Like many who grew up Catholic in the last century, my understanding of sin was first formed by the drawing of a milk bottle printed in the Baltimore Catechism of the

Roman Catholic Church. This milk bottle, representing the soul, starts out white, but as sins are committed, dark stains mar the glass, eventually turning it black. The only way to whiten the bot- tle again is to confess those sins and to do penance.

As adults, my contemporaries and I learned more about sin: That, for instance, as Rabbi Joshua Boettiger and others explain in this Spring 2015 issue of Parabola, at its ancient root the word “sin” means “missing the mark.” And, as Jesus says in THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, explored here by Cynthia Bourgeault, that “Sin as such does not exist. You only bring it into manifestation when you act in ways that are adulterous in nature.” We’ve
come to see that it is our “tendency,” as one of G.I. Gurdjieff’s students, Pauline de Dampierre, puts it here, to act in those errant ways, to deviate from our spiritual aims and to succumb to passing thoughts, feelings, and desires, thus missing the mark time and again.

Those are deeper understandings of sin—and yet that simple Catechism milk bottle isn’t out of date. We imperfect humans do stain our inner lives, we do miss the mark, we do “sin,” and it seems that when we do, we incur a debt that needs to be paid— with conscious, heartfelt effort and not in secret. In these pages, through encounters with the “mad monk” Rasputin and the paci- fist saint Martin of Tours, through three new poems by Mary Oliver and comments, new to print, from spiritual sage John G. Bennett, through an array of art and essays and reviews, we explore the mystery of sin and expiation and forgiveness, of the journey from darkness into light. May this issue of Parabola serve you well.

—Jeff Zaleski