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Books : Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's LifeIn association with Amazon.comby: Kathleen Norris  List Price: $25.95 Amazon.com's Price: $17.13 You Save: $8.82 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 818.5403 EAN: 9781594489969 ISBN: 1594489963 Label: Riverhead Hardcover Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: September 16, 2008 Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover Studio: Riverhead Hardcover Sales Rank: 719 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: 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 world’s 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 Norris’s own experience, Acedia & me is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - READ IT!!!No lengthy treatise on this book - that's already been done. Very simply - Mighty good book, which is no surprise seeing that's it Norris - and on a much-ignored and forgotten topic. Read it - it's eye opening. Rating: - Acedia and meOnce again Kathleen Norris shares her life experiences and helps me see new possibilities in my own life. Rating: - Beautifully written and touchingAcedia may not be a word used often in secular society but most Catholics will be familiar with it. Acedia is that feeling that you simply cannot, cannot do this any more. It's boring. I'd rather do something--anything--else. It's too hard to be good every day. Being good requires a hero; not me. Acedia turns up in the spiritual life of anyone on the narrow road, and it's a deadly temptation. Norris explores acedia, it's closely related cousin, depression, and the long history ... Read More Rating:  - Good writing, but pieces are cobbled together and the seams show The subtitle hints at a different direction for this interesting but overly-long book: a series or collection of essays on Acedia (Acedia & Me, Acedia & Writing, Monks on Acedia, Acedia & Marriage, etc.). Rating: - Why are we so depressed?I have long harbored an intuition that the desert fathers and mothers have provided humanity with some of the keenest insights into the depths of the human conidion. Kathleen Norris in her newest book Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life, demonstrates a similar intuition, as she probes the little-known temptation acedia, which - although its usage has all but ceased in the English language - is alive and well in our consumer culture. What is acedia? Well, considering that Norris devotes ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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