Lust and Chastity

Part Four of my series on Sins and Virtues begins with the Sin of Lust.

The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
Exodus 15:9

And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
Samuel 11:2

The woman, if you know your bible stories, was Bathsheba; and what does David do about this?

And he [David] wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah [Bathsheba's husband] in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.
Samuel 11:15

Easy to see why Lust is considered the most deadly of all the sins.

Monsignor Wojciech Giertych, Pope Benedict XVI’s personal theologian, notes that men are more prone to commit sins of lust, while women of pride. While I'd have to agree with this on principle, I really have to wonder if that's true considering the steady rise in romantic erotica sales. :-)

Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but when they are out of control they become the sin of Lust.

The sin of Lust occurs when one intentionally initiates and continues to fantasize about another person in a lustfully sexual way, knowing that it is wrong, but choosing to do it anyway. Even thinking lustful thoughts about another person is sinful, but acting on that thought is even worse because it has social consequences.

Your punishment in Hell will be: You'll be smothered in fire and brimstone. Not kisses.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

To combat Lust, you must practice the Heavenly Virtue of Chastity

Chastity is refraining from sexual activity until marriage and then enjoying a lifetime of sexual activity within the bounds of marriage.

Chastity is also moderation in dress, speech, thoughts, and sexual activity. Without chastity, humans are considered not unlike animals which copulate purely out of instinct. Chastity compliments the higher intelligence of humans.

Let us be careful of the company we keep, and avoid all occasions of sin to preserve virtue of chastity. Let us form the habit of temperance in all things, so as to strengthen our self-control. We should often have recourse to prayer and the sacraments, receiving these frequently. "Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Galatians 5: 16

If you’re late coming to the series, check out the sins of  Pride, Wrath, and Sloth Sloth.

Poetically Speaking

It was another slow week, writing wise. I’m still distracted and still thinking too much, but I also gave a poetry reading Thursday night, so I was a little preoccupied.

One of the emails I got from my poetry group said something about the reading being a bright spot in an otherwise dull month, so I thought, “Hey, why don’t I read all funny poems?” Well, it sounded good in theory, but the problem with that is that I don’t have a lot of funny poems. Certainly not enough to fill in my twenty minutes worth of reading.

So I decided to do what I do best – forms. Dutifully I gathered together some of the more interesting forms I’ve explored until I was sure I had enough to fill in my time slot. And just to make sure of the timing I read them out loud, which brought me to the second problem with my reading.

A lot of poetry forms look good on paper, but don’t sound so great when you read them out loud. The rhythm’s a little off, or this syllable count makes them seem choppy – I ended up rejecting about half the poems I’d selected. But in the end I came up with a respectable number of poems, and ended with three parodies to leave the audience laughing. They went over very well and I received many compliments afterwards.

But seriously, I have a LOT of poetry. And that fact is never brought home so much as when I have to go through them and select poems for a reading. More to the point, I have a LOT of poetry and I’ve never done anything with it. As in, I’ve never tried to sell any of it. And I don’t know why that is.

For a while I was doing a new form every week (on a different blog). I’ve done many poems from prompts (from a variety of sources). I’ve explored over 150 different forms and have a list of more than 100 I haven’t tried yet – even invented my own form. And I’ve written a whole lot of poetry just for the heck of it. But I haven’t tried to market any of it. What’s the point of writing all this poetry and keeping it all to myself? Some of my poetry isn’t all that bad, which begs the question, why haven’t I submitted it anywhere?

Good question. Wish I had an answer. Maybe that’s something I could start working on.

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Wordage Report

Wandering Wizards – ???
I dabbled around a bit and expanded on the scenes I wrote last week, but I didn’t really keep track.

Weekly Prompt – 0 words
Never actually looked at the prompt from last week, so I guess I’ll keep it for this week too. It was:

Use this as your first line:
Cruelty is a sleeping boy but art was a bleeding man.

Happy Writing!

Sloth and Diligence

Oops! I almost forgot to post my sin of the week. But I have a really, really good excuse (for a change). I got all caught up in the poetry reading I gave last night and forgot all about it. You’d think having written as many poems as I have that it would be a breeze to pick a dozen or so for a reading, but it turns out not all poetry sounds good read out loud.

