18 jan

Sorry, have to talk about sins a little bit more. (sinful behaviour, the pretension to think one can write about sins all the time.)
What I really liked about those lists of Evagrius and Gregory is that they seem not to be so hung up about sins like lust and gluttony. Mind you, these are still deadly sins, but in order of seriousness they are much less important than, for example, pride and envy.
That’s not how people think about it, I am certain. To be honest, there seems to have been a very serious debate between theologians about the ability to order sins. These days the order of Gregory is not used anymore.
I have to say I find lust a little bit of a boring sin. Sinful of course, but I find Envy, Pride and Acedia (mental sloth) much more challenging and disturbing. The fact that Acedia has fallen out of the picking order of sins puzzles me greatly. I would say that the lack of spirited commitment is one of the most common misdemeanors of our time.
Well, it is something to think about a little more.
Talking about sins, into which category does forgetfulness fall? Remember that walk where I dropped my map, walked back, found my water bottle that I didn’t even realize I lost, and then forgot my walking stick at the point where I found my map. A few days later I went for another walk, dropped my map again, walked back and was waited for by a friendly man and woman who knocked on their window opened it and showed me my map with a big smile. They start to know me here in the area. A few days later again, Claire and I went to the best boulangerie of France, bought a delicious apple/marzipan pie for a change and I left my wallet on the counter. At least that’s what I hoped I did after I had stepped into the car, realized I didn’t have my wallet anymore and panicked. I mean, I know myself. I am absent-minded.
When I first started living by myself and needed a wallet, I constantly lost it. I solved this ‘problem’ by making the wallet more important. I did not only put money in it, but also my driver’s license, my passport, everything of value. Then I started to be more careful. In fact I have never lost my wallet since, and also the lovely old ladies at the boulangerie took great care of it till the moment Claire ran into the store to see if the wallet was found.
Things do not always go right.
This morning we left for Periguex to put Claire on the train to Madrid (where she arrived timely and liked her new au pair family, she informed us this evening). At one point I asked Julie: did you take the house keys with you. She didn’t. I also didn’t, obviously. We were locked out of our temporary chateau. It seemed like a good moment to contact Tony & Heather (T&H), the house guardians at times when the owner of the house is in Holland. We had two numbers for them, one land line and one mobile. The land line wasn’t answered, the mobile immediately switched to voice mail. This happened at 12, at 12.30, at13.00, at 13.30, at 14.00 till I finally called the owners of the house in Amsterdam. They also didn’t know where T&H were, but they knew someone else in the village with a key. Everything solved, we thought.
Not.
This guy only had a key of the basement door, a door that we had locked from the inside with a bar, something we remembered when we tried to get into the now unlocked door.
That was a real problem. The owners in Amsterdam called the rest of the people in the vicinity of Chassenat to find out where T&H were. Julie and I were trying to warm up Merlin, pretending to act liked we missed her, while in reality we were absolutely not in a mood to get back to suffering again. We know those days will come again, but we were unprepared for it now.
Luckily, around 9 pm, the son in law of T&H showed up with an impressive bunch of keys to let us in. We made a fire, had a little pate, that according to Julie tasted even better now than when we first ate it a few days ago, and will be going to sleep in the knowledge that we were very close to having had to suffer through a Merlin-night.
This will teach us a lesson, we said. Which I hope is true, but doubt.
More importantly I am wondering under which sin forgetfulness would fall? Or are there nine sins?