8 Deadly Sins

Throughout history people have sought to explain the inexplicable through numbers. Some numbers have attracted more attention and been more satisfying than others. Three is a number that attracts more attention than, say, 42 which has always felt rather neglected to me. My recent reading has taken me down some unexpected routes and it is no surprise that it should encompass Sin. The major preoccupation with sin, apart from some dubious pleasure in describing sins graphically, is in the counting. Some early philosophers favoured the idea of 3 sins from which all others follow: love of pleasure, greed and love of honour. Alternatively there are three things that are beautiful to God and man, says Sirach, who wrote what is more usually called Ecclesiasticus: agreement among brothers and sisters, friendship among neighbours and a wife and husband who live in harmony. You can't really argue with that, can you?

Old Sirach seems to have very clear ideas about who he hates: a pauper who boasts, a rich person who lies, and an old fool who commits adultery. A pity for him he isn't around now. He would be writing for the News of the World and have his finger on the redial button for Britain's Got Talent.

But I, too, quite like 3. A beginning, a middle, and an end sounds quite round and satisfying.

And then along comes Carl Jung and I'm reading about his fascination with the number 4. It's even fuller than 3, more Beth Ditto'ish in the number world. Four seasons, four elements, four points of the compass...you get the idea.

Other attractive numbers, I read, are those that come from adding 4 and 3, or multiplying, or adding and multiplying, or subtracting. It's all a bit like that jolly game of 'who is truly your hero?' Try it here, but you must play fairly and not scroll down......

  HOW TO FIND MY TRUE HERO USING INFALLIBLE MATHEMATICS

1.Pick you favourite number between 1 – 8.

2.Multiply by 3 and then....

3.Add 3.

4.Then multiply by 3 again.

5.You will get a 2 digit number

6. Add the digits together.

With that number you will see who your role model is from the list below.....

1.Albert Einstein

2.Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff

3.Lily Allen

4.Bill Gates

5.The Queen

6.Sting

7.Nelson Mandela

8.Spike Milligan

9.Lesley Brain

10. Lisa Simpson

Which proves conclusively that you can prove anything with mathematics....or you have underlying issues with hero-evaluation.

So, because 3+4 = 7, someone decided along the way, around 500A.D., that there should be seven deadly sins. The number seven is called a 'completion number' because humans find it comforting. So, although the news of sin is bad it is softened by the comfort of there only being seven. It's not just religion that likes to identify these sins but popular culture for once is in agreement. So what are the seven? Pride. Covetousness. Lust. Anger. Gluttony. Envy. Sloth. All of which are called 'deadly' because all other sins flow from them. Being a person who has OCD I want to put them in some sort of order...to number them, dust them and put them in a labelled box and then give them to the charity shop. But the nature of vices is that they are about disorder, fragmentation, confusion and incoherence. It's a miracle I have so much experience of them being a person who thrives on control and order.

Are they so really bad, these untidy vices? After all they aren't like the Sunday newspapers hanging about on a Thursday, or Christmas tree decorations NOT in one of those decoration tidy boxes with little cardboard compartments, or used soap in a slimy soap dish....I am now on to the New Testament and Luke who says that it is in a house that has been swept and put in order that the deadly sins happily make themselves at home. I don't stand a chance.

But I am persevering with this as I am thinking about doing a retreat and feel that to take full advantage of it I should be tackling some major issues....a little preparation might put me ahead of my own thoughts.

Covetousness. I don't believe that Thomas Aquinas – who defines this as seeking to possess material wealth beyond the degree necessary to a life suited to one's station – is right when he says that it is impossible for one person to enjoy extreme wealth without someone else suffering extreme want. While I would never buy a Dyson (I find something about the design offensively patronising) I don't believe that anyone buying one will, by making Mr Dyson even richer than he is now, cause suffering to anyone, except possibly the purchaser. Nor can we all solve the problem by giving everything away and becoming monks. The true problem begins when people find their sense of meaning and identity in external goods and so reality is distorted. I also never shop on a Sunday. I think so long as I am sensible, prudent and reasonable, I should score quite low on this one. (Though, without even having seen it yet, I am pretty covetous of my sister's new kitchen). Hence 4/10

Envy. This, they say, is linked with sadness. Setting aside my sister and her kitchen, which I might wish were mine - though not in red - envy appears to have its' roots in ambition but it soon transforms into something else. It is as though someone else's good fortune is at my own expense and instead of being pleased for them I pull them down – by gossip, questioning their motives and real worth, and enjoying their misfortune. 'Lean-faced in her loathsome cave' Shakespeare called it. We are more likely to envy those close to us than those distant. So the 'celebrity culture' thrives but real problems of envy are close to home. Some psychoanalysts identify that even very young children do not want to be indebted and resent the one who cares for them. Shakespeare again (that man said everything first) 'you turn the good we offer into envy.' I can truly say that I do not revel in other's misfortune, indeed it is one of my characteristics that I want everyone to be happy – but there is the issue of the kitchen – I shall give myself...5/10

