Acedia and Me

Acedia and Me: Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris

This is the latest offering from the author of Dakota, The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace. Fans of Kathleen Norris will find that deep in the throes of her blue period, with her writer husband hospitalized for a depression more serious than hers, she delivers what amounts to another chapter of her running narrative journal. It's depressing both as a life and as a read. The contemporary monks are incidental. The ancient monks of the desert take their place as sources of wisdom and encouragement, as Norris turns to the desert fathers' term acedia to describe her state of spiritual emptiness, boredom and depression.

Buy this book, but not for its depressing narrative. Buy this book for its wonderful "chapbook" of wisdom on the subject of acedia and depression, quotations from spiritual writers through the ages who have written on that all too common experience. Have this on hand to be able to offer that wisdom when a parishioner or a colleague needs it, or to turn to when you recognize your own movement into a cycle of hopelessness and loss. There's nothing else quite like it available.