Beeson Podcast, Episode 479 Stefana Dan Laing Jan. 14, 2020 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. Doug Sweeney: Welcome to episode 479 of the Beeson podcast. I'm glad you've joined us for another week of ministry that we hope will aid and encourage your walk with Jesus. Today's podcast features a lecture given by one of our own outstanding faculty members, Dr. Stefana Dan Laing called Vice And Virtue In The Heart Of The Seminarian. Kristen will tell us more about Dr. Laing and her lecture in just a few moments, but let me first say a word about our first preview day of the spring semester. If you or someone you know is interested in seminary and wants to have an on the ground experience of Beeson, join us on Friday, January 31 for preview day. I will be there and look forward to meeting and talking to those who attend. Find more information and register at beesondivinity.com/previewday. Now, Kristen, who is Dr. Stefana Dan Laing, and what will we hear today? Kristen Padilla: Dr. Stefana Dan Laing is assistant professor of divinity teaching in the area of spiritual formation. She is also an early church historian having written an important book with Baker Academic called Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church. Dr. Laing wears many hats at Beeson as she serves as our theological librarian and the faculty sponsor of our women's theological colloquium. Dr. Laing gave the lecture we will hear today in the 2019 fall semester during our schools Finkenwalde Day, which is a day-long spiritual retreat named after Dietrich Bonhoeffer seminary Finkenwalde. On today's podcast, Dr. Laing presents a lecture entitled Virtue And Vice In The Soul Of The Seminarian: Encounters With the Noon Day Demon. In this lecture, she examines the teaching of Evagrius Of Pontus, a fourth-century desert father. Evagrius is largely responsible for the schema that we know today as the so-called seven deadly sins, which Evagrius called the eight evil thoughts. Kristen Padilla: The lecture focuses on one vice, in particular, the vice of the acedia, which the desert fathers called the Noonday Demon. She expands on this topic and lays out how acedia might manifest in the lives of seminary students or anybody trying to grow in their spiritual life and how acedia impedes our growth in virtue. I was there for this lecture and I can attest to the fact that Dr. Laing was insightful and engaging, and she astutely applied the understanding of acedia to our lives today. I believe you will be captivated and stretched by what she has to say in this lecture. Doug Sweeney: That's right, Kristen. I was there too. A wonderful lecture, stretching indeed. Let's go now to Hodges Chapel and listen to Dr. Laing lecture on Vice And Virtue In The Heart Of The Seminarian. Dr. Laing: Good morning. I'm not exactly sure why I was drawn to this topic. I just was and I sort of felt like as the ethos of this semester went on that the topic was going to be an appropriate one. So, I'm excited and I don't expect you to just sit quietly with hands folded. This is for you and I hope that you'll hear a lot here that you can relate to. Unfortunately, some of it will be things that you don't really want to admit that you relate to. Okay? It's the same for me, so I'm going to say a word at the start. I'm going to spell a word for you that I'm going to be using during this lecture, and it's the word acedia. It's A-C-E-D-I-A, so don't raise your hand in the middle of the talk. Dr. Laing: And the reason that it's a little interesting for me to talk about this topic is it's difficult for me and it's easy for me at the same time. It's easy for me because I see so much of this in myself, unfortunately. It's also hard for me because I see so much in this in myself. So, maybe you will see some of it in yourself. As soon as I define it for you, maybe you'll know just exactly what I'm talking about, right? All right, so Vice And Virtue In The Heart Of The Seminarian, I have a subtitle for you as well, Encounters With the Noon Day Demon. Yes. Have you heard that phrase before? The noon day demon All right. So, today I'd like to address a phenomenon that comes to us out of a desert context, but it's particularly suited to our age, to our time right now, to the pathos of this generation, your generation, and might I add, the generation coming after you, which are my children. Dr. Laing: A contrast between the desert context and ours might set the topic in a bit of perspective. In his life of Antony, Athanasius says that so many people were inspired by Antony's spiritual feets out in the desert, that there seemed to be crowds of people thronging out to the desert. That was a zone traditionally seen as God-forsaken, just the realm of demons. These men and a few intrepid women went out to the desert to do combat with these demons who weren't silent, it seems, and protested asking what all these people were doing trying to invade their space. Athanasius writes that the desert mountains were colonized by monks are so many and rolling in the ranks of heavenly citizenship, so that the desert became like a city, even like an oasis and its monastic inhabitants regarded as God's