Anyway, it’s a day late but the next sin in the series is the Sin of Sloth, also known as the sin of Idleness. This is a sin of which I am all too familiar with!

By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.
Ecclesiastes 10:18

The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.
Proverbs 21:25

Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said Sloth is "sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good... [it] is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds."

A slothful person is loose, meaning a waywardness with a view to doing what he wants, since slothfulness is tied to gluttony. Apparently he can be a gossip, having a loose tongue, and can't trusted to be told anything in confidence. He is also deceitful, using lies and deceit in order to get what he wants and to enable him to do only what he wants to do. He appears to be a follower, subjecting himself to other people's rule because he doesn't really think for himself.

The modern view goes further, regarding laziness and indifference as the sin at the heart of the matter. Sloth is often seen as being considerably less serious than the other sins, more a sin of omission than of commission.

Your punishment in Hell will be: You'll be thrown into snake pits.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

If you don’t want to end up in Hell because of your slothful ways, you must practice the Heavenly Virtue of Zeal or Diligence.

Zeal is shown by a diligent and careful nature as proved by one's actions and work. It includes a decisive work ethic, budgeting of one's time; and monitoring one's own activities to guard against laziness. It the decision to fulfill all of the responsibilities in your vocation or state in life.

The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God; it is fulfilled in his vocation to divine beatitude. It is essential to a human being freely to direct himself to this fulfillment. By his deliberate actions, the human person does, or does not, conform to the good promised by God and attested by moral conscience.
Matthew 5:3-12

If you missed them, click on the links to check out Pride  and Wrath.

Thinking Is Not Writing

When I started this post yesterday, I started getting all grumbly with myself because despite all my good intentions I was going to have another week with a zero word count. It’s not that I didn’t want to write, I just kept getting derailed or distracted and one of the many pitfalls to having too much time on your hands is there’s always “later” to do things. So I didn’t get any writing done although I did think about it a lot, but as you know, thinking isn’t writing.

I wasn’t even spending all that writing time reading, like I was doing at the beginning of the year. I’m really enjoying the books I’m reading right now, both the tree book and the e-book, but I’m taking the time to savour them. Sipping the stories instead of gulping them down, as it were.

It was early enough in the day that I figured it was time for a reading break, but then I thought why not write instead? I had no problem taking writing time for reading, it only follows that I could take some reading time for writing if my lack of progress was bothering me.

Which is exactly what I did, and I wrote close to a thousand words. So take that procrastinating and distractions!

However, I’m not particularly proud of the words I wrote last night. I’m having to do a transition scene in Wandering Wizards and I tend to flail around a bit with them. Once I get my group to the shrine I can get the action going again, but the journey from one disaster to the next is kind of dragging. Of course that’ll be fixed in the edits, but right now it’s kind of annoying.

But… I also had a good idea for a bit of fore-shadowing, so I wrote a brief scene for that. It’ll need to be expanded, but it killed two birds with one stone: first, the foreshadowing, and second, it touched base with the wizards down south who really don’t have much to do other than wait around until they’re needed. Hmm. Maybe they need to be a little more pro-active as well.

As well as continuing to work on Wandering Wizards (too bad I can’t be as single minded about that as I can about reading) I also have a poetry reading coming up on Thursday evening. Seeing as February is so dark and dismal I figure I’ll see if I can come up with a selection of light hearted poems. I tend to write three kinds of poetry – humorous poems, depressing poems, and poems written to forms. It’ll be interesting to see if I can come up with enough humorous poems to fit the bill.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Wandering Wizards – 892 words added

Weekly Prompt – 327 words
It turned into a weird little dystopian, post-apocalyptic story that didn’t really go anywhere and I had no great urge to turn it into something.

Total words - 1219
Not great, but better than I've been doing lately, right?

Prompt

Use this as your first line:
Cruelty is a sleeping boy but art was a bleeding man.

Happy Writing!

Wrath and Patience

Today we have the second in my series on the Seven Deadly Sins, the Sin of Wrath

“Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment"
- Matthew 5:22

"A mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."
- Proverbs 15:1

Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as anger or "rage", may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. These feelings can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (such as engaging in vigilantism) and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others.

So in other words, Wrath is pretty much the way I feel about other drivers on the road when they cut me off or don’t follow basic traffic rules. :-)

The transgressions born of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide. Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest (although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy, closely related to the sin of envy).

Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite". In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of wrath directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.

Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said Anger is "the name of a passion. A passion of the sensitive appetite is good in so far as it is regulated by reason, whereas it is evil if it set the order of reason aside."

Wrath is ruled by the sign of Mars. This is the Sin most likely to harm other people, particularly when mixed with another Sin. It is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury.

Your punishment in Hell will be: You'll be dismembered alive.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

To combat a Wrathful nature, we have the Heavenly Virtue of Patience.

Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties.

Guardian of faith, it is the preserver of peace, the cherisher of love, and the teacher of humility. It governs the flesh, strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, and subdues pride. Patience also bridles the tongue, refrains the hand, tramples upon temptations, endures persecutions, consummates martyrdom.

Patience produces unity in the church, loyalty in the State, and harmony in families and societies. It teaches us to forgive those who have injured us, and to be the first in asking forgiveness of those whom we have injured.

Patience, my lord. Why, 'tis the soul of peace.
Of all the virtues 'tis near'st kin to heaven.
It makes men look like gods; the best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.
Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Honest Whore Part One, act V scene II

Check out part 1 of this series, the Sin of Pride, HERE

A Walk Down Memory Lane

You’d think, this being winter and all, I’d find the view from my office window less distracting. Unfortunately, it seems it doesn’t take much to distract me. Sometimes it’s the squirrels frolicking in the trees at the back of the yard or along the top of the fence, sometimes it’s the birds fluttering about; today it’s the light snow falling. Maybe it’s the movement that catches my eye, causing me to stare mindless out the window. . .

Around this time last year I was gearing up for my very first writing retreat, Winterfire. I went with a friend and though excited we were also a little nervous – we had no idea what to expect. When all was said and done it was both good and not so good.

The good was getting away for a weekend to a big old farmhouse on Lake Simcoe. I didn’t even mind being unplugged for the weekend (no phone, television, or internet), in fact it was kind of liberating. We were given some fun prompts to work with and I learned not to take myself so seriously – that all writing didn’t have to be part of a bigger something, it could just be for the fun of it.

The not so good were the narrow, insanely hard beds for sleeping on, and the food which we took turns preparing ourselves. Most of the other writers were writing family histories or memoirs – my genres are fantasy, science fiction, horror and romance. They didn’t really get my kind of writing.

By September the negative aspects of our first retreat faded and my friend and I went to our second one, the Kingston Writersfest. It was more like what you’d expect from a retreat. For one thing it was in an actual hotel with all the amenities. The workshops were filled with a variety of writers, and even if the moderator was from a totally different discipline there was always something to learn.

The only downside to this one was that the friendship did not survive the weekend. To this day I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I’m willing to take at least half the blame. My friend started giving me the silent treatment and I gave it right back. Kind of stupid when you think of it, but it is what it is.

Anyway, the reason for this trip down memory lane is there is a retreat coming up in April that I’m considering going to. I can go for 3, 5, or 7 days – seeing as I don’t know what to expect from it I’ll probably just go for the three days. It’s a little closer to home, which is nice, but not too close. It’s a little more like Winterfire, in that it’s run by a pair of writers, but with better accommodations.

I’m still planning on going back to Writersfest this fall, for the entire festival this time, but maybe this will tide me over until I do.

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Wordage Report

Not much to report as yet.

I’ve been doing a lot of organizing and shuffling around, not a whole lot of writing save for blog posts and a weird little short short written from a prompt.

I’d like to do at least one prompt piece a week without the pressure of a time limit or word count. And just to make it a little more fun, I think I’m going to start posting the prompt itself in the sidebar, changing it when I move on to a new prompt. What do you think?

It just might be *gasp!* fun.

Pride and Humility

As much as I promised when I first started this blog that I didn’t want to stick to a schedule, the fact of the matter is I like schedules. I like knowing what to write on certain days. So my random posting went to general updates on Sundays and themed posts on Fridays – first it was fun with quotes, then prompts and stories, then it was kind of all over the place and moved to Thursdays.

I’m thinking of bringing back the Wordage Report on Sundays, just as a way of making sure I get some writing done during the week, but today (and subsequent Thursdays) I’m going to do my own version of Throwback Thursday, an idea I stole from Facebook.

