30 September 2006

A tickle in the throat

A few minutes ago I was looking in the mirror trimming whiskers. They've accumulated over the last three or four days. I've been sick. Ill. Ironic in a way. I felt it coming on after dinner with friends, "Did yours start with a slight tickle in your throat?" "Yes." Then off we were. It was predictable, no fanfare, no regret. I gave myself permission to be sick. That's ridiculous. I made illness the priority the last few days. In many respects I saw it as health, but I concentrated mightily on how sick I was. It was all and all a decent time. I got to catch up on some reading, but I also saw from a slightly different perspective. One where my body had caught up to my mind in its fatigue. It was in harmony. My first response was not prayer, it was vitamin C. I was in prayer as normal, but didn't think to include my health in the conversation. At some point fairly early on it came up, but in retrospect it was a little startling that it wasn't a priority earlier. Perhaps I missed healing or I prolonged dis-ease or it was all OK. How funny that even illness has expectations. I'm feeling better now.

In one book there were a few ideas that intrigued me in my dis-ease. What if God's sense of justice is not that everyone gets what they deserve, but that every part of creation should live the nature they were given? That it is right for some young men to die of heart disease and lions to kill zebras. It doesn't fully work, but it adds some interesting thoughts to justice. Another idea is how language is a result of the fall or our continual falling. Sin. That language is a means to shorten the distances we have with God and each other. A few months ago I read how all of technology is to further language. Putting these two ideas on language together is interesting. Another short story I read today was lamenting on how the author had sometimes mistook obliteration for love. I can see how that happens. Perhaps in a way it's part of love, in our fellenness...