Acedia
I started reading a book awhile ago by Kathleen Norris called Acedia & Me. She expands and defines in terms of our modern day what acedia is. It has been often understood as spiritual sloth. What it means to most would be the serious malady of being unable to care. After Christmas this seems to be something we all are aware of.
Acedia has a clinical cousin called depression. Norris traces acedia’s path through history to expose the damage to not only our own lives but also to our culture as we become desensitized by never ending distractions and our loss to care about anything that is really important. She finds that “restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia and enervating despair” that we have problems with today are “the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.“
This is not a new concept. It is first encountered in the 4th century by the Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus. This is what makes the challenge so interesting. How can a 1600 year old concept be so relative in today’s world? We are so enamoured in the newness of the modern age that our view of history and what it has to offer is so easily forgotten. We should realize that the paths we currently walk are not always ‘new’ but sometimes very worn with previous travellers.
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