A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT SIN
For no reason I can fathom, there are nights when Daphne wants to curl up in the living room. She began barking an hour ago. She is sixteen. A good dog. After ten minutes of trying to appease her, I gave up and got up. Daphne and Olive and I have been in the living room for an hour now. It is 3:58 in the morning. Both dogs are sleeping on the couch. I sit in my chair by the window. Dark, no moon, dawn is still a ways away. What to do with myself? I’m wide awake.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is on the table where I can reach it. I have two copies. I think of it as my ersatz history of English speaking peoples. The distance a word has traveled through the centuries can be revealing. One of my favorite discoveries long ago was that the root of “miracle” was “to smile.”
I spent the evening before bed listening to the news, and wound up nowhere. Maybe my time could have been better spent. I could have tried doing something useful. For no particular reason, at least nothing that travels in a straight line, I look up the word “sin.” The earliest Indo-European Root for the word “sin,” is the verb “to be.” Sounds hopeless, right? I burst out laughing. To be is to sin. And vice versa. So then I took a closer look at the Seven Deadly Sins.
We probably all have a rough idea of what they are. Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lechery, Envy and Greed. Do you have a favorite? Mine is sloth. Trouble is, I can’t for the life of me call these sins. Not sin as I understand it, anyway. They seem more like common human weaknesses, annoying, whether found in oneself or in one’s neighbor. If practiced for a lifetime, it’s clear they can lead to yet more trouble. “Sin’ and “to be” is beginning to make sense.
But these seven sins are often a crucial part of learning how to live your life without getting in your own way, without making yourself miserable (or should I say insufferable?) without being a pain in the ass. If we’re lucky, we learn. If they are sins, I’d say they are for rookies. My version of full-blown sins are these, although I am sure there are many more. These seven came pretty fast. What are yours?
Rape. Torture. Murder. Deceit. Cruelty. Indifference. Silence.
Now it’s 4:59. Time to go back to sleep, if possible. Although “sleep” and “to be weak,” come from the same root. I have to smile. There’s nowhere to hide that a word won’t find you.
From one lover of words to another - this is now my very favorite of your posts. I have been a collector of words all my life, since my Dad taught me about words when I was very small. When I asked him what a word meant, he'd say, "What does it feel like in your mouth? What shape is it? What does it taste like? Can you think what it means by how it feels or how it sounds?" I adored those conversations with my Dad, and I think of them often when I encounter a new words or an old favorite. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. ❤️
First: your writing is lovely, like a Japanese brush painting that shows a world with a few strokes. Thank you.
As I read, I felt grateful for my childhood: my mom and dad, an atheist and an agnostic, never brought the idea of “sin” into our upbringing.
We were taught good and evil; that it’s bad to hurt others, yourself, your society, or the planet, and that it’s good to do as much as you can to help and support yourself, others, your society and the planet.
We were taught that we would encounter difficult moral decisions involving competing goods or greater and lesser evils, and they encouraged us to think deeply and always try to choose the greatest good and/or the least evil.
I found and find all of this much easier and less fraught to consider without the overlay of religion that the idea of “sin” brings in…