I was baptized into a Protestant church, and I’ve always attended Protestant churches, and likely I will go to my grave with all my WASPy bits intact. But I gotta say, when I’m down in the spiritual dumps and asking myself, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” I love me some Catholic writers. From Paul Mariani to Robert Clark, Henri Nouwen to Brennan Manning, Paula Huston to Kathleen Norris…these are my people. I’ve spent the last two days with Norris, particularly her teeny tiny little booklet, The Quotidian Mysteries. A friend of mine lent it to me years and years ago and it’s been on my shelf, patiently waiting. I finally took it down yesterday and found someone who understood exactly the kind of angst that’s been plaguing me for…well, longer than I’d like to admit. It even has a name: acedia. Always good to have a diagnosis.

While reading TQM and then getting started on The Cloister Walk, it struck how very much in common a writer’s life has with a monk’s. Solitude, contemplation, dailiness, “otherness.” I’m starting to think it might be more helpful to think of the writing life as a call to devotion and contemplation rather than as a “career.”

Also today I watched Winter Passing. I had no idea when I popped it into the DVD player that it was written and directed by YA novelist Adam Rapp. You probably already knew that. Where have I been? Anyway, I thought it was really good, if a tiny bit uneven. The first 15 minutes worried me because they were damndepressing and for someone suffering from acedia that might not be a good way to spend an hour and a half. However, it grew increasingly (and believably) hopeful as it went on, so, phew.

now playing: DMo on KRCL