Yesterday I had a conversation about envy and its harmful effects. Is it possible for a person to cause another person harm, by feeling envious towards them? A lot is made of positive and negative energy these days. How we must keep the positive energy flowing. How do we protect ourselves against negative energy from other people?.
This started me thinking about the seven deadly sins. Some years ago, in the days of VHS, my son asked me to tape him the film "Seven" with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Poltrow. Would you believe the tape run out ten minutes before the end? Anyone who has seen the film, knows that the last few minutes, are the most gruesome of a grisly film.
The seven deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. They sound really weird and you think "oh they're nothing to do with me!", especially sloth !!! What's that?
Unfortunately for us, thinking you have nothing to do with the deadly sins, is pride. And that is considered the most serious and the source of the others.
But we were mainly thinking about envy today. It is similar to jealousy, but the envious also desire the entity and covet it.
Dante, defined envy as a "desire to deprive other men of theirs" . In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire. ugh!
The Scrovegni chapel in Padova (Padua) contains a fresco cycle by Giotto, completed about 1305, that is one of the most important masterpieces in Western Art. Among the paintings are allegories of the vices, and the virtues. It is a real relief to see the Virtues, I can tell you. There they are on the other side giving us hope.
The virtues are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. Again, like the vices, they sound very old-fashioned, not words commonly used any more, apart from kindness and patience.(Phew!)
But here, I found the answer, how to protect yourself from other people's envy, and also from stopping you feeling it yourself. It's always that word, that my Mum used so much. Love.
In St Paul's letter to 1 Corinthians, 13:4-8 he seems to be telling us that.
Love is patient and kind
Love does not envy or boast
It is not arrogant or rude
It does not insist on its own way
It is not irritable or resentful
It does not rejoice at wrong doing
but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things,
believes all things
endures all things
Love never ends.
You can understand why it is such a popular choice for a reading at Weddings.
Mary Lamb, the sister of the poet Charles Lamb (a friend of Coleridge, as I wrote in another post) wrote a poem called Envy, that would just fill you with compassion for the envious ones.
This rose-tree is not made to bear
The violet blue, nor lily fair,
Nor the sweet mignionet:
And if this tree were discontent,
or wished to change its natural bent
It all in vain would fret.
And should it fret, you would suppose
It ne'er had seen its own red rose,
Nor after gentle shower,
Had ever smelt its rose's scent,
Or it could ne'er be discontent
With its own pretty flower
Like such a blind and senseless tree
As I've imagined this to be
All envious persons are:
With care and culture all may find
Some pretty flower in their own mind
Some talent that is rare.
Lovely
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