Sin, take 2

I recently read this passage from Roberta Bondi's book on the Lord's Prayer.

Even when I was a small child, holy beauty filled me with a longing to be worthy of it, not in order to please others but because I loved it. Now, my friend, notice that I don't say I felt an obligation to be good or a fear that I would be punished in some cosmic way if I weren't. What I did believe, however, was that if I was mean to my brothers, resentful of my parents, judgmental or without compassion toward my classmates (all of which I frequently was), I might lose my capacity to see it. To put it simply, I loved it and I wanted it, and I was convinced, like the ancient Christian and non-Christian Platonists before me, that "like is only known by like," that if I refused to share its qualities, I could well be left without it. (Roberta Bondi, from A Place to Pray, p. 42)

For me, this gets at our intuitive sense of what sin is -- how it separates us from God, others, all that is Good in the universe. It is about so much more than breaking rules (I think this is most people's dominant sense of what it means to sin) and fearing punishment. Rather, it's how we fall short of our call to love God and others. I'm acutely aware of my own limitations in this area.