Mortality as Pictured on Sundays
--by Ben Henneke

In the comics a couple of Sundays ago, the named characters in Frank and Ernest were discussing the Seven Deadly Sins and one of them - probably Frank -- pointed with pride at his record of shunning the first six. He asked if he would be forgiven for breaking that seventh, the sin of pride. The cartoonist was wise enough to print all seven in a separate panel so we didn't have to go to the encyclopedia or dictionary to review the names of all seven.

The Seven Deadly Sins are not listed in my dictionary under the “sevenses.” There's Seven Seas, and Seven Ancient and Modern Wonders of the World, and dozens of other “sevenses,” but the sins are listed in the “ds” under deadly, as if the editors of Webster thought that there were some venial sins that might get promoted any day now and thus inflate the number.

Brushing off that digression, I am left with a discourse on relativism. Is Pride so deadly a sin when it expresses our reaction to our own discipline? Let us leave that for Frank and Ernest. My question has to do with a sliding scale for the sin of sloth.

I was brought up to be upright physically and up right along with the birds and the rooster. I was castigated if I didn't keep my shoulder to the wheel, my nose to the grindstone, my hand to the plow. I was expected to give 44 hours of work for 40 hours pay and never say quit.

“Don't just lie there, do push ups,” was a maxim of life. I kept a dictionary and a book of crossword puzzles in the glove compartment of the car to occupy those times I could have wasted when waiting for Ellen or the kids. Had I joined a monastery it would have been one where the lector read educational books while we monks ate.

Sloth in my mother's family was a deadly sin. It even had another name: Accidie. There's an etching by Durer of Accidie - a slatternly female whose hair isn't combed and whose blouse is misbuttoned - at least that's the way I remember it.

To have some kindly female rebutton my cardigan is a declaration that I have been slovenly, a slothful way of dressing.

Well, that's how it used to be. When one has passed beyond the Biblical allotment of three score years and ten - actually, when one is on the verge of four score - I feel he should be given a little slack.

Why an alarm clock?

Why shave every day?

Why shined shoes?

Why not a nap?

When you get right down to it, why burden yourself with anything? It may be sloth until age 65, but why can't it be prudent self-indulgence thereafter?

Oh, the other deadly sins are Wrath, Lust, Covetousness, Envy, and Gluttony. Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus has the seven deadly sins personified. When I directed it in my younger, unslothful years, Sloth was shown hanging like a limpet to a platform on stage-totally relaxed; unmoving..

I'm planning to act like that any day now.