12/19/2023 0 Comments Living earth beauty coupon codeThese days, riding our tiny planet around a middle-sized galaxy through a universe that doesn’t seem to have a center anywhere, we find it harder to believe that we human beings and our fate are the point of it all. The drama of human souls wrested from God by sin and returned to Him by the Church was the central story, the heart of the cosmic mystery, the only show in town for Western Europe. Man’s spirit, alone in the earthly Creation, partook of the eternal. While each rock and creature had its place in a Divine scheme, at the same time all the matter was ephemeral and unimportant. To them, the World was not only its gigantic and diversely solid self, our material frame, but also an illusory veil of snares employed by Satan to entrap a naive spirit, which could escape into the clear and certain air of Heaven only through the intervention of the Church. If a rose was a rose, it was also a sign of Something Else. Without suspecting that their heavy oaken chairs and tables were actually composed of space and moving particles, believers knew things weren’t just what they seemed. Theologians in charge of Western Man’s spiritual and mental development - as well as much of his real estate - saw him as a contradictory blend of angel and beast, the very heart of God’s mysterious Creation. The mind of medieval Europe danced nimbly among complexities and made its home in paradoxes every bit as weird as the theories of modern physics. The authors of morality plays, however, were less simple than the message they delivered. The answer to life’s thorniest question - how are we supposed to live here? - was simple for the faithful. So ends the drama of every Christian soul that throws itself upon the Church’s mercies, according to the wisdom of the time. Gentle Mercy and Peace drown out the demands of stern Righteousness for just retribution and persuade God to welcome penitent Mankind into His presence for an eternity of bliss. The Sins return to lead the poor, dimwitted hero off course again, but there’s a happy ending. In one of the livelier scenes from a 15th-century play, the Seven Sins besiege Mankind, generic humanity, in the Castle of Perseverance until the Virtues within the Castle win the day by pelting them with roses that signify the Passion of Christ. The Sins walked the stages of medieval morality plays, fantastic characters quaintly childlike to modern minds and remotely picturesque, like gargoyles, flowing robes and halos - all signs of a culture that viewed sins as henchmen of Evil, bent on a diabolical mission to divert humans from the narrow path of salvation. To name the Seven Deadly Sins is to invoke echoes of Puritanical thunder and ghostly smoke from the pyres of the Spanish Inquisition. Each one is a gem of depth and brilliance. What follows is her masterful evaluation of the sins and American culture. She seemed to be up to the task and so I pitched the idea to her. Along came Brooke Hearn, a high school teacher who had randomly sent us an unsolicited essay. I had wanted the magazine to do a story about the Seven Deadly Sins for a long while, but couldn’t find the right writer for such a project. I decided to share them with you, a new one each Saturday until the calendar reaches 2024. It reminded me of a memorable essay from years back, and that got me to conjuring a list of all-time personal favorites published in the magazine over the years. Editor’s Note: On a peaceful Saturday morning in early September I sat in my backyard, savoring the scene before me: the grass and trees and black-eyed Susans, all feeling different now - as the sunlight and scents took on an autumn mood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |