Short Rope

The student comes to the sufi master and tells the master what a bad person he, the student, is.  The master tells him that we are all tethered to God by a rope.  Every time we sin, we cut the rope.  Every time we repent, God takes the two ends of the rope and ties them together in a knot.  Sin, repent, sin, repent, and so on.  Soon enough, the rope has become very short, from all those knots,  and you are now closer to God than the perfect person.  My sister, Maureen, told me I was going to burn.  I wish she had read the sufi mystics.