The Path out of Wormwood

Note: Any chapters from this point on are not in the ebook that is available on Amazon.

The love of money is the root of all evil. That’s why greed is the first plague. Its color is yellow because we are afraid to say no to it. We do not understand the slippery path it lies on. It lights up our eyes and makes us think all our days will be sunny once we have it.

Like most vanities, greed is bidirectional. If we cling too tightly, we become miserly. Our greed becomes our master. The thing we set out to hold ends up holding us. It becomes a chain that weighs down our hearts and our minds. But if we let go, we find charity and the joy of sharing our treasure with others.

When we are too charitable, we give too much. Lust is giving too much. Too much time, too much attention; it all leads to too much distraction. At times, we need to just break away from it all. We need to pull the brakes. When lust overwhelms us, chastity is our only way out.

Chastity requires us to stop and take stock of things. It also forces us to answer uncomfortable questions. Our charity led us to lust, and our lust isn’t being quenched. “What aren’t we doing?” it asks. It chastises us for not doing more. Our answer is to say that we did more than we should have. In fact, we did more than anyone else. Our pride comes sweeping in like a savior. But pride is not a safe place to rest in.

There is always a fall. Why? Because we are bouncing, not floating in space. God loves the bounce. He does not want us lukewarm. Hot or cold, he can work with those. But indifference? A lack of movement? That doesn’t help the plan.

Pride is merely hot air. But hot air cools in the upper atmosphere. Cold air is heavy. It is the lead in our Zeppelin. Without it, we would float off into space and never touch solid ground again. When we fall, our pride deflates like a leaky balloon, and there is only one way to go: down.

Humility is not the high road. It is the mud that breaks our fall. It catches us and wraps its arms around us and tells us that it’s okay to be lowly. If you read Busytown, by Richard Scarry, then you already know that it’s cool to be Lowly the worm.

When we have recovered from falling, we come to a fork in the road. One leads to the decision that we went too far, and should not try to go there again. The other branch leads to a place where we believe that we did not go far enough. This is how humility spits us out into gluttony. Either way, whether we want more, or less of more, we set our minds on striving for abundance.

But less of more is not abundance. Is it?

It is, if you consider that not wanting the thing that made us fall leads us to want more of what kept us safe.

Bloat comes when we put too much into too little. Contrary to the popular myth, frogs don’t explode when you feed them antacids. That doesn’t mean a sudden buildup of gas isn’t harmful or fatal. When we eat too much and we feel like we might explode, our instinct is to push away from the table. That is the correct reaction. That is why gluttony leads us to temperance. Tempering metal trades a small amount of hardness for a massive gain in flexibility and impact resistance. What this means for us is that tempering our gluttony keeps us from bursting and makes us more resilient.

When metal is tempered, it becomes more flexible and impact resistant. The same goes for us. We weather storms easily. This can lead to comfort. We stop preparing for storms, thinking no storm can touch us. We neglect the basics. In martial arts, the best practitioners never stop practicing the basics. If we do, our temperance, which is control over the things we do, could lead us to sloth.

Sloth is a slow death because we don’t move when we need to. We become lukewarm, and we all know what happens to those who become lukewarm. We get spat out.

Do the small things regularly, or face the catastrophic things later. A snowball becomes an avalanche when it has a mountain to roll down and nothing to check its momentum. Sloth forces us into diligence when the mountain is falling on our heads, and we have no choice but to run. During our escape, we come face to face with all the things we should have done. If we survive, our fear pushes us to stop the avalanche from happening again.

Diligence leads us to uncover our full potential. Once we are aware of what we can and cannot do, we begin to marvel at others who can do the things we can’t. In this way, our diligence leads us to envy.

Envy shows us that we will never have enough, and that even the things we have come with downsides.

Envy is a two-way street. We go up it one way, or down the other. When we envy, the object of our envy becomes the apple of our eye. In watching them, we see their strengths and their flaws. We respect their strengths, and we pity their flaws. Either way, we come to appreciate them. That is why envy is a circular path. It doesn’t matter which way you go on it; if you go far enough, you will find yourself deeply in love. And we cannot hate the thing we love. Therefore, we cannot be cruel to it, either. This is how envy leads us to kindness.

Kindness requires us to love, and love brings understanding. When we understand our neighbor, we may find that he is not as enviable as we thought. All of our lives have their own tribulations built in. The realization that nothing will ever be good enough, and there’s nothing we can do about it, makes us all angry. That is how kindness leads us to wrath.

Wrath is the final plague because all of the others lead to it. When we don’t get what we want, we get angry. Wrath is an airborne contagion. To stop it, we must stop breathing it out. We must take a breath and hold it in. To take that breath, we must fill our nostrils with patience.

Wrath is the final plague, but patience is the final straw that sucks the anger from our lungs before we can spew it all over our neighbors. But even patience has its limits.

Patience wears thin. When that happens, we start to focus on our own needs, and less on pleasing others. Greed returns and the cycle of Wormwood starts all over.

How do we stop it? We turn right. Always to the right.

What do I mean? What is the cure for greed? Charity.

So, when you feel your greed creeping back in, give it away. Don’t embrace it. Then, when lust comes, don’t engage with it. Turn right before your pride carries you away. Pull back before your gluttony fills you up. Move before your sloth overwhelms you. Turn a blind eye to the object of your envy. Hold in your wrath, so it doesn’t burn your neighbor’s house down. Always turn to the right. Right turns are the path out of the maze.

“Right turn, Clyde.” If an orangutan can do it, so can you.