture and prayers aloud, and not rushing through the readings and reflections as I often do. I relied also on the daily live-streamed Masses from St. Johns Abbey, which has been a Godsend..
I tackled books I’d always meant to read, and streamed good films. I accepted any small writing projects that came my way, paid or not. I knew that physical exercise would help me mentally and physically, and while it was no longer possible for me to go to a gym for cardio workouts, I could take walks. I began going out in the early mornings, just around the block at first, but gradually expanding my range. Simply being out of doors was good for me, and it was inspiring to see so many people who were hard at work, delivering mail, collecting garbage, driving busses and HandiVans, and walking their dogs. This diverse community was going strong, and I treasured the chance to thank the postal workers, or to visit briefly - and at distance - with people about their dogs. I discovered that Airedales are not into social distancing.
All of this helped defeat me acedia - mostly because it connected me with other people, and acedia thrives on dis-connection. It suggests that we roll up in a ball, because we’re all alone in the world, and no one cares. Instead I signed up for webinars and concerts, events that I never would have been able to attend in the Before Time. I began gathering on Zoom with friends. I attended church online and found that although worship on Zoom is dreadful it’s better than nothing. All of this served to take my mind off myself and my troubles, and stop acedia’s deadly spiral of self-absorption and despair.
Turning away from the self and considering the needs of others is an essential step in fighting acedia. And a faith community is uniquely suited to help with this. As the COVID crisis unfolded my church family, and especially the prayer chain group to which I belong, began to ask: now that our monthly hot lunch and grocery give-away is not possible, how can we provide people with food to meet the increased demand? how can we stay in touch with those who have no internet access, and can’t attend online worship? How can we help those, especially the ill and elderly, who are suffering from increased isolation? How can we help families who have lost loved ones, when they weren’t able to be with them when they died, and can’t have a funeral service?
None of this would concern someone mired in acedia: why bother? Why get involved? In the 4th century when Evagrius was delineating the 8 bad thoughts that plague us, he also gave us their opposing virtues. Compassion, for example, for anger: if we think through our anger we find that we’re disturbed because the issue at hand is one we care about. For acedia, the opposite is love. Thomas Aquinas refined that somewhat to say that the opposite of acedia is the willingness to do what love requires.
And love may require a lot from us: cutting our food budget to provide groceries for others. Or a little: one small step I took last year was sending note cards to people in my church congregation, especially the elderly, asking how they were doing, and telling them I missed seeing them. Every one of them wrote back. And I was able to use my gifts as a writer in an unaccustomed way. When our pastor asked me for a reflection to share with the parish, I wrote: “God does not send nasty viruses to punish us. But God does listen when we respond to trials by praying, “What is it you’re asking of me, God, in this situation?” Our being able to ask that question shows that we still believe that God is there, for us and with us. It means that we still trust in God’s love, and are rejecting acedia’s temptation to give up all hope.”
I sent out a prayer by Gertrude the Great. Most people in the congregation had never heard of her, but one woman responded by saying she was startled to find a prayer from the 13th century that seemed so urgent and contemporary:
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.
I can’t think of a better prayer with which to silence the nihilistic voice of acedia. And laughter can help as well. One morning I read something that made me laugh out loud. and I knew I had to share it. It was a meditation by the British poet Thomas Traherne, in which he states: “Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in heaven.” Easy for you, to say Tom, I thought, until I looked into his life. In 1665, when he was just 24, and recently ordained as an Anglican priest, a plague struck London, killing thousands of people within two weeks. Imagine the terror of having no idea what had caused the disease, what might cure it, or how long it would last. And yet we find Thomas Treherne waking every morning in heaven.
That kind of joy is possible only when we embrace gratitude, and being thankful in the middle of a dire pandemic stops acedia in its tracks. It loses its power over us when we acknowledge that among all our tribulations and anxieties and the daily living out of our obligations to ourselves and others, we have much to be thankful for. The gift of life, of breath, of our loved ones, present and past, who have been stewards and sharers of God’s grace.
Traherne’s statement about waking every morning in heaven is shocking, but also liberating, as it dislodges acedia’s grim hold on us. It delighted my church family when I shared it with them and suggested that even in COVID-time we might look for ways to wake every morning in heaven. People responded in many, life-affirming ways: the sound of my child’s laughter, being able to talk with my grandmother on the phone, even though I can’t be with her, singing in the shower when I can no longer sing with the choir, tending my flower garden. Each little affirmation doused the flame of despair that acedia would ignite in us.
Traherne’s reflection contains an insight into God’s creation that I found inspiring and prophetic: “You never enjoy the world aright,” he wrote,” till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.” What Traherne could only imagine in the 17th century we now know to be true: human blood has the same chemical composition as sea water, and every atom in our bodies was once inside a star. Thanks to the Hubble telescope we are the first people in history who are able to see our home in full, a mostly blue and breathtakingly beautiful orb in the dark of space.
I closed my reflection with that passage, hoping that even on our worst days, that image of our world might give us hope.
There is no cure for acedia, any more than for anger or pride. They’re part of the human condition. But we can learn to recognize these “bad thoughts” and resist them when they come. A method recommended by Evagrius in the fourth century, and touted today as the latest in cognitive behavioral therapy is to “think about your thoughts.” When anger, greed, pride or acedia rise in us we can examine the thought dispassionately and try to figure out what it is tempting us to do. There is no blame attached to having a “bad thought,” because they come to everyone. But we do have some choice in how we respond to them. The early monastics knew that in rejecting anger, we embrace compassion. In rejecting pride we come to a realistic understanding of our humble place in the universe. In rejecting acedia, we choose to care. We choose to love.
Kathleen Norris is a poet and essayist, and author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Amazing Grace, and Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life. This essay was originally a talk for beingbendictine.org, delivered on 1/30.2021
