Sin

My favorite movie is The Fisher King, directed by Terry Gilliam. For anyone not familiar with the film, a superb synopsis and analysis of the plot and themes are to be found here (spoiler alerts).

Basically it's a film about Sin and Grace and I've been having an extended dialog with Penelope about precisely those topics of late.

I have a problem with the notion of Sin as it's typically formulated, as disobedience to a deity, as "missing the mark". Many of the behaviors that constitute "sin" in many vocabularies (sex, drugs, rock and roll,...) are, at worst, minor taboos if not overt pleasures to be taken in appropriately moderate doses.

Regardless of that the notion retains a compelling quality. There's a sense of the erotic, the forbidden, the transgressive that it expresses; a violation of some "established order". This has some psycho-emotional (archetypal?) resonance that I'm still trying to tease out, there's clearly literary or poetic merit to be found which I may explore at more length in my fiction.

But I'm not clear that's where it hinges for me in my current spiritual journey. I've continued to search for how it applies to me, I think I found it on the way to work one recent morning.

I sin when I violate my deepest spiritual nature. When I am thoughtless, cruel, or unkind. When I treat others as objects or, worse, ignore them.

Looking back over my life, I see many instances where I "fell short" in being the open and loving being I aspire to be. That pains me. I feel sinful.

So what do I do about this?

More to come...