Urge Under Over

I don't think I've slept for more than six hours any day in the past two weeks or so; it's becoming increasingly common for me to sleep at four and wake at eight, and then keep dozing off whenever I can find an opportunity to do so--yesterday I did it while in classes and then at a Campus Crusade meeting after classes--and of course the recurring problem is that whenever I'm tired I become more taciturn than usual, and then people start thinking I'm depressed or pondering something or preoccupied, or else all the scum in me rises to the top because I've no energy to think twice or suppress the urges... even if today is a public holiday it doesn't mean I'm going to get more rest than usual. At least, if I manage to stick to the schedule I might, but my mind feels like a packet of cotton wool at the moment.

I went out for something of a jog last night with a friend, and at the end of it we decided it was a bad idea. But then it's never seemed to turn out well for me to jog with anybody, ever. I suspect--nay, I know--the problem is that my level of fitness is so low, and theirs is so much higher, relatively speaking, that in any situation requiring physical force I will almost certainly be outmatched. The only advantages my physical form has over others, in general, seems to be that I can ignore a lot of physical stimuli--whackings and ticklings and squashings and so on--and my thumbs are longer (proportionally to the rest of my fingers) than those of other people. But the gap in fitness between myself and pretty much everybody else is large enough that I haven't a snowflake's chance in Singapore of keeping up, and then you get a situation where one is constantly panting and gasping and getting stitches in one's side, and everybody else is jogging on the spot waiting for one to catch up, and by the time you all finish the route the one is completely wiped out and the others haven't even exhausted their first wind. And of course I'm much too lazy and undisciplined to force myself to go running alone. I'm starting to think it's a good thing I never did buy jogging shoes because they'd be such a wasted investment if I had; at least the post-jog conversations do tend to be more enjoyable than the jogs; but it's starting to look more and more as if if I ever want to have anything like a normal BMI it's going to mostly be a solo effort--and how struggling in solitude does depress--I'm never convinced I'm doing it the right way unless I have somebody who knows what they're doing is coaching, and even then I have to make sure what I'm doing is what the masses are doing. I'm susceptible to public opinion that way.

It's raining. That's nice. My laundry is still in the washing machine and if it finishes on time I shall be hanging my laundry in the rain--it's either that or leaving the laundry to moulder away in dampness and dark. That's not quite so nice.

It's hard to believe there's only three weeks left until the exams begin; and then the exams will last for a little over a week, and then it's Christmas... And, of course, my studying is woefully inadequate. But then you wouldn't expect anything less of me.

I've been wondering for awhile how we think of omnipotence (and, by extension, God's actions in the world)... what spurred this train of thought was Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, in which there is a scene where Moist von Lipwig, a conman extraordinaire, digs up a great deal of money--really the results of many years of conning people--but attributes it to a sudden flash of inspiration from several gods and goddesses. Then there is a response from Gilt, who is admittedly the villain of the book and who dies by suicide, but his response is oddly... resonant, perhaps: "The gods are not generally known for no-frills gifts, are they? Especially not ones that you can bite. No, these days they restrict themselves to things like grace, patience, fortitude, and inner strength. Things you can't see. Things that have no value..." Or perhaps it only resonates with me... The Bible is full of quite amazing stories that happened to perfectly ordinary people--I don't refer to the various ordinary housewives who rose up and drove tent pegs through kings' heads or tossed millstones down on besiegers--in just as many cases people were released from prison by a convenient earthquake, or the sun stood still for a long time, or manna was found at the doorstep every morning. And in modern times--we don't see these things happen any more, do we? We don't see floods rising up to drown evil armies, or fires falling down on people, or anything; increasingly it seems as if religion is a private thing, not only because the world demands that it should be so, but because it doesn't seem to be connected to physical reality. The demands of the masses are that one's beliefs may be different from others' but you'd better not start a fight about that even if the two beliefs are diametric opposites--in essence the prevailing belief is that peace must be preserved at all costs, and peace is defined as "the docility of the people". But that is a topic for another time. I suppose what I want to say is that I wish, maybe just a little bit, sometimes, that something a little more--empirical, perhaps--would happen. But then the Bible is also a document showing the insufficiency of large-scale demonstrations of power in maintaining belief, or the Israelites would be the most devout people on earth in all history. Essentially I don't know what I want, but I'd certainly like things be more the way I'd like them to be, whatever that might be.

And of course there are many good arguments why God would not want to simply do some dramatic thing that would immediately and conclusively prove His existence: the preservation of free will and His mercy come immediately to mind, and there might be other ramifications--sending ravens to feed hungry people would just lead to ravens' brains being dissected and studied, I suspect. But then that doesn't explain why He did those in the past, if (as it seems in some of my grimmer moments) the result of knowing Him is... intangible benefits. Of course those are valuable: peace and fortitude and inner strength and whatnot; and they can't be bought for love or money; but how... pale and thin they seem when compared to... well, to things like health and prosperity and so on. It's no wonder that a common argument against religion of any sort is that it's a crutch or a motivating force for people to develop desirable traits that other, better, more self-sufficient people can develop on their own with no need for help.

Not that I'm thinking of abandoning Christianity; but these days, when we talk so much about God being able to do anything, we have a very limited definition of anything, don't we? Or at least I do. Maybe the prosperity movement has caused a massive backlash, and now instead of thinking God will provide riches and wealth I've come to think that all He provides is inner virtue and as far as the physical realm goes I'll stay alive as long as He needs me around but I'd better not expect to live in the lap of comfort, which is a pity because I absolutely delight in soft cushions and warm fuzzy blankets and fluffy bathrobes and things. Or of course maybe I don't trust Him quite as much as I should, or I value comfort a lot more than I value obedience to Him.

I don't think I've managed to help myself articulate anything with all this verbiage. It's mostly cathartic, though. And it does remind me I'm only human--as if I needed reminding of that...