people dwelling in peace like the tents of Israel dwelling in peace and harmony and love. Dr. Laing: Well, that's the virtue part that we all strive for as we live in our own context, but whereas Athanasius thought the desert became like a luxuriant and vibrant city out there in the desert. In our time, our city, cities actually are looking more like a desert. Whereas, the monks were able to flourish inwardly despite their bleak landscape. In our context, we seem to be flourishing economically here in our first world, but increasingly, our inner landscape is bleak and desolate, empty, and dare I say sometimes feeling nearly dead. This bleakness is exacerbated by feelings of loneliness and abandonment of self-inflicted as well as undesired traumas of thoughts of discouragement, and despair, or despondency, and Nihilism, and numbness, and suicide. Dr. Laing: Well, if you've ever felt this way, you're not alone and not the first. The ancients had a term for this, Acadia. Not caring is what it means. Today, we use the term acedia and sometimes we see another version of this term and sometimes in 19th and 20th-century literature, accidie, A-C-C-I-D-I-E, which is also the title by the way, of a famous essay published in 1923. This is for you literary folk. Aldous Huxley published an essay called Accidie. Very, very interesting. Accidie is so much more though than not caring and I hope that in this time together we can kind of draw out this concept and examine it a bit more closely through the lens of an astute spiritual director of the fourth century, named Evagrius Of Pontus, sometimes called a psychologist of the soul. Dr. Laing: I think that we'll find that in the midst of a depressed and fragile and disoriented generation of self-loathing, and narcissism, and desperation at the same time for love and purpose, that the spiritual resources offered by the church are rich and that right now there is an openness to conversations about emotional wellness and healing therapies that approach the person holistically, not just medically, or socially, or economically. As seminary students as present and future ministers, I think we should ask ourselves, what is the role of the church right now? What is our obligation to this generation? How do we serve them in their specific needs? Can the church offer from its treasury of 20 centuries of spiritual resources, some hope, and purpose, and balance, and reorientation of sufferers from a selfish and inward focus to an outward focus on the Trinitarian God who is our life, who brings light and clarity to the soul, and who himself is our very goal? Spoiler alert, I'm going to say yes. The answer is yes. Dr. Laing: One source of bringing about some understanding of the human condition is through a kind of taxonomy of sin so that we understand what happens spiritually to cause suffering, and temptation, and sin, and why? And also, what can be done about it? And we're not going to answer all those questions today, but most of us are somewhat familiar with the so-called seven deadly sins. But before that there were the eight thoughts, sometimes called the eight evil thoughts, or obsessive thoughts depending on which translator you're reading. Evagrius standardized and defined this eightfold list, calling them logismoi, thoughts rather than sins or vices. He also associated them each with a demon. That was not at all unusual at that time, given the already robust demon menology of the ancient world among Christians, and Jews, and Pagans. They all had a kind of demonology. Dr. Laing: This use of demonology helps rather to personalize and to externalize the temptation rather than to detract from human responsibility. Since Evagrius fully held to freewill, understanding sin and evil as the misuse of that freedom. In the seven deadly sins scheme, acedia was renamed sloth, so if you know the seven deadly sins, sloth is the one that we're talking about today. Dr. Laing: So, sloth or idleness, and it was called that first by Evagrius' disciple, Cassian. And then, those terms were picked up by Benedict and transmitted to Gregory the Great, and then to Aquinas. That was super fast history there. Since we don't have time to talk about the development of that particular list of deadly sins that has come down to us today, but it's a very fascinating study. To his credit, Aquinas re-expands sloth back into acedia, acknowledging its danger and the urgency with which it should be rooted out. Like it's not just laziness, it's something dangerous. Evagrius believed that acedia is the most dangerous of the thoughts of the logismoi. And in a minute we'll see why, but first, let's get acquainted a little bit with our spiritual director of the morning. And so, the first section of my talk is The Story of a Sometimes Seminarian, Evagrius of Pontus. I'm going to call him a seminarian. Okay. Close enough. Dr. Laing: There wasn't Beeson Divinity School back then. Okay. But there were the Cappadocians. I'd say that's pretty darn good. Once upon a time in the fourth century, in a land far, far away in Northern Turkey on the South shore of the Black Sea, there was a bright and affable young man named Evagrius, a pastor's son, born