Sloth. At first glance I should score very low on sloth. I am a person who does not like to be idle and cannot easily relax. An old school friend recently contacted me. I have no memory of her and from how she wrote it is small wonder. She became a teacher, married a teacher, and moved five miles down the road. They are retiring and plan to but a camper van. She actually wrote, 'I have lead a very boring life.' I don't predict she will become a close friend. Thomas Aquinas again...he calls sloth 'the noonday devil' because it strikes at the mid-point. Not the time of day but the middle of any project, journey or undertaking. Symptoms...agitation of mind, restlessness of body, verbosity, curiosity, cowardice....Dorothy Sayers calls it a 'wiffling activity of the body'. I am a starter of projects, a person who loves to set things up, a sprinter, not a long distance runner, a walker away.....Shit! Just when I thought, being a person who does more in one day than most do in ten, that I was in the clear I find I am the world's worst wiffler. 9/10

Gluttony. It's easy to put your hand up to gluttony. It has a warm and generous feel to it, a love of life and all things good. If it harms anyone it harms oneself, mostly on the scales.. But the concept of gluttony is not just about being piggy at the table and what one eats but HOW one eats. Being fastidious or picky is as bad as being greedy. Eating a banana with a knife and fork, while not mentioned specifically by Sigmund Freud, is one of the worst cardinal sins. It is important while eating to think about one's host, about one's table partners, and thinking about the poor. Thought alone is not enough to combat this sin...you have to control one's daily regime, to fight the whirligig of commerce that pushes us into 'discontent and gluttonous consumption'. This was Dorothy Sayers in the 1940s. I must remember to take my little hessian bag to the supermarket and not accept plastic bags willy nilly. 8/10

Lust. Now I should do well here. I am 60 years old and happily married and all reproducing over and done with. What might have scored high 20 years ago should, in theory, be reducing now. And surely even Thomas Aquinas, against whom I am building a personal resentment, will forgive a little understandable lusting after Alan Rickman? Lust, he, Thomas not Alan, says loses sight of the other person as a human person, makes them something less than that, it sort of chops them up so they are in manageable bits and we can incorporate them into ourselves. To solve this, early philosophers recommended living in remote places. Well, I've lived in Cornwall and high on a hill in Portugal and I can tell you distance really does lend enchantment, the first rule of lust. They also recommended calm discipline and a sense of humour. So bang goes the theory that men can laugh women into bed. A sort of transference is required. Music – well that's me lost then – or crafts. A trendy young friend gave me the word for those knitted hats that young men wear...not a beanie or a bobble hat but with a long, full floppy end...shrooms. I shall knit Mr Brain a shroom. 1/10

Anger. It has always seemed to me that anger could well be a virtue as much as a sin. After all who achieved anything without some rage inside? There is no real contrary to anger, it is a passion with no opposite. Unless you go for indifference which MUST be a vice. There must be so much in the world to be rightly angry about. I can see that displacement anger – kicking the cat – isn't a good idea but that's about you deal with the anger not the anger itself. Then there is the anger that projects one's own faults on to someone else. Things that I don't like in myself I get most angry at in other people. The problem with this is that when I think of those people who make me angry I can't see anything of me in them. I shall think about that a bit more....probably at the next W.I. Meeting...provisional 5/10

Pride. Now this is going to be interesting. I am now reading Gregory. Thinking about pride involves thinking about reality, about truth. Pride is out of touch with the truth and so is false and empty. Pride, he says, carries nothing more than the power of an empty name. It is all façade and no depth, not at all what it pretends to be, and such is pride the most spiritual of sins. Pride and vainglory have often been counted as two distinct sins, hence 8 deadly sins. I'm dealing with them together for the purpose of this hour because I think I am thunk out. Both are self-consciousness carried to excess. I have always sensed myself, right from being a lonely and unhappy child, as standing outside myself, looking on at myself, separate from other and performing , when necessary, for others. And yet I don't compare myself with others, the usual trait of someone proud, because I know it is pointless, me being so 'odd' in my own mind – but perhaps that too is a sign of pride. Normal families are a great leveller in that sense...while loving us they teach us our place and laugh us out of pride....mine wasn't a normal upbringing so I only guess. And yet I am almost proud to score so highly here. It's very wickedness makes it somehow desirable...it is a drama enacted inside our own heads that has no basis in reality – paranoia, I think. The proud learn from no-one...and we must be encourage humility. Give me a break, lads. Surely one of the benefits of old age is the diminishing of pride. 9/10

So that's the 7 deadly sins. I would like to add one of my own. The 8th must be a zebra print handbag worn with a leopard print frock.

I was thinking of booking in to the retreat for five days. It really isn't long enough, is it?