As they travel the upper reaches of purgatory, where souls are cleansed of sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust, Virgil explains something that stuns Dante. All these “sins” are actually based in love. Sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust are simply unbalanced relationships with rest, abundance, nourishment, and sex. We can err by either compulsively indulging or rigidly repressing our natural relationship with these things. This lack of balance doesn’t come when we allow union with our true nature, but when we split ourselves away from it. It’s misguided thinking, not natural behavior, that causes us
...more