in the province of Pontus. He probably had an excellent classical education and others in the church recognize his intellectual gifts. He was tapped to be mentored, and advised, even promoted in an ecclesiastical career by some of the most prominent pastors and bishops of his day. This meant of course, that he couldn't stay in the provincial backwaters of Pontus. By the way, that's where Aquila and Priscilla were from, you remember? But he would have to move to the big city and to the big city he went. To the cosmopolitan Capitol of Empire, Constantinople. Dr. Laing: Those who had opposed Heresy and formulated doctrine in the fallout of the Arian controversy and who had capped off the theological legacy of the great Athanasius were now mentoring and promoting this young man. Giving him a chance to work, to rise even, in the church. First, he was noticed and ordained as a lector, as a reader by Basil of Caesarea, and then he was promoted to subdeacon by Gregory of Nazianzus being present with him at the second ecumenical council of Constantinople 381. Evagrius was excited. He was thriving. He was loving the big city life, the thrill of doctrinal ferment, and development, and defense against heretics. Evagrius himself was also quite a people person. He really enjoyed life in high society, and he liked to dress the part it seems. He's described in some sources as a dapper and handsome young man, which no doubt increased his popularity with leaders and laity alike. Dr. Laing: It seems that he even tended towards vanity, ensuring that his suit was pressed, that his hair was properly quaffed to the right spikiness with some kind of gel, I'm sure, and his brown stitched leather Oxford shoes were always polished as he confidently strutted around Constantinople with his got this attitude. Unfortunately, his vain, glory, and pride became his undoing, despite his brilliance. A senatorial married woman noticed him, and he her, and they became infatuated with one another. Faced with the specter of moral failure, Evagrius prayed desperately for some kind of deliverance. He was afraid of acting on his desires, but he felt powerless to leave the city. One night he had a dream that he was arrested and held in custody for something that he didn't do, and an angel told him to leave the city immediately. In his dream, Evagrius swore on the Bible, on the Gospel, that he would leave, and when he awoke, he decided to keep true to his oath, even though he had taken it in a dream. Dr. Laing: He said, "Well, I still took the oath, so I'll abide by it." So, he packed up and he went to Jerusalem. Hosted there by the Ascetics, Melania the Elder, and Rufinus, the sometime friend and later enemy of Jerome, the frenemies. After about with fever and a six-month-long illness Evagrius finally agreed to take the monastics garb, and he withdrew to the Egyptian desert. At first, to Nitria, a few miles just outside of Alexandria, and after a couple of years, he moved further into the desert to a place called Kellia, which means the cells. There in Kellia, Evagrius spent his final 14 years practicing the monastic vocation, writing and giving, spiritual direction. Now, Evagrius was not a career desert dweller. He was not a willing solitary like Antony who was content to just live with himself for decades at a time. Dr. Laing: Evagrius was a young man, an energetic and vibrant young man who had studied theology with the top theologians of his day. He interned with them in their ministry. He had been mentored in his vocation, but he had crashed, and he ran away just when everything was proceeding spectacularly career-wise for him. See, he was blindsided by his own carnal vulnerabilities, and he found that he had no spiritual muscle to flex against that temptation. It seems that his experience and theological perception enabled him to serve many others as an insightful, and incisive, and compassionate spiritual doctor. Diagnosing spiritual malaises and their cause, their symptoms and prognoses offering hope and prescribing remedies, but he's not just helping people avoid his own experience. One Evagrian scholar, Gabriel Bunge, writes that Evagrius had a particular aim to achieve through his model. "To make the human being capable of loving again and thereby capable of God. But this is not possible without overcoming the distortion of human existence and it is a selfish distortion, and overcoming the passions that kill love. In turn, this overcoming is not possible without a working knowledge of the mechanisms of these passions and of their accomplices, the demons." Dr. Laing: So, we have some information from Evagrius' biographer about his work there at Kellia, and he says, "This was his habit. On Saturday and Sunday, the brethren from cells," kind of close by, everybody had their own, "The brethren gathered at his place. All during the night, they discussed their thoughts with him and listened to his words of encouragement until daybreak. Then, they went away, filled with joy and praised God for Evagrius' teaching was very sweet. Also, he was so hospitable that his cell took in no fewer than five or six strangers per day." Per day. See, he's not a career desert