Envy

June 20, 2020

I have been feeling pride in my container garden.  It seems the plants are flourishing, except for the cantaloupes which died and the onions which refuse to grow.  Melissa took some of her succulents over to our friend’s house today and she asked if I wanted to see her garden.  I knew Toni and John had spent a lot of time earlier rebuilding the six beds that take up about a quarter of their back yard.  When I walked out the door, I was amazed by the tomato plants that were at least twice as tall as mine and loaded with unripe tomatoes.  I was envious of the garden and the beds, including the soaker hose watering system.

The 7 Deadly Sins, or the Cardinal Sins or a classification of vices within Christian teachings but are not explicitly outlined in the Bible.  These seven behaviors are classified as deadly because they spawn other types of immorality.  In 590 CE Pope Gregory I revised an earlier list of eight sins to form this more common list. Gregory combined tristitia (sorrow or despair) with acedia (sloth), and vanagloria (vainity) with superbia (pride) and added invidia (envy).  Gregory’s list became the standard list of sins and was defended by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica.  According to the standard list, these are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.  Just think, until 590 CE my envy would not have even made the cut.

Earlier in the day I had texted my friend about the rot I was getting on the ends of some of my Roma tomatoes.  When I described it, she returned that it sounded like blossom-end rot and sent a link to a grower’s site.  I have been watering every day, except when it rains, and this is a common disease caused by over watering.  I have mentioned how I killed a cactus from lack of water and now I was over watering my tomatoes.  There seems to be a lot more to this gardening thing that I thought.  And yes, I realize my opening started with pride and ended with envy.

THOUGHTS:  Most activities we participate in naturally lead to other forms of behavior.  My gardening has spilled over into a higher level of lawn and flower care.  This idea is behind the formation of the sin lists first by the Greeks and Romans and later by the early Christian Church.  Where we choose to place our priorities and thoughts guide and direct everything we do.  This is true consciously and subconsciously, and our thoughts form the behaviors in our life.  That is why it is so important to do the work needed to heal the divide we face.  We need to change our thoughts to change our actions.  If you can, work to keep the conversation going.