South Dakota's most famous Benedictine oblate has written a new book about spiritual sloth, which, she says, took her years to complete.

Kathleen Norris' "Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life," was published in September, about 20 years after she first encountered the little-used theological term in an ancient Christian text by a fourth-century monk.

"It was the hardest book I've ever done," Norris said this week from her home in Hawaii, "because acedia is such a negative thing and it's hard to write about something that's so negative."

Best known as the author of "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography" and "The Cloister Walk," Norris is also a Benedictine oblate affiliated with Assumption Abbey in Richardton, N.D., which is 90 miles north of her adopted hometown of Lemmon in the far northwest corner of South Dakota.

"Dakota" tells the story of her journey back to the hometown of her maternal grandmother, Charlotte Totten, and back to faith through the monastery. Her grandfather, Dr. Frank Totten, was a pioneer physician in Lemmon.

After 25 years in Lemmon, Norris left in 2000 because of her late husband's health problems and medical needs.

That's another reason "Acedia" took so long to write. It kept getting interrupted by her life, she said. While she was writing the book, she moved from Lemmon, her father died and her husband died a year after that. "I kept having to set the book aside and go back to it later," she said.

Widowed for five years now, she continues to live in Hawaii, where she writes and cares for her 91-year-old mother. But she remains connected to Lemmon, maintaining her home there, and to the nearby monastery, where she took oblate vows 22 years ago.

"I was able to get back there twice last year," she said. She enjoys a lifelong connection to the monastery, maintaining close ties by e-mail and other correspondence with its members.

Norris was the first Protestant oblate of Assumption Abbey. "I just kept coming back to the monastery. Eventually, somebody suggested I become an oblate and they revived their program for me. Now, it's grown to be a much bigger group," she said.

Later, she brought monasticism to the masses through her book, "Cloister Walk," an account of her time in residence at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.

"I think she has a good insight into monasticism and trying to describe that lifestyle to a lay audience," the Rev. Ray Deisch said. "She does a good job of relating it to people who otherwise would know nothing of it. She's a bit like (Thomas) Merton in that way."

Deisch will lead a Benedictine oblate retreat later this month at St. Martin Monastery in Rapid City.

Norris remembers visiting St. Martin in the late 1980s, perhaps for a Benedictine conference. She was thrilled to learn that the oblate group there plans to read her new book on acedia.

"I'm really honored that they want to read the book, and I hope it enhances their understanding of monastic spirituality," she said. "There's a lot of monastic history in the book, so there should be a lot for them in the book. The word itself was kind of limited to history because, for so long, so many people assumed that only monks suffered from it."

That's not true, as Norris and many of her readers attest.

When she first read about acedia, she immediately recognized its presence in her own prayer life and began to see its corrosive effects in contemporary society, as well.

"He was describing something I had felt for years but had never been able to name," she writes of the fourth-century monk. "The word was unfamiliar to me, but I felt an immediate and personal connection to it."

In the book, she uses the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin" to convey the dangers inherent in the modern world's dismissal of acedia. "If you're suffering from something, but you don't know its name, you're at a disadvantage," she said.

Acedia: Author calls it 'a deadly spiritual affliction'

Commonly called spiritual sloth, acedia's modern definitions as apathy, boredom, torpor or as a primitive word for depression are not sufficiently nuanced, according to author Kathleen Norris.

At its root, the word literally means "not caring." Being unable to care about people, faith or life - and not caring that you don't care - is the ultimate toll of acedia.

The spiritual writer has battled "the noonday demon" ever since she was a young girl growing up in Hawaii.

"It is part of who I am. I'm trying to talk my publisher into make me a T-shirt that reads: "Got acedia? Who cares?"

And she accepts that she'll always combat it.

"I like the idea of "standing with" acedia, facing it head on, because acedia would prefer that I lie down and moan and just not give a damn," she said.

Here is more from Norris, courtesy of Riverhead Books:

Q: Why is acedia so little known today?

A: In the fourth century, the early Christian monks regarded acedia as one of the worst of the "eight bad thoughts" that plagued a monk trying to live and pray in peace. Acedia was right up there with anger and pride. Over the next few centuries, however, as the "eight bad thoughts" evolved into what the church came to define as the "seven deadly sins," acedia was subsumed into the sin of sloth. And as sloth became associated more with physical laziness, we lost the sense of acedia as a deadly spiritual affliction.

The early Christian monks taught that every person has a primary temptation, or "bad thought" that is likely to cause trouble in one's life. This makes sense to me. When I start to go off track, acedia is usually the root cause of the problem.

Q: How do you see acedia manifest not only in the lives of individuals, but in our culture as a whole?

A: One reason I wrote this book was to explore my suspicion that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia and enervating despair that plague us today are the ancient demon of acedia in modem dress. When we look at acedia's root meaning, as not caring, we can see it as a social problem, and perceive that the sloth it engenders is anything but an insignificant physical laziness. It may even manifest as hyperactivity, but it is more like the activity of a hamster on a treadmill than action that will enhance the common good.

Lethargy, acedia: In some ways, I think they define American culture today. The plethora of 24-hour news sources are perfect carriers of the disease, bombarding us with so much "information" that we can no longer distinguish between what is important and what is not, and discern what we truly need to care about.

