An old grey t-shirt hangs loosely over faded blue sweat pants–I say “blue” only to indicate their present hue. They may have, once upon a time, been green. Completing this stunning ensemble is a pair of dirty white socks and untied high-top gym shoes. The wearer is lounging in all his sartorial richness in an extravagant manner on the family room sofa, engaged in his favorite pastime, watching sports on TV.
Since no pastime is ever half so much fun as when it is shared with another like-minded creature, our subject has company: a scruffy, dozing cat and a similarly attired human friend.
“Ya know,” the friend remarks, “That sofa’s seen better days.”
“Grmmph,” is the semi-conscious reply.
“What did you say?” the friend asks.
“Huh?”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. Did you say something?”
“I said that sofa’s seen better days.”
“That it has, that it has,” says our subject, patting the sofa affectionately, “but it fits my physique rather well, so I can’t bear the thought of getting a new one.”
The cat rises from its slumber, stretches, and does two circuits of the square foot of carpet it was formerly lying on, eventually lying down again in exactly the same position. It yawns for full effect.
“You mean,” the friend replies dryly, “that it fits your big keister.”
“Har. Har. Very funny.”
“In fact,” observes the friend, “you’re even beginning to take on the same color. I think you’re rotting right into the couch! In two or three more hours, you’ll cease to exist and there’ll be nothing left but an old, somewhat lumpier green couch!”
This little vignette dramatizes, more or less, an actual conversation I once had with my best friend. Forever after, we would refer to any type of lazy relaxation as “rotting”. To whit:
“Whaddaya wanna do?”
“I dunno…let’s see if there’s a game on and rot.”
Humor aside, rotting is an ugly concept. Leave a banana out on the kitchen counter long enough, and it will turn brown, then black and shriveled. If you pick it up, it will ooze all over your hand. It will smell too, and this is the point: we know that while we are vertical, and above ground, rotting is not something a human being should do, in either the physical or metaphorical sense. It is the metaphorical sense of the word that I’d like to explore.
What we are discussing here is an extreme type of lassitude that many people struggle with on a regular basis. When the condition is fully blown, they become unable to overcome the leaden inertia which prevents them from taking control of even the simplest aspects of daily life. It is a nagging, depressive feeling which is more than, and distinct from, depression. It is accompanied by an absence of feeling. The afflicted person does not care about any thing; up to and including, not caring that they don’t care.
Like the ugly green sofa, it swallows a person whole and prevents them from rising and doing. They have, in essence, rotted–they have developed a “Naugahyde Soul”. This state of being is truly frightening, for it can have eternal consequences, leaving the soul’s power to act for its own good completely impotent.
In times past, this condition was referred to as the “attack of the noonday demon”. John Cassian, one of the fathers of the Church, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, and whose writing had a great influence on St. Benedict’s Rule for Monastics, said this:
“This is a harsh and terrible demon, always attacking the monk, falling upon him at the sixth hour (mid-day), making him slack and full of fear, inspiring him with hatred for his monastery, his fellow monks, for work of any kind, and even for reading of Holy Scripture.”1
The common term for this type of spiritual debilitation is acedia. Acedia comes from a Latin word meaning listlessness. The ancient Church fathers knew and wrote about acedia as being common to mankind, and monks in particular. One of the hallmarks of an attack of acedia on the soul is that anything seems preferable to what you are doing, even doing nothing at all. It is in this the danger lies.
The Christian life is a mostly arduous pilgrimage to our heavenly home. If, along the way, we become fatigued to the point of quitting the journey, we will never reach our promised rest. Acedia is that type of fatigue. So, you may ask, is there no cure? In answer, let us turn to Cassian again as he relates his own experience while a monk in the desert of Egypt:
“It is good to recall what Abba Moses, one of the most experienced of the fathers, told me. I had not been living long in the desert when I was troubled by listlessness. So I went to him and said: ‘Yesterday I was greatly troubled and weakened by listlessness, and I was not able to free myself from it until I went to see Abba Paul.’ Abba Moses replied to me by saying: ‘So far from freeing yourself from it, you have surrendered to it completely and become its slave. You must realize that it will attack you the more severely because you have deserted your post, unless from now on you strive to subdue it through patience, prayer, and manual labor.'”2
As we can see from this anecdote, thinking that the cure lie in a change of scenery, Cassian sought out a friend to visit and talk to. On the face of it, there certainly seems to be nothing wrong with this idea, unless of course you are a monk who is supposed to be seeking God through prayer, repentance, and labor. In Cassian’s case, acedia was able to drive him from his primary responsibility, to seek relief in something else.
You and I are not monks living in a desert hermitage, but I think it safe to assume that you and I have some primary occupation, whatever that may be. Broadly speaking, for a Christian soul, it is their primary occupation to know and love God. But God has also made us to assist him in his work of creation. Specifically then, when we work, no matter what we do, no matter the size or complexity of the job, we become partners with God in his ongoing act of creation. A person suffering from the Naugahyde soul, is drawn away from this partnership and becomes cold and unresponsive to God, and consequently, to others. The more one “rots”, the more difficult it is to extricate oneself.
However, Cassian’s experience is instructive. Abba Moses told him that giving in only exacerbates the condition. An extreme act of will is called for in order to return to equilibrium, and the first step is prayer. If we are unable to do so, we can find God’s assistance through useful employment that will support and sustain us in our primary occupation. Even something as simple as washing the dishes or painting a door can be a powerful antidote to “naugafication” of the soul. It refocuses the mind on something other than ourselves. Excessive care for one’s own sense of well-being is a sure path to soul rot.
The other critical component to fighting off the noonday demon is patience. As with all other types of soul-work, we must be patient with ourselves. We must be patient amidst our suffering, recognizing that God allows such trials out of paternal care in order to build our character, so that we more accurately reflect the face of his Son.
“Ya know, I need to replace that kitchen faucet my wife’s been after me about,” says the lump on the couch.
“I’m not that great at plumbing”, warns the friend, a touch of anxiety in his voice.
The cat yawns, showing long white canines that have never been used for anything other than stalking and killing stray socks from the laundry basket.
“Oh it’s no big deal”, assures the lump, “the package says it can be installed with simple tools in ten minutes.”
“Well, okay, but let’s do it at half time, huh?”
1 John Cassian, “On the Eight Vices,” The Philokalia Vol. I, G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware, (London: Faber & Faber, 1979) 90-91.
2 Ibid
