October Letter
on disordered loves, acedia and being weak. (plus a few favorite things from the month)
“Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still / Even among these rocks, our peace in His will / And even among these rocks.” - T. S. Eliot
Hello friends,
Welcome to another monthly letter. October is almost wrapped up, leaves are still gently falling and piling up on sidewalks and yards. In my neck of the woods, the clouds decided to open up with a vengeance and cause quite a few flash floods in my city - one of which was in our garage. Our “non-paved” road quickly turns into a delta when the rains come hard and fast. So, while my boys delight in the small pool gathering at the bottom of our driveway, I hurriedly clear away any debris clogging our drain. My neighbors dig ruts and pathways in our road to try and steer the water in a better direction than our driveways, but it’s all a bit of mess and at the end of it all, we shake our heads, shrug our shoulders and move on. Bureaucracy has its limits.
In my last letter to you, I alluded to writing about my journey with acedia. Of course I had high hopes of really figuring the whole thing out, solving the problem and tying a neat little bow around this nasty demon that’s plagued us all since the beginning of time. But as it turns out, God was even more gracious to me then expected. While I obviously had my own plans to understand such a thing, He thought it wiser to teach me about it using my own life. Thankfully I was paying attention.
“Let us remember that the life in which we ought to be interested is ‘daily’ life. We can, each of us, only call the present time our own…Our Lord tells us to pray for today, and so he prevents us from tormenting ourselves about tomorrow. It is as if (God) were to say to us: ‘(It is I) who gives you this day (and) will also give you what you need for this day. (It is I) who makes the sun to rise. (It is I) who scatters the darkness of night and reveals to you the rays of the sun.”
- Gregory of Nyssa, On the Lord’s Prayer
The word acedia isn’t really a word we use much these days. Merriam Webster Dictionary describes it as “boredom or apathy.” It’s root deriving from a “combination of the negative prefix a- and the Greek noun kēdos, meaning ‘care, concern, or grief.’"
Spiritual torpor has also been used to describe it. Again from Merriam Webster: “The English word torpor is a 13th-century borrowing from Latin: torpōr-, torpor mean "numbness, paralysis, absence of energy, lethargy," and correspond to the Latin verb torpēre, meaning ‘to be numb, lack sensation; to be struck motionless; to be sluggish or lethargic.’" Or perhaps, that feeling we have after taking part in Thanksgiving dinner. Or that constant drag we feel in our minds and bodies as we look at our watch or out the window wondering if it’s lunchtime yet. When will we get our escape? Name any distraction from the menial tasks that remain and I’ll take it. But alas, it’s not that simple is it? For as Kathleen Norris’ friend told her on the other end of her phone line, “We are speaking of cosmic time. And it is always noon somewhere.” 1
I take notice of this small comfort. This thing that plagues me is spiritual and cosmic. The answer isn’t found in doing something else.
Inevitably, that Something Else haunted me these past couple of weeks. The centuries old war that erupted over the weekend of October 7th in Israel and Gaza spilled its lava to the outer reaches of the world. Me in my little corner of Portland, Or, knowing that if I finished reading that article, or looking at those pictures or listening to this story, my mind will break. My heart is already broken. I’m not worried about that. It was my mind. I couldn’t close the laptop, the paper or the radio. Rage and grief seeped through my pores and before I knew it, my every day life seemed…trivial; not worth much. I knew it was bad when I opened my Instagram app and literally had to put my hand over my screen because whatever newscast I was following was posting video footage of sensitive material again.
One of my teachers in my Spiritual Direction program says that INFJ’s (that’s me) need the strongest boundaries. We’re the ones who can tell ourselves anything and get away with it because we feel so strongly about it. So, I put a timer on my IG app and over the coarse of a week, I noticed my brain and nervous system settling.
Because in order to not engage with all the very real pain “out there” I had to take a hard look at why I was so engaged with it. Of course this didn’t happen alone, it would be impossible. We need the wisdom of God embodied through others in our lives.
It’s true that God is always with the outcast and downtrodden. All I could see in the stories coming out of Israel and Gaza was Michelangelo’s Pieta, Mary holding Jesus’ dead body after being taken down off the cross. He is with them in their death. He grieves for He knows their pain, more than I ever could.
Was Jesus inviting me to join Him there? It seemed I had put myself there out of my own will and fear. Out of my own boredom with my own life. I was looking for Him because as St. Augustine said, “My heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” My feelings of looking for Him in the wreckage of war were ones of desolation. Empty. Far from Him. To be clear, this is my own experience with where Jesus is inviting me to pay attention. We are all on our own journeys with Him, and if you feel the consolations of Jesus in stories of war that grow fruits of the Spirit within you, then by all means -remain.
