All that you sit upon
So, when one virtue tumbles,
The rest are quickly gone.
This was taken from Panchatantra, the "oldest extant collection of stories in Sanskrit literature." These particular lines are from the Ryder translation of Handsome and Theodore.
Reading this today was particularly appropriate as I recently finished two loads of laundry. If there is one chore that I despise above all other chores it is doing the laundry. As easy as it may sound for others to use those machines I always seem to make a mess of it all. I never know just how much soap to put in. Once I fill the cap to the proper limit I end up filling it again and putting double in the machine. I figure that it'll make my clothes cleaner and even better perfumed. But then once I pass the wet, soggy mess into the dryer I realize I never have any of those fuzzy little static removing sheets. That is, I suspect, the reason for why my clothes always come out super wrinkled (including my jeans!). That just means I have to pull out the iron and I hate that as much as all the rest of laundry related work. Ugh. I hate doing the laundry.
But my disdain for doing the laundry should not be as great as my disdain for the loss of virtues. Yet these lines prove to be very accurate. With one sin - with the license of just one sin (usually of the ones termed "respectable" sins) - I make a mess of everything. Sin is crouched at the door, always ready to pounce. So it doesn't matter, I suppose, whether I open the door wide or simply ajar. Sin will attack. Once it attacks, subtly or strongly, everything is ruined. It all tumbles, according to the piece.
Thankfully there is a clean-up cure for my tumbled over virtues and my dirty sins. Yes, Christ can cleanse me (again and again, if seen through the eyes of confession, or once and forever and for always as seen through the eyes of sufficiency).
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