"If you believe in God, all bets are off!"

Today I learned a new word. I like to think I've got a good vocabulary, but I'd never come across accidie before - I think. I had to look it up. It's pronounced aksidi, and comes from the Latin "acedia". Its meaning is "spiritual or mental sloth; apathy" (Oxford On-line Dictionary). It's one of the seven deadly sins. I suppose I ought to have known it in the light of my last job, but no one ever came to me with the confession, "Father, I've been guilty of accidie." A good thing too. It wouldn't have been helpful to have responded, "You what?"

Accidie Sloth

I don't know why we use obscure language so much in the church, but in this case it made me stop and look. I came across it in the service sheet which we picked up at our parish church on Sunday. I think the comment bit is edited or even written by Jane Williams, who teaches at St Mellitus' College in London. (She also happens to be married to the Archbishop.) This week the article was about the two sins, avarice and accidie. "Avarice, or greed, is an active, dominating, forceful passion, while accidie or sloth is utterly passive, exhausted, and uninterested." "Avarice despises the generous self-giving of God... Accidie on the other hand, is indifferent. It can look on God's exuberant vitality and overflowing love and feel nothing but weariness. Accidie despairs of life, holding it cheap, worthless. It cannot bear to see joy or pleasure in others, but creates dull, deliberate sadness all around it. It has none of the honest depth found in genuine pain or despair. Instead, accidie hugs its dreariness to itself, with a kind of quietly destructive self-satisfaction. Nothing can ever penetrate this mood: not love, not laughter, not pain, not suffering, not triumph or despair. Accidie is cynically determined that nothing is worth the effort; God's life is just too much effort" (Live the Word, 18th September, Redemptorist Press).

When I first read it, I thought, "That's harsh." And then I thought, "It must be serious to feel like that." And next I thought, "Actually, I've met people like that, people who hug dreariness to themselves," and they are desperately unhappy. What, I wondered, is their remedy if nothing can penetrate that mood? I suppose the answer is recognising when one's in that place and recognising that it's a sin, a deliberately (even if understandably) chosen and cherished state of mind. A recognition which requires expressing and confessing - and being absolved, forgiven. We weren't meant to live in the grip of accidie - so world-weary - and we don't have to.

Quite the opposite from world-weary, I derived much enjoyment from listening to a conversation between the stand-up comic, Frank Skinner, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Frank Skinner is a cheerful Catholic with a lot of pithy observations about life and the spiritual journey. One of the parts I most enjoyed was his account of the eleven years he spent in "the wilderness" from the age of 17 until he had returned "home". What was refreshing was to hear two men not ashamed of the Gospel which had changed their lives. Rowan Williams & Frank Skinner in conversation. At one point, near the end, Frank has a go at people who water down the truth, to make it more palatable for others, including atheists. It's too big for that, he says. "There's been too much apologising for the 'magic' in religion. Don't give in to 'em . If you believe in God, all bets are off. There can be angels. The Red Sea can part. There's a temptation to 'Let's be a little bit reasonable, let's be a little bit atheist.' I don't want to do that. I want to feel that absolute mystery in the air."

Frankly, Amen to that, Brother!