The invitation before me and anyone wishing to find Jesus, is to be curious about our attachments and loves. Are they disordered? And not in a “Jesus, Others, You” sort of way. But in a way that says, “Things are good in themselves when ordered and directed by the love of God,” as Kevin O’brien, SJ writes in The Ignatian Adventure.
When I was asked the question by a friend in my Spiritual Direction cohort, “ Do you see yourself in Michelangelo’s Pieta? My answer was no. That is how I can make any sense and find a sliver of comfort in the realities of death and war.
She then asked me, “Where do you see yourself with Jesus?”
I answered, “Being held. His hand on my head.” I started to cry as I slowly came back to my body and realized how badly my head hurt.
In tenderness, she then said to me, “It’s ok to be weak, Janell.”
It’s ok to be weak. It’s ok to be tired. It’s ok to sleep in the bottom of the boat during a storm while people scream, don’t you care?
In my weakness with Christ, it is an extreme act of faith to not be outraged in today’s culture; to not take the bait of vengeance or nationalism or some crazy frenzied argument that say’s God is on our side. The Trinitarian God is always on His own side. Our problem is it’s too painful to scoot ourselves over and allow God’s Spirit to re-order all of our disordered attachments. For me, the "re-ordering" feels right in my body but also downright exhausting. It feels slower...patient, like one piano string being tuned and then on to the next one. (Recently, it took 3 hours for my piano tuner to tune my piano.)
Sometimes God is speechless too. He has his moments of Selah. But He is nonetheless with us in our absence of words.
Just because I can feel so deeply, full of tears and rage, or joy and excitement, doesn’t mean it is a good and right thing for me at this time. Am I seeking the emotions to feel alive? Is my life that menial? My kids are worthy of my attention. My husband is worthy of my attention. My neighbors are worthy of my attention. My laundry and dishes and grocery list are worthy of my attention. My friends are worthy of my attention. My life here is worthy
I want to tell God how He should love and care for us by being outraged and grievous over horrendous things. Yet…His way is not efficient. Oh how I want it to be! It is so personal and sensitive and slow and patient. He could be in a swarm of chaos and respond with, “Who touched me?” to the slightest hand reached out in faith. Suddenly, all the places I was looking for Him are dimmed, and He’s found me here.
I want to ask Him, “But what about them?” Those dying, being smothered and stomped on by the heel of vengeance and power? Those taking your name in vain and using it as leverage? What about…starts to sound an awful lot like, why don’t you just turn these stones into bread? Why can’t I strike this rock and have fresh water to drink? Why don’t you just come down off that cross if you’re really God?
And before I know it, I’ve forgotten the Word behind His words. I’ve twisted the words and flesh became no more, the deceit of the Devil abounding.
If all Jesus desires is to love us so personally, never looking away in our shame and guilt, then couldn’t His Spirit reach to the depths of the dead, (surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear), and the heights of the unreachable with a touch so swift, so sudden that all we could do is whirl around and say - Who touched me?
Because thankfully, we are speaking of cosmic time.
October favorites:
The movie Living. It’s slow and beautiful and a small comfort to me recently
Ben and I have our boys join us in watching The Great British Baking Show, which is usually a delight and sometimes hilarious having them join in.
My local classical music station. There is something special about those djs, and transcendent in all those songs without words
Kale, hard cheddar & pickled onion salads
Katie Langston’s talk at the Minneapolis Mockingbird Conference. If I had to pick just one to share, it would be this. Her story of finding grace outside Mormonism, mixed with brilliant illustrations from C.S Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, and the myth of Oedipus, had me in tears by the end.
WATCH HERE.
I deeply appreciate the work Plough is doing. This article on Psalm 46 and the way of peace was of deep comfort to me.
That’s all for now friends. I’d truly like to know, what have been the things helping you stay grounded in this life God has for you? Feel free to leave a comment below. And as always, thanks for reading.
Until next time,
Janell
Following my Spiritual Director’s orders, I started reading The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris. Something to gently rip the bandaid off before reading Acedia & Me.
This is a beautiful reflection! Also really loved your East of Eden set. :)
I have also longed for God to be more efficient. This was really great writing.
And oof - that talk by Katie Langston was powerful.
Have you read Eugene Peterson’s essay titled “Teach us to care, Teach us not to care”? 😊