Counting heartbeats.

Sometimes I am sitting reading an article or a book, and I am sitting so still that I can see my hair vibrate from my heartbeat. So I slowly move one hand to check my pulse, and sure enough - the vibrations are from my heartbeat. So I sit even stiller and try to notice other vibrations. Maybe my scarf will shake, maybe I can feel the pulse in my hands or legs or hear it in my ears. I become aware of my breathing. I think "I need to exercise more."

I like being aware of my heart as it just keeps pumping pumping pumping. It's steady and faithful. My fingertips are pink and my toes aren't cold. When we studied the circulatory system in biology I would imagine my arteries breaking off into smaller and smaller vessels, ending in tiny capillaries so small that only one red blood cell could pass through at a time. I would close my eyes and feel my heart beat and think about being alive and how my body takes care of me; my heart pumping without me ever asking it to; my lungs working with air pressure to move oxygen in and out of my body.

So sometimes I get really distracted when I'm reading articles or books for class. It's more fun to count my heartbeats.

You're so vain

I found out that my littlest sister is vain (actually a tad narcissistic). In a real tangible way, I realized this when I drove the car after she had. The rear view mirror was angled so that it reflected whoever was sitting in the driver's seat. My sister moves the mirror so that when she glances up, she can see herself, checking her hair or her make-up.

It was about a mile down the road before I realized that the mirror was tilted incorrectly, and it wasn't because I wasn't glancing up. I know to use my mirrors - side of the eye, side of the eye.
I didn't realize it because I guess I'm vain as well. I was looking up and checking out the color of my hair and the freckles on my nose.

So I guess I have something to work on.

So this frog hops into this bar...

I've been thinking about sex way too much recently. Being a TA for a professor who's teaching Sociology of Sexuality might do that for you.

I'm beginning to think that we do not know how to order our sexuality. Christians, Americans, young, old. How we teach sexuality to the young, how we think (or fail to think) about it in our own lives. We err either by licentiousness or by denigrating the body. In truth, God gave us bodies, with all of its emotions, desires, faults, and beauty. We order our sexuality out of honor for God. Our bodies are good, created by God. We are to bring glory to God with our whole lives, by moderation in our pleasures and chastity in regards to our sexuality (both married and unmarried)

Related to sex and sexuality is the simple fact of embodiment. I have a physical body that has needs, desires, problems, issues. I am never disembodied. I sit and study and my body causes me discomfort. I can forget about it for a time, but it doesn't let me ignore it for long. I have to pee or I'm hungry. Prosaic reality after reading Shakespeare or Paul.

What happens when we fail to use our bodies rightly? Related to sex, yes, but related to everything else that our bodies do? Is it wrong to not take care of our bodies? And then, what does "not taking care of our bodies" mean? We will all decay and our bodies will lose their strength, so to what level should we attempt to maintain health, and when do we gracefully let our bodies age?

Right now I kind of like my body. I'm young, spry, etc. It doesn't cause me too many problems. As I grow older I want to give my body grace and have patience with it. But what if I get arthritis? What if I get cancer? What if my body ages in a way that is painful?

I think that God gave us bodies for a purpose. We will never be disembodied spirits but will exist in resurrected bodies. they are not to be hated, as some soiled cloth that we must live with for a time but will eventually discard. We will be renewed but still embodied. Recently I wondered if we will still have internal organs in our resurrected bodies. It's odd to think of myself having a liver. I've never seen it, but I guess it's pretty important.

Paul says that he beats his body and makes it his slave, and as I struggle between these dichotomies of making the body everything or of nothing, there are many verses (such as this) that I am not sure how to understand rightly.

It's probably right for us to think seriously about embodiment and sexuality, especially as we live in a culture inculcated with sex and obsessed with a young, firm, trim, body. But there are other aspects of life that are also important. So many things to think about.

I should only tell funny stories on this blog. Thanks for reading.