dweller. "Who came to him from various places in order to become acquainted with his teaching, his intellect, and his ascetical practice. Indeed, he had at his disposal the money that he needed for this for many had sent him some. He had more than 200 pieces of silver, which had been deposited with his administrator who always served in his dwelling place." Dr. Laing: So, he was receiving visitors on a weekly basis out there in Kellia. Well, we're coming to the Noonday Demon. Encounters with the Noonday Demon and Evagrius is very famous for this. What is the Noonday Demon and where in the world is it from? Well, I'll tell you, it's from a psalm we didn't read today. It's from Psalm 91:6. In the Greek, it has the phrase [Greek 00:20:22], and the Vulgate has [foreign language 00:20:26]. Okay. So, this is the verse where it says, "The Lord will protect you. You'll be under his wings, and under his opinions, and you won't be harmed by the arrow that flies by day, nor by the danger that stalks by night, nor by the evil that wastes at noonday." Dr. Laing: But here in these other versions, it says the Noonday Demon. Okay, so the Noonday Demon. Well, the monastic life has its rhythms of manual labor, and prayer, and scripture reading, meditation, worship, rest, all at the right time and in proper proportion. And into this rhythm, the noonday demon struts, and he inserts and imposes himself as a distraction, and a disruption, and a danger both to the individual monk and to the community of monks. Anyone can be his target, but he is especially successful when he prays on those who are not diligent in their spiritual exercises, especially those who are lacking in fervent prayer and who are lazy about keeping up the rhythms of devotion. Here's Evagrius' description of how the noonday demon stalks his victims. Dr. Laing: "The demon of acedia, also called the noonday demon, is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour," about nine, "and besieges the soul until the eighth hour," sometimes three or four. First, what time is it right now actually? Yeah. He's starting his work right now, so stay awake. Okay. Be vigilant. Okay. "First of all, he makes it seem that the sun is barely moving, if at all, and that the day is 50 hours long. Then, he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully again at the sun to determine how far it is from the ninth hour. To look now this way and now that to see if perhaps one of the brothers appears from his cell." Dr. Laing: "Then two, he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor, for work. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from among the brothers. There is no one to give him encouragement. Should there be someone at this period who happens to offend him in some way or another? This too, the demon uses to contribute further to his hatred. This demon drives him along to desire other places, other sites where he can more easily procure life's necessities more readily, find work and make a real success of himself. The demon goes on to suggest that after all, it's not the place that's the basis of pleasing the Lord. God can be adored everywhere. He joins to these reflections, the memory of his dear ones and his former way of life. He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time and brings before the mind's eye the toil of the aesthetic struggle, and as the saying has it, he leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. No other demon follows close upon the heels of this one when he's defeated, if you could defeat him, but only a state of deep peace and inexpressible joy arise out of this struggle." Dr. Laing: Well, a few points are reinforced in this passage. First... Oh, sorry. I want to make sure I'm going the right place here. Sorry. Okay. From this description, we can gather several points. First, acedia produces or prays on weaknesses, like weaknesses you already have. It's not the devil. Okay. Impatience, restlessness, spiritual slackness, and inattention, boredom, anxiety, agitation. How much longer will the day be? I hope you're not asking yourself that right now. Is the sun even moving? How much longer until dinner? I think that's a valid concern. I wonder who's around looking for a distraction, a reason to step outside the cell and not continue in prayer and grading. Sorry, manual labor, manual labor. Dr. Laing: So, acedia preys on weakness, weaknesses that are already there. Second, acedia has a locational aspect. The monk develops a hatred for the cell. His four walls become unbearable. He just wants to get away, effectively to run away. His work is boring. He's in the wrong profession. No one in this place is loving and therefore his disdain for the place includes the other brothers of the community. A different place to live would be better, more suitable, more supportive, and will enable him to truly flourish. It would be better to go back home probably where ostensibly the community there, his family, offers him love, and encouragement, and maybe a different worldly vocation would be more suitable for his abilities and for his giftings. After all, God can be worshiped anywhere, not just in the cell. There's a feeling