Sin, Evil and Soul

'Sin' is such an old fashioned and religious word that it seems hardly to have any place in a contemporary discussion of human and environment relations, or anything really, in a modern, scientific and secular context.

But that is a real shame (another word that gets little respect). Part of the problem is the fact that the word 'sin' is understood as a bad action, specifically one that requires a punishment be meted out to the committer of the sin. In this context, the commission of a sin is likened to the breaking of a law, with similar consequences.

I want to argue for another meaning of the word, one that is closer to its theological origins. A sin, understood in religious terms, is an action that involves not so much an alliance with evil as a distancing from goodness. The English language still preserves this meaning in the construction: 'It would be a sin to . . . '. 'It would be a sin to squander the opportunity'. 'It would be a sin to throw away that shirt'. 'It would be a sin not to see her'. Here the emphasis is not on causing someone or something harm, but on failing to engage and appreciate the goodness that someone or something offers.

This thought came to mind as I, hypocrite that I am, was tearing out one group of plants to replace them with another. To be honest, I must say that I held out as long as possible before I decimated the vegetal denizens of my front yard. Once the foxtails had gone to seed and shriveled to the dry beige color that indicated that all life had left their domain, I felt it was perfectly okay, even respectful and expected, to scrape them out of the hard clay soil (the months of rain we got this year has evaporated from the soil with just a few hot days, at least in the first few inches or so). Still, there were a few hardy plants who - who! - with their long tap roots were able to take advantage of the moisture that lay deep beneath the surface crust.

I loved seeing them each day, maybe a half a dozen scattered here and there across the terraced landscape. Typically they were closed early in the morning, which is sensible, there being little light to exploit for photosynthesis. When they did open, their bright yellow flowers displayed the plants' vigor in vivid detail. Then, strangely, while it was still bright out, I noticed that they were all closed up again. Why were they not still open in the sunlight? Was it a moisture saving strategy? My aesthetic appreciation moved to scientific curiosity. But I did nothing about it.

Still I waited, until one day I decided to tear out the lot and replant it with something new. And here is where I started to think about sin. How absurd, I thought, as I walked around the nursery, to be buying new plants to replace the old plants that I am tearing out. No, not absurd, this is not a question of intellectual rationality. How sinful it is to be doing this, to throw out the plants I have for some new plants that I see here before me. The fact that I have to buy them is irrelevant, albeit an aggravant to the main problem. (I realize I just made up the word 'aggravant', at least as a noun and in the context of English, but where else do we get new words except by having people invent them and use them liberally in their writings?)

I will give myself a pass on the foxtails. They had lived their lives and had no more to give except as biotic matter to the soil. But as I mentioned in a recent post, how wonderful soil is, and how wonderful it is to contemplate and appreciate its beauty in and of itself, rather than to consider it only as a supporting base to plant life. In any case, it too is alive, and it too has a soul. In fact, I cannot think of anything more soulful than soil.

I'll stop here and continue my thoughts in the next post.