]Kathleen Norris calls it acedia. She writes,

I recognize in all of this the siege of what the desert monks termed the ‘noonday demon.’ It suggests that whatever I’m doing, indeed my entire life of “doings,” is not only meaningless but utterly useless. This plunge into the chill waters of pure realism is incapacitating, and the demon likes me this way. It suggests sleep when what I need most is to take a walk. It insists that I shut myself away when what I probably need is to be with other people. It mocks the rituals, routines, and work that normally fill my day; why do them, why do anything at all, it says, in the face of so vast an emptiness. Worst of all, even though I know that the ancient remedies – prayer, psalmody, scripture reading – would help to pull me out of the morass, I find myself incapable of acting on this knowledge. The exhaustion that I’m convinced lies behind most suicides finds its seeds in acedia; the rhythms of daily life, and of the universe itself, the everyday glory of sunrise and sunset and all the ‘present moments’ in between seem a disgusting repetition that stretches on forever. It would be all too easy to feel that one wants no part of it anymore.

I’m going to go ahead and call it poison. Thick, slow-moving poison that creeps into my bloodstream like molasses and colors everything a nasty shade of grey. Aside from lacking the motivation to do what needs to be done in my own life, this poison makes everything look so broken and without hope. All I read about are car bombs that kill children, genocide, war, walls, hurricane damage, illness, and death. All I hear about are the deaths of young fathers due to trees crashing on a home, frustrated relationships, broken dreams, and overbearing amounts of stress and homesickness. It is everywhere. Norris is right, it creeps in and all I want to do is crawl under the covers and seek comfort from silence and darkness, but I know that doesn’t help. Eventually, you have to get up and you have as of yet done nothing to get the poison out of your system and so it all looks the same . . .

Psalm 48 tells me to “walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever.” This is God. Our God. Forever and ever.

I know there are many towers, ramparts and citadels to consider, count and admire that I might remember God is God: it is summer and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to; I live in an amazing area that has both city and nature at a stone’s throw and I went for the most beautiful of hikes today; I have new friends who make me laugh and old friends who give me huge hugs; I am completely and deeply in love with the coolest, hottest, nicest guy I’ve ever met and he loves me. If for the last reason alone I should be nothing but smiles and giggles. And I am sometimes. But this poison, I swear it sucks in my citadels, towers, and ramparts and swallows them in its muck and they seem for naught.

I know it takes time. Time, patience and the ancient remedies. I know it passes, it always does. But what do you do in the meantime? When you know you are missing beautiful and joy-­‐full things right in front of you? Where is God in all of this?