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

by Kathleen Norris

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189 ratings, 3.74 average rating, 77 reviews (more data...)

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published

September 16th 2008 by Riverhead Hardcover

binding

Hardcover, 352 pages

isbn

1594489963 (isbn13: 9781594489969)

description

Kathleen Norris's masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its...more

[close] 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 worlds 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 Norriss own experience, Acedia & me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important. [close]

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12/26/08

John rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Acedia was identified by a fourth-century monk named Evagrius as one of the eight bad thoughts. It evolved into one of the seven deadly sins.
Acedia is to spiritual health what depression is to mental health. Where depression is fought with therapy and medication, fighting acedia is a matter of spiritual warfare.
This is an oversimplification. To properly describe acedia and the battle with it would require a book. Kathleen Norris has written such a book. She has done so in 300-plus pa...more

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03/02/09

Jon rated it:

I listened to the author read this one, and I'm sure my opinion is somewhat colored by the fact that she is not a particularly good performer, and she has a fairly grating voice. Nevertheless a very interesting book--taking acedia (roughly the Deadly Sin of sloth) very seriously and in fact taking all the deadly sins the same way. She traces its history from one of the eight bad thoughts of the 5th century desert fathers (and, she invariably adds, mothers, although there were precious few of tho...more

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11/19/08

Carol rated it:

Kathleen Norris has made an auspicious place for herself in spiritual literature, through her explorations with poetry, with place (Dakota), and her extensive time spent in Benedictene monasteries. Her most recent book is a study on acedia, defined as the absence of care. Acedia was one of the "eight bad thoughts" as defined by the desert fathers, and became known as "sloth" when the Catholic church defined seven deadly sins.
Norris acknowledges that this sort of torpor...more

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01/26/09

Kate rated it:

Read in November, 2008

Reread pp 1-80

"David enjoyed a passage I had found in Louise Bogan's memoirs, in which she writes of seeing out the window of a psychiatric ward, a woman hanging clothes and of 'wishing that I, too, could . . . hang out clothes in a happy, normal way.' When she walked with other patients at 'the hour when children begin to scent supper,' she observed an air of despondency came over the group. The women 'knew the hour in their bones. It was no hour to be out, taking an aimless...more

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11/11/08

Capitu rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, spiritual

Read in November, 2008

I was disappointed with this book. It was just too uneven of a book, with moments when it really picked up my interest and passages that spoke to my heart, only to fade in a few pages to the repetitious descriptions of acedia. At times I just wanted to scream at her: go back and rewrite it all as essays.

I really wanted to hear more about her experience as a teenager, about marriage, death and spiritual growth. But she insisted on linking it all under the theme of acedia, and too...more

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02/02/09

Susan rated it:

Oh this latest from K Norris is her best yet, at least to my brain. A little-known-to-the-modern-world wave of thought/behavior called Acedia is its focus. Here Norris has spared no effort, during the book's incubation over the last 20 years, at yanking Acedia out from its sly hiding places in her own life and subjecting it to a lasery investigation. This investigation includes the testimonies of men and women who fled the cities in the early Christian era for the purpose of creating labs out ...more

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01/05/09

Lisa rated it:

Read in January, 2009

As in "The Cloister Walk," (which I did enjoy), Norris mixes careful research and quotation from sources with personal experience, this time as she tries to define the term "acedia." Although she tries to distinguish it from depression and sloth, she notes an overlap, and the boundaries between the terms seem muddy at times.

I was interested to see how she developed a discussion of this interesting spiritual condition that can lead to laziness, etc., but the org...more

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01/18/09

Deborah rated it:

Read in November, 2008

Given my driving habits this last year commuting to school, I felt compelled to get the recorded version. How is it that, despite my annoyance at the timber of author Norris' delivery - a sloooow unengaging slog - I couldn't stop listening and it kept me company for several long return trips, an unique reading experience in itself.

Some of my subbornness was due to my good history with her writing from her Dakoka days, another her honest scholarship, her own relentlessness and, as th...more

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01/17/09

Sarah rated it:

bookshelves: christianity, memoirs, nonfiction

Read in February, 2009

I have only read one other book by Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk. I loved that one and I appreciated this one because it filled in some of the gaps in her personal life that I had wondered about (what was her husband up to while she was spending so much time in that monastery? - and what did he think?). I liked her exploration of acedia and I have struggled with it at times, but not recently at all. In that sense it was hard to relate. It seems like a writer's life (or a monk's) would be hi...more

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02/05/09

Emilia rated it:

bookshelves: churrrch, real-books

Read in February, 2009

Well, Ms. Norris.

