"All who go in beauty
will resurrect in beauty.."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I spent all of Wednesday at home, feeding the stove and watching the grey skies pour snow; the whole day was a grey dusk. Tucked away in the woods, our little house seemed a world apart. I saw no one but my husband, no car save our own. It was a day of blessed silence, a retreat, a hermitage. I lit candles for my saints and read beneath a window while soup cooked slowly on the stove and tea steamed beside me.

I am still absorbed in "Christmas Reading." I received an abundance of good books, and recently became completely absorbed in Kathleen Norris' Acedia and Me: a marriage, monks, and a writer's life. The book is primarily an examination of "the noonday demon: acedia," which is a "non-caring state," spiritual boredom. In examining acedia, Norris also delves into the vocation of marriage, the life of a writer, and the similarities these two vocations share with the monastic life. I find if helpful, both in directing myself to see with fresh eyes the beauty of my own life: my marriage, my writing, and my little "domestic monastery," which keeps me busy creating a space in which the grace of God can find welcome.

Norris draws extensively from the writing of the desert fathers and the psalms; I'm thrilled to find myself immersed in psalms I've often overlooked. It is a book rich in thought and full of inspiration.