WHAT THE HELL IS ACEDIA AND WHY AM I IN IT NOW?

  Acedia is a term I first came across when reading "Amazing Grace," by the wonderful Kathleen Norris, a Benedictine oblate, poet, and writer.

 Other writers before her have referred to it as "a period of spiritual dryness, barrenness." I am seizing upon it to describe the current state of my soul and personality. (Can a personality be "dry"?) At any rate, here are the signs I see that I am suffering from Acedia:

 

--A lack of joy in my life.

--Not feeling an uplift of spirits when I see bluebirds, sunlight, and the wind in the tall pines, all things which used to give me joy.

 

--Feeling a certain down-presser sense about my life as I putter around the kitchen, walk on the deck, speak to friends, and more.

--When at Mass not getting the usual sense of awe and joy after receiving the Eucharist, as I used to.

--Feeling that my insides are in rather a muddle, all mixed up like a ball of yarn which has come unraveled and I cannot find the end to put it right again.

--Lacking any motivation to finish a short story, a promising one, which I started before my bad fall on the deck.

--Not looking forward to anything, not even going out to my favorite restaurant, Alina's.

 

  Now you may say, "Sounds like depression, Annie." It does share a few things with "the blues," but it is qualitatively different to my mind. It's almost as if I cannot take a deep breath into my spirit, as if it had become flattened and crushed somehow.

 I think that dryness is common in one's spiritual life, although I don't think I have ever experienced it before. I am rather flummoxed in fact, waiting for a new "God Message" to infuse my life with spirit. I expect, were God speaking to me in French, that she would say, "Ces choses arrive, Anne." This is what a wonderful waitress said to me on Guadeloupe decades ago, when I wondered where she had gone for the last days. She replied that she had been "mal au l'estomach." I replied, "C'est domage," and she said, "Ces choses arrive." "These things happen."

  Indeed. But then, being the over-achiever that I am or used to be, I wonder: what can I do to water my spirit and make it grow again like the cedars of Lebanon? Here are a few thoughts I have, besides eating lots of chocolate, sinking into the hot tub, calling a friend, and ordering another cookbook from Amazon:

--Pray more, really pray, not just mumble repetitively like the pagans used to.

--Read through the Ignatian Exercises. Even if I am too tired to do them right now (still recovering from my accident), I can place myself inside the words of those spiritual experts from long ago.

--Read about some saints, even "Saints Behaving Badly" which appeals to my bolder self.

 

--Call a Catholic friend I love, share what I am going through, and listen for her responses. She may have some good advice or at least, some fine sympathy.

--Go outside on a warmer day and sit in the weathered wooden chair in back beneath the pines, breathe deeply, and let the greenness of the pines sink into me. Nature always plumps up my dried-up soul, I've found.

  And if I am still walking through the dry valley, I will kiss my husband, curl up on the couch beneath a heated blanket, and cuddle with my doggy. That often is a remedy for "what ails ye" as the Brits used to say. And I know, as most spiritual seekers know, that "this too shall pass."