Flashback

At a distant time ago, maybe pre-Hadean I may have come --

hot rocketing in   in a rock knocked loose from a distant planet under a different sun
thermal-shock explosion from earth impact with swampy  liquid,  the fossil exposed
to be an organic molecule -- maybe many.  A seed.    A friend in the sea of possibilities.

Hence life as plants, animals, souls,  reproducing, dividing,  developing, changing, adapting over 4.7 billion years
blossomed , came and went, and experimented with the laws of life.

A tendency toward kinship develops  --- a feeling that we are one, joined to the past and each other somehow.

But I am not that special
It could have been you!

Be Good

These were the issued behavior guidelines about1400 BC when Moses brought them down from Mt. Sinai to the Israelites,   according to legend.  Apparently he hadn't read them carefully  before he broke the tablets and had the sons of Levi slay  3000 of the flock for:  constructing a calf of gold for  idol worship , dancing  and partying whilst Moses (1525 BC-  1445 BC,  80 years) was up in the hills speaking with God . . .   its OK  he had another set made later.

I am surprised that murder or killing was not mentioned in the Seven Deadly Sins issued much later in time (and shown on a previous post).  Could it be that 1000 years later civilization had learned to respect life and needed no designated sin for killing or "murder"?     I doubt it!
In fact even today in our  times of enlightened minds (?) and history to guide us we still live primitive lives with borders, tribal hatreds, the need for retribution, religious' separation and "my god is better than your god" nonsense ;  we still have not learned and I suspect will not.  Although now most of the killing seems  to be sponsored by  places of military and political  power.   But be careful --  if you are  caught up in that power and singled out by that to engage in their killing and refuse, you may be shackled to a chair in the Company dayroom for 8 hours, made fun of and ridiculed,  and ordered to assemble  and sign pages of testimony and evidence , including backup paper from church ,neighbors, and friends, indicating your truthfulness and honesty.  So for I  it was kind of an "opt out" deal rather than "opt in" as exists with the government today.
I really hate to be an outlier --much easier and safer to fit within the smooth confines of the bell curve.  But I cannot abide being pushed around and I will not be told how to believe --"godless communists" notwithstanding.

What official  requirement or personal situation would convince you to kill another human being?

Drifting

Tommy was a hitchhiker -- this may be him except the sleeping bag doesn't look right.  He had his stolen in Arizona and we gave him an army bag that was excess to us (and apparently the Army since they gave us an extra to keep!)  He was in Forest Park in St. Louis and spotted his bag alone near a tree, so he traded back.  The army bag was warmer so it was a matter of familiarity rather than function, apparently.
He would hitch mainly route 66 (now 44/40) St. Louis to LA mostly ,staying alive by giving blood in the bigger cities along the way. You could get $15 a pint but could only give once a month or so.  But the tracking was poor then and he could give in several cities, hitting the blood centers about a month later on the trip back east.  He would stop in Albuquerque at our place for a nights sleep and some food; he knew people all along the route even extending north to San Fran. where he would hit the Haight.  His stories were always a non time-dependent series of events.  May have been last week. May have been last year.  A smear of stories runtogether in a stream of consciousness.   We once prepared a large duck dinner for us and him but he could only eat half of a normal meal since his stomach was shrunken due to the sparse, but consistent, input of food over the weeks previous. Large enough to live
on but not enough room there to accommodate splurging.

Last time we saw him he came through with a girl from Baltimore in tow.  We loaned him our address so he could collect some food stamps and fill 2 gunny sacks with the food; the overage he gave to us. Seems to me it  was about $150 worth of stamps/food that we all got.  Took them up to the hot springs north of town where they intended to camp for a few months.  G'bye free spirits . . .   we moved on and that was that.

It may have come as quite the surprise  to each when he showed up later at our last place to be greeted by the  new-renters.  Where'd they go?  Don't know. (we were in Fort Polk Louisiana)  Maybe later. 
  That was that.

Historical Sin

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things is a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, completed around 1500 or later. The painting is oil on wood panels. The painting is presented in a series of circular images.
Four small circles, detailing "Death of the sinner", "Judgement", "Hell", and "Glory", surround a larger circle in which the seven deadly sins are depicted: wrath at the bottom, then (proceeding clockwise) envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, extravagance (later, lust), and pride in scenes from everyday life rather than allegorical representations of the sins.^[1]
At the centre of the large circle, which is said to represent the eye of God, is a "pupil" in which Christ can be seen emerging from his tomb. Below this image is the Latin inscription Cave Cave Deus Videt ("Beware, Beware, God Sees").
Above and Below the central image are inscription in Latin of Deuteronomy 32:28-29, containing the lines "For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them," above, and "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" below.
(from wikipedia.com)
 
"Hieronymus, or Jerome, Bosch, b. c.1450, d. August 1516, spent his entire artistic career in the small Dutch town of Hertogenbosch, from which he derived his name.
At the time of his death, Bosch was internationally celebrated as an eccentric painter of religious visions who dealt in particular with the torments of hell. During his lifetime Bosch's works were in the inventories of noble families of the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and they were imitated in a number of paintings and prints throughout the 16th century, especially in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Bosch was a member of the religious Brotherhood of Our Lady, for whom he painted several altarpieces for the Cathedral of Saint John's, Hertogenbosch, all of which are now lost. The artist probably never went far from home, although records exist of a commission in 1504 from Philip the Handsome (later king of Castile), for a lost Last Judgment altarpiece. None of Bosch's pictures are dated, although the artist signed many of them. "  (from whitestonejournal.com)

Deadly Sin * **	Opposing Virtue	Brief description
Pride (1) (18%)	Humility	Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone else's pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride.
Avarice/Greed (5) (5%)	Generosity	This is about more than money. Generosity means letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed wants to get its "fair share" or a bit more.
Envy (2) (5%)	Love	"Love is patient, love is kind…" Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.
Wrath/Anger (3) (20%)	Kindness	Kindness means taking the tender approach, with patience and compassion. Anger is often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the faults of others is related to this.
Lust (7) (31%)	Self control	Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation. Legitimate pleasures are controlled in the same way an athlete's muscles are: for maximum efficiency without damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control.
Gluttony (6) (8%)	Faith and Temperance	Temperance accepts the natural limits of pleasures and preserves this natural balance. This does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and other legitimate goods, and even the company of others.
Sloth (4) (13%)	Zeal	Zeal is the energetic response of the heart to God's commands. The other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses so we first become slow to respond to God and then drift completely into the sleep of complacency.

* Numbers in parenthesis indicate position in Dante. ** Percentages indicate results of our poll as of October 25, 2009.

Sadness was once a sin, but it was combined with Sloth years ago.


There are consequences if you wander from the path (when they occur is not specified but I would think that they are not immediate or your friends might start disappearing):

     Sin                                            Punishment

Pride                                            Broken on Wheel
Greed/Avarice                              Boiling Oil
Envy                                            Freezing Water
Lust                                             Smothered in Fire
Sloth                                           Snake Pits
Wrath/Anger                                Dismemberment Alive
Gluttony                                     Forced to Eat Snake, Toad, Rat


These punishments seem harsh but I guess if you want to keep the "nation void of counsel"   in line you have to scare them into compliance.