of boredom and laziness with respect to spiritual things and simultaneously a restlessness manifested in a desire to run away the getaway. Dr. Laing: Third, acedia has a durational aspect, a time aspect. Acedia makes one long for time past. It makes one long for the past that one has decisively left behind. So, for the monks, they left their families. They left a former lifestyle behind and contrasting that to the present struggle, the difficulty of the struggle and views the future as stretching out forever as interminably as the afternoon in continued and burdensome toil. The goal of this temptation is to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. You heard that. Aldous Huxley's colorful phrase of this section is a little more succinct, but I like it. As the monk returns to his meditations after these temptations, Huxley says, "He would sink. Sink through disgust and lassitude into the black depths of despair and hopeless unbelief." When that happened, the demon smiled and took his departure conscious that he had done a good morning's work." Dr. Laing: Another example, which I think we will all find relatable, comes from Evagrius describing a monk trying to perform the discipline of study. And in this particular English translation, acedia is translated as despondency. Despondency. It's a great example of how acedia might manifest in student life. Maybe even, I don't know, faculty, I'm not sure. Specifically, when reading for devotion or in Bible study, activities that are specifically intended to grow the student spiritually. So, here's a monk at reading time. Okay. The one who is despondent stares constantly out the window and his mind presents visitors to him. The door creaks and he jumps up. He hears the voice and he peers through the window. He's in the desert. And he does not go away from the window until exhausted, he finally sits back down. Dr. Laing: If the despondent one is reading, he yawns a great deal and soon he sinks into sleep. He rubs his eyes and stretches out his hands and while his eyes wander from the book, he stares at the wall. Then, he turns away again and reads a little, and when he leafs through the book, and he searches for the end of the chapter, he counts the number of pages and determines how many more sheets he has to go. He finds fault with the writing, it's not good enough. He doesn't like the design of the cover. And in the end, he snaps the book shut, and he lays his head on it, and falls into a not too deep sleep. And in the end, hunger wakes the soul up again. And the soul, now renewed and refreshed, attends to its own concerns. How do you like that? Fourth century. So, a few points I think are reinforced by this passage. Dr. Laing: First, acedia takes away attention from the present. Okay. So, this is like the time aspect. The monk is prime to do anything but read. He's looking for other brothers to provide a distraction, a diversion, just hoping for an interruption. Second, acedia exhausts the monk and induces time-wasting. It's enervating power leaves the monk in a torpor, weakens his ability to read edifying books. It makes him impatient to finish, and in the end, he can't even finish what he started. Once he naps and wakes again, he doesn't return to the book. He attends to his own concerns, thereby missing all spiritual benefit to be derived from the discipline. He's completely wasted all his time and all his effort, which wasn't much to begin with apparently. But acedia doesn't just weaken and slacken the soul. It doesn't just lead to inactivity or lethargy. It's not just manifest in idleness, or procrastination, or avoidance, or lack of desire for discipline. Dr. Laing: It can also manifest in a very active way. It can manifest in a kind of frenzied activity, and even though these activities may be good and praiseworthy under normal circumstances, the one afflicted with acedia is using them as a substitute for what he's supposed to be accomplishing spiritually, through various disciplines. So, the monk, therefore, exhibits a lack of stability. One of the chief requirements of monastic life, especially in Benedictine monasticism. Benedict makes a big deal of this. This indicates a lack of commitment and a lack of faithfulness to the vocation that has been professed. Oh, let's see. I've got a few examples here for you from Evagrius. These are like some short sayings on acedia. A person afflicted with acedia proposes visiting the sick. That's good, right? But is fulfilling his own purpose. A monk given to acedia is quick to undertake a service but considers his own satisfaction as a pretext. Dr. Laing: A light breeze bends a feeble plant and a fantasy about a trip away drags off the person overcome with acedia. A plant that is transplanted will not bear fruit and a wandering monk will not produce the fruit of virtue. So, see. This type of activism that's posing as brotherly love is actually a self-deception, much like Gabriel Bunge again, much like a full appointments calendar that blinds us to our inner emptiness. The longer this illusion continues, the more disastrous the consequences. Evagrius says that this kind of service is usually characterized by bitterness and