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

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

View our feature on Kathleen Norrisâ€™s Acedia & Me.Kathleen Norrisâ€™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 couldnâ€™t drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldnâ€™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 â€œnoonday demon,â€ 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 worldâ€™s vernacular.

Like Norrisâ€™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 Norrisâ€™s and her husbandâ€™s bouts with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression. Moreover, her analysis of acedia reveals its burden not just on individuals but on whole societiesâ€” and that the â€œrestless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that we struggle with today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.â€

An examination of acedia in the light of theology, psychology, monastic spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norrisâ€™s own experience, Acedia & me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important.
Country USA
Manufacturer Riverhead Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2008-09-16
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Riverhead Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2008-09-16
Format	Kindle eBook

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

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