Sidereal Sea

Why, you may ask, am I featuring a picture of a wall on my blog today? It is a source of pride and shame. This is the 'courtyard' or 'Lounge' or whatever you want to call it, upstairs in my house. Yesterday, I was asked permission to get into my house, because a couple of the female teachers had been playing foamball (well, really, they were just hitting a foam baseball) in the field beside my house, and had hit the ball onto my roof. So, I went over there, went upstairs with them, and just jumped and scaled the wall, then up to the roof. Pride, because that wall is about 7 feet tall, and I just jumped and got up there. Shame, because I was pretty clearly (to my mind) doing it to show off. And it irritates me, since I am really trying to curb that side of my personality.

In other, semi-related news, yes, that wall is 7 feet, and I scaled it without ladder or anything. My weight is trending back up (I'm at 68kg, or 149 pounds) right now, which is up a kg from a week ago. I'm pretty happy about this, because it's mostly muscle mass. I've worked out almost every evening in the past three weeks, and I do situps every morning and most every evening - I'm doing about 200 a day. Of course, my abs are sore now, but they're pretty cool looking, if I do say so myself (No, you can't see a picture.)

We had guys group last night, and we talked about the companion to hope and lesser subordinate of love. One of the things we talked about was the healing of the apparently epileptic (and more) boy in Mk Nine, and the father's response about his belief. Where, following our discussion, I am more inclined to think about mine own. I find as I walk around in this place, I am more and more tempted to think in terms of the observable only. This is not what I expected when I came here, which would lend itself to be the precise reason why I am tempted in that way. It is easy here to become hide-bound and numb to the Glory. It is easy in this culture, with its emphasis on appearance, saving face, greasing palms, to forget the simple nature of the Message, and the unrelenting nature of the victory of grace over the law. I've been reading the letter to the Galat* and am struck in 3 at the imagery of imprisonment. For truly, the things I see here can be and are a form of such. There are little things, like walking down the street, and watching a worker preparing concrete by throwing shovelful after shovelful of dirt onto a screen to sift it out. Hearing frustration in my female colleagues' voices as they describe walking out in the city. A couple of kids having to sit out a lot during basketball these last few weeks. There are larger things, culturally, that I think you can extrapolate.

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