Tidbits from Kathleen Norris

• She talked about the writing process and the fact that it is largely made up of boring work habits.  Everyone has to face the blank page.  (The cleanest houses are those belonging to writers on a deadline [and, I would add, teachers with a load of unpleasant essays to grade].)  The voice of the mocker says, "Why bother?  Who's going to read this?"  Acedia rejects the routine.
• We all have 24 hours to live in a day.  We either see this as a blessing or as a curse (acedia).  It's a choice sometimes. 
• Dean Nelson asked her if acedia was our national disease.  She replied, "As any reader of fairy tales knows, if you have a problem and you don't know its name, you're in trouble."  She went to describe symptoms of acedia -- ennervating despair, commitment phobia, boredom...the extremes of either lethargy or workaholism.  Yep, that's American society.  She mentioned watching a CNN broadcast in which story on a search for a child sex offender was immediately followed by a story on gas prices rising -- they both had the same importance, the same urgency.  (She said, "That's why I've stopped watching tv news and started reading The Economist.  Heh.)  Pretty soon we won't know what's important anymore.
• When asked about the opposite of acedia, its corresponding virtue, she noted that the ancients regarded it as zeal, enthusiasm.  But given the misuse and associations with the word zeal nowadays, she says it's love.  If you can love, if you can be in relationship, you have defeated acedia.  Acedia says nothing matters;  love says it matters.
• "Now, more than ever, we need symbolic language."  It touches our hearts.  Metaphors reach us more than anything can.  We've tried to shield ourselves from language that makes us feel.  She used the following as an example:  In the Civil War, the post-war effect on soldiers was called "soldier's heart."  In World War I, it was called "shellshock."  In World War II, it was called "battle fatigue."  Today it's called "post-traumatic stress disorder."  It's a long way from "soldier's heart" to PTSD.  We want to shield ourselves from pain.  Norris says that when we use terms like "PTSD" outside of the medical arena, we're fooling ourselves. 
• Re: poetry -- physical chores enhance poetry.  It's the same in the monastic tradition;  repetitive physical labor helps memory.  She referred to Donald Hall, who speculates that iambic pentameter developed out of the rhythm of walking.  [Calls to mind Augustine's "Solvitur ambulando" -- "it is solved by walking."] 
• Three things are taught so badly, she says, it's a miracle any of us is still alive:  the Christian faith, poetry, and math.  Textbook poetry is some of the worst ever.  Norris (like Mary Oliver before her) notes that kids have learned by 10 or 12 that poetry is boring.  She alluded to the missed opportunities to stimulate what's there already in kids.  [And again I am forced to question my vocation as a teacher in this current broken system.]
• She speaks highly of Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being [which I just so happen to have on my bookshelf, awaiting the right time for reading;  perhaps it will be soon]. 
• She lamented, "In the Christian community, what separates us is more important than what unites us."  She went on to note that St. Paul was writing about this in his epistles to the various churches.  Today's divisions are nothing new;  concerning the big church blow-ups, "we've been here before."  If there's one thing that still unites us, though, it's baptism.  She said, you hear people say "I was baptized a Roman Catholic" or "as a ____."  No, you're not, she said.  You're baptized as a Christian.  Baptism is ecumenical. 
• In response to the typical question about what advice she'd give to writers and hopefuls, she said first, "Of course, you're reading a lot."  Then she advised, learn to edit and revise yourself;  love revision as much as writing.  Writers' groups can help, but learn to detect when you've fudged or overworked or overdone something.  Everyone faces the blank page.  The world doesn't care if you write. 
• When asked what do you say to people for whom acedia appears to be a daily reality, she first responded, "Commiserate.  We've all experienced it."  Secondly, anything to get them out of the closed circle of the self.  It can be something social, labor, learning something new.  Thirdly, if a person is suffering with clinical depression, send them to a doctor. 
• There are no shortcuts, only the passage through the dark nights.  There is no magic pill.  God sends us moments, people, at times.  Receive these moments gratefully.  But it's not a snap-out-of-it. 
• What to read:  Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being;  Emily Dickinson's poetry;  The Praktikos, by Evagrius;  the Desert Mothers and Fathers.