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The Mounds of Our Sins
I’ll bet you uncountable pots of money you’ve never once made mental piles of your individual failings, am I correct? Well, not sayin’ I’m better than you, but I actually have. Made mental piles of my sins. (Heavy word, “sin.” Eye of the beholder etc.)
As I rather too rapidly get closer to the big Eight O which will arrive with a nation-wide celebration on Jan. 1, 2018 I find myself most reluctantly making separate piles out of my life, piles of positive and negative memories of the things I’ve done. Or have not done. Or wish I’d done. Or wish I hadn’t done. Or should have done. Or---well you get the idea. You do, right?? Good. I knew that you would.
So here’s the deal. I am actually spending time making mental heaps of all the really good things I’ve been responsible for in my life and yes, all of the really bad things too. I know you’re wondering which accumulation is the largest. Guess! So here I sit with these multiple imaginary mounds in front of me and oh my, some of them are Everest high. For example, I struggle to remember how many times I’ve made even the slightest effort to walk in another person’s moccasins to see how they feel about things before I go roaring off into judgmental blatherskiting. That mound is really tall. The times I’ve successfully walked in other people’s moccasins and have truly made a strong effort to understand why they are, who they are, and why they are doing/being/saying what they are, is pretty wanting, and I’m awfully unproud of that fact.
The stacks of the times I’ve gone out of my way to be kind or thoughtful to another human being isn’t nearly as large as I’d like, so I’m working on that. There’s still time. Will that thoughtful pile ever get to be as large as the thoughtless pile? I can only hope. I can make an effort. But, will I? At this moment of writing today, I’m saying yes. But it’s only ten AM.
And then there are the masses of slothfulness and no, I’m not plagiarizing the Bible, but it’s a good starting point. I can so easily nod off while folks about me are working triple shifts and regret I feel no shame in doing that. I’ve always been a great champion of good hard long solid avoidance sleep. My sloth pile is way too big although I recently once read that laziness is genetic. Phew. No more guilt. It’s my ancestors’ fault. I’m so relieved, I think I’ll sleep on it.
The pile next to it is that old nasty gluttony. It’s way too big, most of it caused by my milk chocolate addiction. Can I ever give in and not eat m. c. when it’s in front of me? No. I just add that onto my growing mountain range of sins, but to my mind, that particular mound is forgivable.
Coveting? Come on. Anyone who says they’ve never wished they had something their neighbor has and they don’t, is lying, and lying is yet another pile. You’ve never coveted? Never lied? Seriously? Then your life is lots more mound-free than is mine. But don’t forget—avoidance of truth is yet another mound, so beware!
Gloating is another heap of mine that isn’t too huge, but it’s there. I will confess to giving in to gloating when someone who’s been an evil human gets busted, and has to pay dearly for doing bad things. Hitler comes to mind although his badness went on far too long. I’m not too ashamed of my righteous gloating when appropriate, and fiercely gloat when anyone who’s hurt a helpless human or animal gets smacked down and is punished severely for doing that. That is a mound I intend to keep and add to as I go along.
My vast conglomeration of stupid pride is rather too large and while I desperately and daily try to maneuver my way around the multiple, disparate life-stacks of my own making, I occasionally focus on my Golden Rule mounds, and they ….. well, let’s say they could use a little work.
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