Parabola's Winter 1985 issue: The Seven Deadly Sins The names of the Seven Deadly Sins bring our immediate interest and attention: pride, envy, avarice, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth. We know them all, all of us, in one degree or another. They are lodging in the human heart today as certainly as when the early church fathers espied them in their own hearts, as securely as when the first Buddhist monks wrestled them within theirs. Somehow or other, they seem to belong to the human condition. They cling to us, and we to them. Perhaps they interest us because they are names for suffering, for the psychic pain of our isolation, frustration, and fear. In a time when the word seems an embarrassing anachronism, each of our contributors has had to face the question of what sin means to us today. Is sin an action, an external deed? What is a "state" of sin? Do these tendencies have a purpose? Are we responsible for these impulses--inevitable and "natural" to us as they are? They have a vigorous life within us--are they in any sense needed? --from the editorial focus Cover: "Pride" by Gloria Ortv?z, 1985. Mixed media. Photograph by David Heald. In this issue:

• "Looking Through the Wall: A Meditation on Vision" by Richard R. Niebuhr
  - Varieties of decisive moments
• "The Vicious Inherencies"
  - Essays by Thomas Buckley, Frederick Franck, Christopher Bamford, Roger Lipsey, Martha Heyneman. Paintings by Gloria C. Ortv?z.
• "Experiments in Truth" by John Loudon
  - Towards an excellent life
• "The Garment" by P.L. Travers
  - A story
• "The Human Place"
  - An interview with Pauline de Dampierre
• "Seven (and more) Deadly Sins" by Paul Jordan-Smith
  - The elaboration of insights
• Arcs: "Savage Stocks"
• "Fire Proveth Iron" by D.M. Dooling
  - The mystery of good
• "From Talks of Instruction" by Meister Eckhart
• "The Lion and the Unicorn" by Helen M. Luke
  - Purging the ego
• "The Nut from Nowhere" by Janwillem van de Wetering
  - A story

Tangents - Reviews

• "Forces of Becoming: Peter Brook's Mahabharata" by Richard Temple
  - A review essay of the epic play's premiere at Avignon

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "The Evil Tempter" / Scandinavian retold by Selma Lagerlv?f
• "Pandora" / Greek from Mythology by Thomas Bullfinch
• "Gluskabe and the Four Wishes" / Abenaki (Native American) retold by Paul Jordan-Smith
• "The Bullfrog and the Bull" / Aesop