“Why do I dread vacuuming?” asks Kathleen Norris, the author of several books on spirituality widely acclaimed for their winning style and sharp insight. By such works as “Dakota,” “The Cloistered Walk,” and “Amazing Grace” she has gained for herself an enthusiastic group of readers.

“What makes us resist repetition? Is it simple laziness or something else?” – – two other questions she asks herself and members of a large audience.

She then reaches back to childhood memories and recalls wondering about the need to make her bed in the morning when the same thing would have to be done all over again the next day. “I wanted to do things once and for all and be done with it,” she explains.

She likes to quote the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who wrote about repetition and asserted that it is reality. And yet, the temptation to reject the repetition of daily tasks and recurring duties often assails, not merely Kathleen Norris, but many other people as well.

As she points out, the problem becomes more serious when it extends to the people who loom large in our lives. “How does a beloved familiar face become an object of scorn?” she wonders.

How indeed? This kind of change surely ranks as among the most painful and undesirable transitions that ever take place in human life.

And yet it happens all too frequently: people who were in love fall into bitter animosity toward one another and feel it necessary to split. That is when they do not take a gun and shoot their former beloved.

Surprisingly, Ms. Norris connects this phenomenon with the classical vice of sloth or “acedia” as it used to be called. The latter word comes from the Greek language and means “without care.” This vice inclines us to become discontented with our current situation, no matter what it might be.

Ms. Norris calls sloth or acedia “a vicious enemy of the soul.” From early on it was seen as such in monastic history: the monks of the desert connected this vice with the work of the devil. In fact they referred to it as the “noonday devil,” spoken of in Psalm 90.

C. S. Lewis, author of the spiritual classic “The Screwtape Letters,” first published in 1942, imagines an exchange of letters between Screwtape, the chief devil, and Wormwood, his young nephew, a devil in training. Analyzing the desire for novelty, he writes ironically:

“The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart –  – an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.”

Screwtape goes on to explain that the demand for infinite change is invaluable for the devils’ purposes. “The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns,” he writes. Thus one is never satisfied with the latest new thing for long.

Sloth is the product of a deadened spirit. It also involves sadness, a spiritual condition that appears as melancholy, weariness with life, and dissatisfaction. Spiritual torpor and apathy can be evidence of this inner malady.

The opposite approach to life emerges from words written by Dorothy Day and quoted in space last week. This woman, whose name has been submitted to the Vatican for possible designation as a saint, said this about the work that she did for homeless people in New York City:

“Paperwork, cleaning the house, cooking the meals, dealing with innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all those encounters –  – these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.”

With the last three words, Dorothy Day points to a style of life that is marked by care. In calling such care “little” she was probably conscious of an irony. What appears small, can have large consequences in the daily life of a person involved in the search for God.

Care for other people and care for things that are important in our life count for much toward growth of the spirit. In showing concern for details that go into caring, a person can resist the deadly temptations of sloth and gather spiritual energies for doing the work of God.

Richard Griffin