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Accidie
I first encountered the word acedia (accidie in English) a few years ago. The definition: spiritual sloth, apathy, indifference. It gave me pause. I recognized it in myself. To me, it’s a feeling of ‘not quite right.’ Yet nothing is actually wrong either; no major catastrophe, no problem to solve, no daily issue. Just not quite right. I find the feeling a bit suffocating. And yet I know that by pushing it away, it will likely stay longer. ‘What we resist, persists,’ ya know? Here’s a little story from Richard Rohr, the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Daily Meditations: The wisdom of the desert tempers our instinct to avoid boredom and discomfort: Amma Syncletica’s (one of the desert mothers) bird metaphor speaks directly to one of the dilemmas of the spiritual life—that of coming to terms with the plain old ordinariness of spiritual practice…