Writing this post, I find myself once again fumbling with the concept of Acedia, a word that I stumbled upon when I began writing the song of the same name. A song that originally started as one about mere indifference turned to something rather startling and deeply disturbing to me.

Acedia is a hard word to define. I read an entire, very well written book on it, and felt like I had only scratched the surface of a word that has an unsettling record of slipping in and out of history for hundreds of years at a time. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to write a song about it. A few definitions of acedia are:

“heedlessness, torpor”

“the deadly sin of sloth

spiritual torpor or apathy”

“a mental syndrome, listlessness, carelessness, apathy, and melancholia”

Since first hearing the word, my picture of acedia has always been this:

A house filled with everything and everyone I love, burning down as I sit on the couch, my mind too absent to notice the flames engulfing my body and everything around me. Heavy stuff right?

I’m writing this on a day when I feel acedia way heavily on my heart. I’ve found he comes when my faith is tested and broken. The road the Lord has set before me suddenly seems stretched, impossible to walk. The struggles are exaggerated, and the promises belittled. A dead air settles in, a heart falls numb, and the mind crawls slow.

But the Lord’s promises are just that; promises. A God of perfection, of undeniably faithful love, will not forsake us, even when we forsake Him. The road set before us is not impossible to walk. The barricades are not impossible to cross. The sins in our life are not impossible to conquer. In fact they’ve already been conquered on the cross by our Lord Jesus Christ. We need only to stand in that victory; to trust in Him and His plans for us.

Even if the sun hangs high in the sky, the clock is slowed, and no horizon can be seen; He hears the deep cries of our souls, though they may be muffled, even from our own ears.

“From the end of the earth I call

my heart is faint, with no more strength

Bring my soul out of this prison

and then I shall praise Your Name.”

Blessings,
Gabriel
Ancient Mariner

P.S. If you were wondering what book I was reading, it’s called “Acedia And Me” by Kathleen Norris. I got my definitions from the first few pages of the book. Cite your sources, kids!

This short EP is the result of bitter struggles and lessons learned from one night in February, to the morning after.

I decided at the beginning of the year to scrap (almost) everything I had written in the past. I had to start over, give Ancient Mariner its own sound (something different from the recycled and weak revamping of old love songs and melodies dashed with shallow, obligatory references to my faith). I hadn’t written anything good in months, and the lack of progress was beginning to weigh heavily on me. Even after tossing everything I found it difficult to write, or even to play.

There was a night at church in early February when our pastor was asking us what was coming before God, what we were pouring ourselves into, raising as an idol before our Father’s eyes. I had and have many of those things in my life, and one of them was music. So I made it a plan that night in my head to stop the noise in my head and in my life. No writing, no playing, and no listening to music, for a week (happened to be the week Radiohead announced they would release King Of Limbs at the end of the week. Figures), and no internet. I wanted to be in silence, in solitude.

I started the week excited and ready for some radical transformation, a realigning of priorities, a word from the Lord, and ending with a burst of such musical inspiration I wouldn’t stop writing for weeks. Instead, in my prayer, a light was turned on inside of me, a light so bright that shown every rotten, dirty, and sinful thing that resides and thrives inside of me. I found a lack of authenticity in faith, relationships, and even the words I said to people; I was fake. I found my pride, my anger, my lust, my laziness, all exposed in the light, and I broke down. I descended further into such darkness and sinfulness and at the end of the night, the only words that left my mouth as I crawled into bed were “I need grace”.

That was the worst night I’ve had in a very long time, if not the worst. “In Solitude” was planted in my head the night after that, and written several weeks later. Writing was still a struggle after that week, it still is. Every song was exhausting to write, usually taking a couple months per song. When you’re forced to be honest with yourself, and where you’re at, you suddenly can’t fake the lyrics and call it done; you can’t fake the music.

“Untitled” is about the morning after that night, and the struggle of Romans 7 into Romans 8, a page that I’m not sure that I’ve turned yet, but the Lord’s grace is sufficient, and I wait for the day that I can truly cry “Abba Father”.

My prayer for this EP, beyond that you simply enjoy it, is that whether you are a Christian or not, that you might find something to relate to. One of the greatest comforts in life, is knowing that you’re not alone in our walk through it. So share it with everyone you know :)

Blessings,
Gabriel
Ancient Mariner