intolerance, whereas true and loving service, and Godly service, God's sanctioned service is characterized by meekness. Dr. Laing: Well, what are some manifestations of acedia? And I've decided to treat two different aspects of it. Two big categories that I think we can relate to. One has to do with literary or artistic fields because, by necessity, we're all writers here. And then the second point has to do with seminary student life. What might acedia look like here? In case you haven't heard yourself in anything that I've just said so far, okay, what might it look like here? All right. Dr. Laing: So, in the literary or artistic field, the reality of acedia's intrusion into the lives of artistic folks is well-documented. Huxley's piece on Accidie is one example, but the writer Kathleen Norris has a book called Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. And she writes about certain phases, and emotional, and mental states that she experienced as a career writer. She says one day these mental states that were troublesome to her stared back at her from the pages Evagrius' Praktikos. She knew right away the accuracy of Dr. Evagrius' diagnosis. She knew what that was. Sometimes acedia manifests itself in the desire to avoid the tedious tasks of editing, of correcting a manuscript, a paper, or just finishing one. Other times it seems that certain writers, including Kathleen Norris' own husband who died by suicide and who possibly had clinical depression as well as manifestations of acedia because those two are distinct I believe. Dr. Laing: Certain writers also experienced episodes of frenzied writing followed by depression, and slackness, and writer's block, and anxiety, some perhaps wrestling with their muse. In any case, acedia may be described as melancholy, or sadness, or depression, sometimes despair at perhaps producing a new book or new ideas when you feel like you're completely dry. And even our friend Bonhoeffer, who we remember this day, and others of you who are Bonhoeffer scholars know better than I, struggled with acedia as we know from his biographer and friend Eberhard Bethge, to whom Bonhoeffer wrote that often in his early days in prison that acedia tristitia, just bitter sadness, with its ominous consequences often set a trap for me, so Bonhoeffer knows. Dr. Laing: I have kind of a sense that between the dome and over there, they're kind of talking up there about this phenomenon. Well, in seminary student life, what my acedia looked like here. Evagrius can help us with further work that he wrote called the Antirrhetikos or translated Talking Back, as David Brackey translates it. It could also be translated contradiction. And in fact, I think that if Evagrius were alive today, I think that he would've invented the app, not a hypothetical app, but the app that exists called Shut Up, Devil! Have you heard of this app? You haven't heard of it. I just heard of it Sunday from somebody in Sunday School. So, Evagrius' book, Talking Back, similar to the app, it categorizes struggles by topics. And so, in Evagrius' it's the eight thoughts. And it proceeds to offer different situations of attack within that topic together with scripture to use against a besetting thought. Dr. Laing: So, it's all scriptural. It's so great. So, what might acedia look like here? Okay. You're going to think maybe I'm calling out some people, but honestly I'm not. It's all in Evagrius, I promise. I promise. All right. Spiritual Sloth, not attending chapel, not wanting to attend, not caring about not attending, and not caring about not caring about not attending. That's acedia, right? Slandering or grumbling against professors who work you hard and don't cuddle you. Desiring to return to your pre-seminary or pre-Christian life in the world, to love the world, to grow cold towards Christ. This reflects a loss of focus on vocational calling. Wanting to get by with the minimum and using scripture and the example of other Christians to justify it. So, Evagrius gives an example where somebody is thinking, "Well, so-and-so holy man only knows 12 Psalms by heart, and he's fine. Why do I have to do all 150? If 12 is enough for the Lord, for that guy." Dr. Laing: Complaining about study and hard academic work, and praying instead, very piously, for God to reveal an understanding of the truth just through the Holy Spirit. Why should you do all that work? God can just reveal it to you or the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, right? It's biblical. It's acedia. Complaining about spiritual testing instead of understanding that it makes you stronger. Giving into discouraging thoughts of giving up your calling and the sacrifice and hard work of discernment that it requires because you feel hopeless in the face of so many demands, or in the face of so many obstacles that are put in your path. You feel hopeless. Wanting to jump from one program to another from one school to another. A restlessness, a desire for an easier route to your goal. Dr. Laing: It also can apply to relationships or to churches. It's a demonstration of instability. Dwelling jealously on news of friends and relatives good fortunes like promotions, fame, worldly