Grappling with Goodness: Against Acedia

“God goes belonging to every living thing

He has made

Sing His being simply by being

the thing it is:

Stone and tree and sky,

Man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes.”

- Christian Wiman, Every Riven Thing

We are made. Failure to receive this is the heart of acedia, the vice we misconstrue as sloth or laziness. In RJ Snell’s Acedia and It’s Discontents, he begins by discussing  “one of the most satanic figures ever concocted”, Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden. What makes him satanic is not the perverse and violent, but leads to it. He despises the nature of his own existence and must overcome it through the dominance and destruction of other’s existence. This desire to be god is what lead Satan to rebel, to lead his own gang against Heaven and out into the wilderness. “Tis better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven…”

In an older way of thinking everything was seen to have being, and to the degree each had it, they must glorify God in it. A person is not a fish, but both have being and one should delight in the other.

In acedia, an outer shell hardens against others while an inner torpor balloons, both inflating your idea of your own importance and placing everything a step away from the pedestal.

It has been said that humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. This key sets aside your own senses, including creature needs like exhaustion, to see and reflect the being of others back to God.

Refining is not instantaneous, and it reduces the unrefined until the proper metal has been achieved. As the human is refined, the calcification will be knocked off, the impurities will be removed, and there will be less material than you began with. We become less, to reflect more.

Returning to Holden, he never becomes anything, he is an unmarked, unchanged horror that continues plowing through humanity until he has crushed them all or is crushed.

Common man is not the most satanic, but has all the grace and folly that being a Son of Adam bestows. He plows through thoughtlessly without reflecting the glory and lifting it up in praise. Functionally, he denies the call to dominion in the name of efficiency.

Monks cursed the noonday demon that drew them out to check the track of the sun across the sky. We check our phones for something from outside our task. We look at the time to see if we are done, if obligations are filled, if we can clock out and check out. Then the interior assault begins and a small self pitying voice repeats the narrative of the thankless ceaseless work.

There is a more excellent way.

The moment when the time weighs heavy is the time to grapple with the goodness we are being handed, to receive the gift. It is not saying there is goodness in the boring and dull, in long hours, and extra miles. We can’t be Eeyore, sour at the cold and proving his merit by his misery. There is nothing truly dull in this world; we are dull. We are bored because we are blind. A dim view of childish delight and ceaseless ideas reveals we grew weary of doing good, not that we are hard done by.

Or to quote Chesterton,” Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” 

To wash another dish is not just to be glad a stomach is full, but to rejoice in the goodness of soap and water. We are not as skilled and faithful workers as they.

Capon wrote an ode to NAHCO3, Baking Soda, which ends with this, “We who stand so deep in your debt praise your generosity; we who play not more than two instruments, who understand only four languages and can hardly express ourselves in any of them, salute the range of your abilities; we who require praise and publicity for what little we do stand in awe of your humility;

ACCEPT, THEREFORE, at our hands, this ORDER OF MERIT which we, though unworthy, bestow: If we were half as faithful as you have been, we would be twice as good as we are. May God hasten the day.

To fight acedia is to pull off the clay caking our eyes. The healing has happened, the work is finished, but we have to obey and wash the crud out.

Our Creator is working now.

We must wait, watch, and work ourselves,

though the afternoon waxes.