Exactly. Precisely. Perfectly.

This Is What We Are.

I am an A-Level Religious Studies student. I have been studying the Problem of Evil and Suffering as part of the course, and did my mock exam on Friday. A day after the funeral of my Uncle, who died from a very rare form of terminal cancer.
I wrote partly about Irenaeus' Theodicy. He says that suffering is a vital part of God's plan for us. We are born in the image of God (Imago Dei) but have to grow into the likeness of God. Part of the way we do this is through experiencing evil and suffering. The philosopher Swinburne said that this is not a 'toy world' where everyone can always make perfect choices, but a real world where people are faced with real challenges in order to grow and develop as people.
I agree with this. I think grief and pain and agony are the essence of what it means to be human. I have just experienced my first taste of this, and it is horrible. It is hard and it is painful and I have only just begun a life where people I love will die and get ill and I will have to cope with it. But isn't that the point of life?
If I never experience the grief of losing a loved one, then I will never have experienced them in the first place. In the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry rages against Dumbledore after Sirius' death. Dumbledore replies that in feeling something that much, Harry is growing into a man. He says that this pain is being human.
This thought does not really help when you are watching someone you have known all your life disappear behind a velvet curtain. At that moment of course it doesn't help. Of course I thought that God was cruel and hateful and that he didn't care. But the next day I sat in my exam and I wrote about how I agreed with Irenaeus, how I thought that in order to become human we needed to feel the sting of evil and suffering. That's the point, I said. And really, I suppose that it is.

Aaaa-whooo!

Werewolves of London!

I was just listening to the brilliance that is this song, when I remembered being slightly drunk on our last night in The Lake District, wandering around the caravan park in the rain and the dark, repeatedly going:
Aaaa-whooo! Werewolves of London!
Because it was a full-moon. And thinking I was hilariously, side-splittingly funny.

(And, if you are a certain girl with a name beginning with 'A', one of the tags is just for you ;) )

PROTEGO!!

I really haven't felt up to blogging this holiday. My first real expieriance with the death of someone that I really cared about has not helped.

Anyway. This is what I did today:

I listened to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows all day in the garden shed, and then I wrote 'Protego!!' on my hand. And when my Mother was mocking me about me tripping over something I shouted "Protego!" held my hand up to her face and said "I'm protecting myself from your sarcasm!"

And now we're watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and my Dad said (about Narcissa Malfoy) "She's Malfoys wife isn't she?" and I said "Yes she is, and she's sister with Bellatrix and their other sister is Tonks' Mum Andromeda, but she married a muggleborn and got disowned." Then my Dad just looked at me and I said "Sorry, did I get an attack of the obsessives?" And Mum said "You probably know more about their family tree than your own."

Harry Potter Rules, Okay?