Once upon a time I did a lot of research on a great many different subjects. It was both interesting and fun. And seeing as I didn’t want to waste all that knowledge, I did a series of articles using a lot of that knowledge. I thought it might be kind of fun to re-run these articles, updating them of course where necessary.

First up is the series I did on The Seven Deadly Sins and their corresponding Seven Heavenly Virtues. I had intended to use the research as a basis for a poem, but the poem never got off the ground. Who knows, maybe by the time I finish the series again I’ll be re-inspired.

We start with the Sin of Pride.

Proverbs 16:18 - Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren.
(Prov. 6:16-19).

Pride, also known as Vanity, is considered the mother of all sins, the sin from which all others spring. It is the sin that turned the archangel Lucifer the “seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” into the devil, the one for whom Hell itself was created. We're warned to guard our hearts against pride lest we too "fall into the same condemnation as the devil."

It was the sin of pride which first led Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. In Genesis we read, Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

The sin of pride is a preoccupation with self. Pride is all about "me, myself, and I." So even as the word "pride" is centered upon an "i," the sin itself is also centered upon "I." It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self.

Your punishment for Pride will be: You will be broken on the wheel.


To save yourself from being sent to Hell, you must practice the Heavenly Virtue of Humility.

The term "humility" is derived from the Latin word "humilitas", a noun related to the adjective "humilis", translated not only as "humble", but also as "low", or "from the earth”. It is defined as: modest behavior, selflessness, and the giving of respect - giving credit where credit is due and not unfairly glorifying one's own self.

St. Bernard defines it as: A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself

St. Thomas says: The virtue of humility consists in keeping oneself within one's own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one's superior

No man can humiliate another, but only himself, and this he can do properly only when aided by Divine grace. Humility removes pride and according to the words of St. James: God resisteth the proud, and giveth his grace to the humble
(James 4:6).

The Year of Finishing

So . . . in case it escaped your notice, apparently I took an unscheduled mental health holiday for the month of January. It wasn’t just from blogging and other forms of social media either, it was pretty much from everything.

I’m not going to go into detail about what went wrong mentally, at this point I’m thinking the whys and wherefores don’t matter so much as the fact that I’m back now. But I will say part of it involved going on a reading binge. You know how some people binge watch a particular show on Netflix? That was me with reading. Reading to the exclusion of all else. Thankfully that has slowed down considerably. It took me almost a whole week to read the trilogy I just finished, so I think I’m on the road to recovery. LOL

I gave up on the whole “goals for the year ahead” thing and instead I’ve decided this is the year of finishing – poems, stories, novels . . . . I have a whole lot of unfinished work sitting around, and this is the year I finally start finishing some of it. That’s not to say I won’t write anything new, at the very least I’ll probably do NaNo again, but my focus is going to be on finishing the body of work I have started and never got around to completing. Either finish it, or consign it to the aether once and for all.

But don’t think for a moment I’m foolish enough to devote my whole year to this. First of all, you never know when a brilliant new idea might hit, and far be it for me to ignore a gift from the Muses. And second, there’s just way too much stuff that needs to be finished – the novels alone I could work steadily on for years to come, especially when you consider several of the novels are the beginnings of potential series.

Then we have the abandoned prompts and stories, and snippets of poems to consider. Some of this stuff is so old it’ll be like working on something new. It’s actually very tempting to make a list of it all, just so I can have the pleasure of crossing things off the list when I finish. It’s something to think about anyway.

I also will be trying to find a little balance to my life. Ten years ago I had a lot more going on in my life, and I was getting a lot more writing done. Now I have all kinds of time, and the writing has become more and more elusive. I’m not sure how or when it happened, but I’ve been spending more time at the computer and getting less done. And instead of turning to one of the many other things I could be doing, I sit stubbornly at the computer – I’m a writer, after all, I should be writing – and then beat myself up at the end of the day for getting nothing accomplished.

Ironically, one thing my reading binge taught me this past month is that I can spend copious amounts of time away from the computer and the world won’t come to an end. Reading’s only one of the things I used to take a great deal of pleasure in, time to rediscover life outside of writing. I can still be a writer, just not to the exclusion of all else.

Something tells me I have a long road ahead of me.