The not so great: as she admits early on in the book, this is a subject that she wanted to write about for a very long time, and it sort of shows. It's sort of a pulling together of disparate elements from her life interspersed and not that well blended with meditation on the roots and definitions of acedia. And you kind of have to have read some of her other work to get the spiritual mindset she's coming from, which is a little problematic. So -- she doesn't pull it...more

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06/10/09

Terry rated it:

bookshelves: currently-reading, non-fiction

I discovered poet Kathleen Norris as the author of a picture book about Benedict and Scholastica and illustrated by Tomie dePaola, at the Benedictine monastery near where I live. An Oblate herself, she is also a spiritual writer. Here she writes about acedia -- which was described by Evagrius in the 4th century as one of the eight bad thoughts and eventually morphed into sloth -- although that's not really it. This is one you'll need to take slowly, to see what happens when you get sick of it ...more

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01/23/09

Jonathan rated it:

Read in January, 2009

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Here Norris explores the subject of acedia as the worst possible spiritual malady; using examples from the psalms, the desert fathers/mothers, medieval, modern and contemporary literature and psychology. Acedia, also called the "noonday demon" is described by Norris in a quote by Evelyn Waugh as the "refusal of joy". Being more than depression, it's a propensity for one to cut himself off from life, at times becoming totally numb to any sort...more

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01/31/09

David rated it:

I wished this book had come with different fonts for (a) the unbelievably, almost comically, boring segments in which she is tracing the history of usage of the word "acedia" and making in-my-reading-futile efforts to argue that it is something different from and poorly described by concepts such as anhedonia, depression, lethargy, boredom, etc., and (b) the well-written, highly-engaging segments about her two-poet marriage, their joint struggles with depression and differing approache...more

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12/23/08

Naomi rated it:

Read in December, 2008

I think this is my first 5 star since I started tracking here on goodreads what I'm reading. The writing itself is a little choppy (i.e. some of the sections feel like the separate essays, talks, etc. they surely began as). However, like any Kathleen Norris book, this made me wish I'd written it myself.

I love/hate books for escapism. This book (ironically, essentially on escapism) made me want to pray, shout, kiss my husband, write a novel, play cars with my son, and brush my teet...more

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01/02/09

Hol added it

Read in January, 2009

I appreciate Kathleen Norris’s interest in monastic life and was interested in the parts of this book that deal with that, especially reagarding elements of early Christianity that seem to have Buddhist parallels—e.g., the “eight bad thoughts” that preceded the seven deadly sins reminded me of Buddhism’s five hindrances. At times she writes in the first-person plural when I think she should’ve stuck to the singular. Maybe she forgets that her core struggles are not necessarily everyone...more

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12/28/08

Michelle rated it:

Read in January, 2009

I have read all of K Norris' prose (I believe)--she's one of my favorites. This book starts out a little slow talking about acedia--what it is and what it means in the grand scheme of things, but then it moves into the more personal. All of Kathleen Norris' books that I've read have been prose (she's also a poet) and there's always the mention of her poet husband with health problems...and in this book you get more of the story and the story of parts of their marriage. It was really interesti...more

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01/01/09

Kari rated it:

Read in May, 2009

The heart of "Acedia and Me" lies in a quote 3/4ths of the way through the book: "A refusal to suffer pain is a refusal to feel love". Part memoir, part history, part theology, Acedia and Me is Kathleen Norris' exploration of a powerful dark force in her life, one of the monastic 8 bad thoughts, the "noonday demon" that kills joy and disengages people from the world. It's also a moving testimony to the love of her life, her late husband David, and to the power of go...more

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11/30/08

Heidi rated it:

bookshelves: memoirs, psychology, spiritual-disciplines, theology

Read in February, 2009

It was difficult to assign this book to one shelf, or even several shelves, but it was a truly unique and rewarding read. "Acedia" (variously defined as sloth, boredom, apathy, despair, burn-out, the inability to care, etc. etc. etc.) is a temptation frequently encountered by those in monastic life. Norris argues compellingly, however, that acedia is running rampant in our contemporary American culture, disguised as "restless boredom. . . frantic escapism . . . compassion fatig...more It was difficult to assign this book to one shelf, or even several shelves, but it was a truly unique and rewarding read. "Acedia" (variously defined as sloth, boredom, apathy, despair, burn-out, the inability to care, etc. etc. etc.) is a temptation frequently encountered by those in monastic life. Norris argues compellingly, however, that acedia is running rampant in our contemporary American culture, disguised as "restless boredom. . . frantic escapism . . . compassion fatigue . . . commitment phobia." Norris's memoir/spiritual meditation is beautifully written and intensely personal as she draws upon the wisdom of the desert fathers in wrestling with this ancient/present day temptation.

This book resonated with me because it names what has been my biggest challenge in leaving a career to be a stay-at-home-mom/housewife. I have experienced acedia at various times over the years in the sheer boredom, tedium, and monotony of housework that never, never, NEVER gets done. I'm surely not the only SAHM who has occasionally compared her four walls to a monastic cell, isolating her from the stimulation of adult conversation and the rewards she once enjoyed in a career. Norris writes acurately about this in her chapter "The Quotidian Mysteries." (Bordeom, she points out, is simply being confronted with "undiluted time," . . . and how hard it is to confront time without entertainment or distraction!) Although I have found contentment and joy in my role by now, I wish that I had had this treasury of wisdom to enlighten and encourage me sooner.