success, which will probably never be your lot, our lot. Dwelling in discouragement that you will probably not have what it takes to succeed at school, and in ministry, and wanting to just turn your back on the whole endeavor. That's acedia. Actual laziness, idleness, not wanting to work, not wanting to perform tasks for which you're responsible. Sloth, wasting time in mindless and possibly spiritually harmful pursuits like excessive gaming or social media, etc. You fill in the blank. Acedia is also being beset by dark and despairing thoughts, possibly suicidal thoughts, thoughts of worthlessness where these persist and affect you spiritually, which they certainly will, cutting off your spiritual disciplines and therefore suffocating your life in God. Dr. Laing: Evagrius writes that other demons come and go. He says, "Like the rising and the setting sun, but the noonday demon," he says, "is accustomed to embrace the entire soul and oppress the spirit." Evagrius ends his Antirrhetikos, his Talking Back with a prayer of Thanksgiving. Bless it is our Lord Jesus Christ who gives us the victory over the thoughts of the demon of acedia. So, what might be some remedies? What kind of prescriptions might we look for? First, with regard to the locational aspect of acedia, Evagrius says that "At the time of temptation, that is not the time to leave one's cell. Devising plausible pretexts, making excuses." Rather, he says, "Stand there firmly and be patient. Bravely take all that the demon brings upon you but above all, face up to the demon of acedia who's the most grievous of all and who on this account will affect the greatest purification of soul." Dr. Laing: Indeed, to flee and to shun such conflicts, schools the spirit in awkwardness, and cowardice, and fear. It just increases your fear of the Noonday Demon. So, stay in your cell. Remain firm and patient. Perseverance and whatever you're doing, reading, parsing, writing, editing, praying, worshiping, whatever it is. Evagrius understood that a locational stability could facilitate mental and spiritual stability too. So, persevere in your place in ministry and life, whatever that is as given to you by the Lord. Persevere in your pastoral vocation, in your church life, in your marriage, in the faith in general. Don't walk away from the faith, communing most deeply with the communal God that we serve and extending that fellowship to our neighbor. Dr. Laing: Second, regarding the duration aspect, so the time aspect, live with purpose in the present. Evagrius also said to live as if you were to die tomorrow. Redeem the time, make it fruitful. Consider it a gift for yourself and others in your community and in your church. Don't live with regret for former times nor be terrified or in dread of a long life of struggle. Be present. Avoid acedia of the midlife crisis and it will come. Establish rhythms for time and life balance and remain stable within those rhythms. Dr. Laing: Third, cut off acedia immediately, as soon as you recognize it and do not allow it to persist. When Evagrius lists the eight thoughts at the beginning of his Praktikos, he insists that we have no say about whether or not we will be afflicted by these thoughts, but he said it is up to us to decide if they're to linger within us or not and whether or not they're to stir up our passions. We don't have any say in whether we're going to be disturbed by these thoughts. We are going to, but you do have a say in are you going to wallow in it? Are you going to persist and are you going to let it persist in you? Dr. Laing: The goal of Evagrius' ascesis, askesis is Apatheia, a well-balanced soul, which does not allow the passions to be aroused and to overtake the person. This balance of soul produces Agape as its fruit, a God-focused love, and it makes our soul light with the light of God, so that we may strive to behold the Light of the Trinity, Evagrius says. So, far from allowing us that great pleasure, acedia chokes and constrains the soul and turns it inward, which is its natural tendency anyway, towards a spiritual dead-end effectively, and debilitating it the longer that it persists unabated until the sufferer is demoralized, depersonalized, just integrated and looks to self-destruction as a final solution. Dr. Laing: Finally, remember when afflicted by many discouragements, remember the example of the Holy Fathers, our predecessors, the Holy Mothers too. Whether biblical or historical and also remember, we're not alone in our struggle. Others have invested in us and continue to do so, especially the Lord Jesus Christ who called us to himself. Evagrius acknowledges this in his conclusion to the Praktikos. He acknowledges the prayers and intercession of the Just Gregory, his mentor who he says, "Planted me as well as those of the Holy Fathers of the present time who water me, and also by the power of Jesus Christ, our Lord who makes me grow." And I say with Evagrius, may praise and power be his for ages without end. Amen. Kristen Padilla: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham at The Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney, and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.