Q: What are the differences between acedia and depression? How can people tell which they are suffering from?

A: I may be stomping through grounds where angels fear to tread, but I have long sensed that there are important distinctions between the two. One reason I felt compelled to write this book was to explore those differences. At a basic level, depression is an illness that will respond to medical intervention, and acedia is a temptation that may be resisted. The big problem is trying to discern which affliction we're dealing with, and what we need to do about it. Being willing to seek help is always of primary importance.

One reason I am certain there is a difference between acedia and depression is that for monastic people, depression is not a given, but acedia is. Everyone goes through it. As one Benedictine sister put it, acedia for a monk is as unfair, inopportune and inevitable as acne for a teenager. Another Benedictine commented that like acne, acedia can also leave permanent scars.

Q: While you were writing this book, you were the main caregiver for your husband as he suffered through many years of chronic illness that ended with his death in 2003. Your father also died, and your sisters had major illnesses. How did your understanding and experience of acedia change over that time?

A: Acedia is tricky. It can surface as boredom, but it can also attach itself to our busy schedules, making us too weary to care about much except the next task on the list. In caregiving, I adopted the role of a woman warrior, and it worked for a while, especially during times of crisis. I got things done for the people I loved. But the eternal question that acedia asks - the "why bother?" - was always there, lurking in the shadows, suggesting that what I was doing was useless, and that there was no hope.

Q: Although both poets, you and your husband were quite different in many ways. For one thing, although he had been raised and educated in an intensely Catholic environment, he gave up his faith as a teenager, while you rediscovered yours in your 30s. How did your battle with acedia figure in your efforts to sustain your marriage for 30 years?

A: Acedia fosters a lack of commitment, tempting us to abandon relationships when they no longer seem to work to our advantage. Back in the fourth century, Evagrius described the syndrome very well: A person feels unappreciated and blames others - these people I live with or work with, who are incapable of understanding or encouraging me. As these thoughts progress, a person comes to feel justified in seeking fulfillment elsewhere.

Discovering the monastic wisdom about what it can mean to remain in a vowed, committed relationship strengthened my conviction that my marriage was something I truly needed, and helped me survive some difficult times with my husband. Looking back, I am deeply grateful: Not only was our marriage strengthened when we came through the rough spots, now I have many good memories that sustain me in my life as a widow.

Q: How can the concept of sin be helpful to us in understanding acedia?

A: The early monk's designation of "eight bad thoughts" that plague human beings was a liberating concept for me. It allowed me to let go of some of that old, useless church baggage. Theologians who came after the monks came to define sin as acts, and once you do that, people tend to either escape into self-righteousness (thinking, well, if I haven't committed adultery, I don't have to worry about lust), or they wallow in needless guilt, feeling themselves to be beyond redemption.

But if I admit that the bad thoughts come to me - greed, pride, anger and so on - I am also admitting that I am no better and no worse than anyone else, in being susceptible to temptation. The important thing is what I do with the thought when it comes, and how I act on it.

Q: How has acedia specifically affected your work as a writer?

A: At times, I'm tempted to think of acedia as a fancy word for procrastination, but I know from experience that it is more than that. It deadens the creative instinct. The problem with acedia is not that I grow slothful and fritter time away, but that I am tempted to give up on the vocation of writing itself, losing faith in the whole enterprise, and in my abilities as a writer.

Q: What particular kinds of help can psychotherapy offer that spiritual practice sometimes cannot, in your experience?

A: It depends so much on the individual. My husband was helped by psychotherapy, while practices like reading the psalms and consulting a spiritual mentor have worked better for me. Twice in our marriage we benefited from seeing a marriage counselor; just having a third party who would listen to us, and not take sides, helped us heal our relationship.

I think that for some people, the notion of spiritual practice as healing is tinged with a deep-seated guilt. They can't shake the notion that if they were "really "good" or if they really had strong religious faith, they wouldn't ever be depressed. Psychotherapy and/or medication might help such a person out of that bind, but I wouldn't count out a spiritual mentor, someone who could help them shed the needless guilt. Nowadays, the people who work in "spiritual formation" or counseling are likely to have education and training in psychology; some are psychiatrists.

Q: How do you sustain your faith at times when you feel you have lost contact with God and prayer seems impossible? Is the kind of persistence necessary to do that comprehensible any longer in our 24/7, on-demand, instant-gratification culture?

A: Well, I guess the first thing to do is forget about instant gratification. If that's what you're after, religion will be a big disappointment. But it can offer a kind of stability over the long haul that allows hope to bloom, even in dire circumstances. I've found that whenever I feel that God has abandoned me, it is usually the other way around. This isn't cause for guilt; it simply means that I need to wait until my mind has cleared a bit, and I can focus on things in a new way.

When my husband was in the last years of his life, I sometimes grew angry and bitter over his situation. But my faith in God was not shaken. It was a curious sensation to know that God was with us in our suffering, even though I could not sense God's presence. Just knowing it was there was enough. Over the years, I seemed to have developed a trust in God that could withstand great trials; the grace and sense of peace that came to me was pure gift, nothing I could have found or developed on my own.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com.