"We want life to have meaning, and want to be fulfilled, and it is hard to accept that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we would like to be." Norris speaks from personal experience. I appreciate her candidly sharing her life-long struggle with acedia in the form of writer's block, depression, her husband's illness, and finally in widowhood. And I am deeply grateful to her for sharing the wisdom that has sustained her through it all.(less)

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11/18/08

Beth666ann rated it:

This is a very thoughtful, interesting book about the monastic concept of acedia, which is akin to spiritual sloth or laziness and has obvious connections to what we call depression today. Thoughout the book, Norris discusses her struggles in marriage; in pursuing the often-solitary career of a writer (as a freelancer who also must set her own deadlines, I can relate to this); and with her relationship to religion. Throughout she works through the differences between acedia and depression and t...more

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09/22/08

Heather rated it:

Though almost everyone is familiar with depression, acedia is a much less well known affliction. Mostly a term used in the monastic community, acedia can be described as a type of emotional slothfulness. Everyday tasks become harder and more pointless to perform, and emotions are dulled almost to the point of desensitization. Acedia takes the form of an unsettled boredom that permeates every area of life, be it physical, emotional or social. In her new book, Kathleen Norris examines acedia in al...more Though almost everyone is familiar with depression, acedia is a much less well known affliction. Mostly a term used in the monastic community, acedia can be described as a type of emotional slothfulness. Everyday tasks become harder and more pointless to perform, and emotions are dulled almost to the point of desensitization. Acedia takes the form of an unsettled boredom that permeates every area of life, be it physical, emotional or social. In her new book, Kathleen Norris examines acedia in all it's mysterious forms, attempting to explain why it is different from depression and some of the ways that it can be dealt with. Interspersed with her reflections on the issue, we become familiar with the religious implications of acedia and get a crash course on the spiritual response to this ponderous problem. In addition, Norris chronicles her life with acedia and her relationship with her husband, who battled physical and mental illness. Part memoir, part reflection, Norris attempts to explain the emotional lassitude that so many suffer from and so few can name. With courage and determination she delves into her psyche and that of the community at large to engage and define a problem that defies drugs, therapy and advice.

In large part this book was theoretical and illusive. Not really recognized by the mental health community, acedia lies merely in the realm of speculation and experience. While the author's attempt to explain and understand this problem was interesting, many people to whom I mentioned the topic "acedia" gave me a blank stare and said they had never heard of it. This included a mental health professional who expressed interest in the book. Though this problem seems to be an unknown entity, Norris gives us a historical frame of reference for this malady and explains why it is no longer recognized in society. She encourages the reader to look at this problem in terms of a spiritual dissonance that can be corrected with reflection and prayer rather than medication and rationalization. As the book went on, though, there were a few things that stuck out. The first was that although an attempt was made for the book to be hopeful, it was not. The picture portrayed was not unlike the myth of Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill for eternity, only to have it roll back down over and over. The author seems to suggest that this affliction is doomed to be suffered over and over again, with different results from each self-administered treatment. Her own battle with this problem, she acknowledges, has been a lifetime struggle that she can never seem to overcome. Another issue that I came across was the implication that only those sufficiently pious would be able to overcome this problem. Many times her solution to acedia was prayer or spiritual reflection. While prayer is something that I do regularly, and does indeed benefit me tremendously, many people do not have the same feeling towards spiritual meditation. This makes her discourse a little alienating. With as many religious ideologies as there are out there, there are many people who don't ascribe to religion at all. To them, this book would be pointless. One can argue that most of those people wouldn't pick up this book, but the good points made in this book should be able to be shared by anyone affected by this problem. I think it is a bit dismissive to only examine one way of dealing with a problem. I am aware that this is the author's show, and it is her prerogative to handle her reflections in any way she would like, but the effect is a bit non-inclusive.

Despite these misgivings, I found that this book had a hypnotic quality to the writing that kept me wanting to explore further and delve deeper. Many of the passages had bits and snippets of prayers wrapped in, and some were moving and beautiful. I found many hidden gems among this book, new ways of looking at things, and reflections and connections that I would have never made without the author's introspective analysis. Her information had a way of winding around itself, coming back to the same points repeatedly, but this was not troublesome. In a way it was like a good speaker highlighting the same points in order to reaffirm their importance and drive home the message. The book was also very informative about the monastic community, its tenants and its values. There is no doubt in my mind that acedia exists, and that there is relief from this problem. I believe that the ability of this author to take a foreign and illusive concept and relate it in a way that everyone will recognize and understand is a great achievement.
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