Tips and Tricks for getting through stay at home orders: Part One

Oh man! We are only 10 days into our stay at home order, with 18 days to go. How, oh how, can we avoid falling prey to acedia? In my October 5,2020 post I explained that ‘acedia’ is a term coming from the Greek which means ‘ bored and listless, due to social isolation.’

Yup! That is close to where I am at!

I have the privilege and pleasure of being part of a phone tree for my church. I get to call several church members and inquire after their wellbeing during this COVID time. One of the women, a 90 year old, has been an inspiration to me. She has remained quite contented throughout this 10 months of COVID. She decided at the beginning to reread all the books on her bookshelves, and she has found this to be quite engaging and enjoyable. Her example led me to look at my bookshelves and I too have decided to reread a couple of the series I found there.

One is Jack Higgins’ novels. Jack wrote about 45 novels spanning a 40+ year writing career. They are simple thrillers, and very predictable. The good guys are very likeable and they always win out over the bad guys in the end. For times such as these, I find knowing this will be the outcome to be very reassuring, and I simply abandon myself to enjoying the read.

The other series is the Mitford series, written by Jan Karon. I loved the first book in the series, At Home in Mitford, when it came out in 1994, and I have thoroughly enjoyed each new book in the series since then. It’s time to reread them! They will be bedtime reading for me. They are beautiful and interesting stories about life and human nature in a small town in North Carolina, that I find to be reassuring and engaging too.

I bet if you look on your bookshelves, you will come across a book or a book series that you would enjoying rereading too. This practice is helping me to avoid acedia right now. I hope it will do the same for you!