Fencing Bear at Prayer

It's working! It's working, it's working, it's working! You know how I know? Because I can fit into my fencing knickers without having to tug! Even better, I can fit into the heavy ones that I wear for epee that don't have any give. I can't wait to try on my stretchy ones for foil tomorrow. But, first, I need to write. Something. Anything to clear my head for the competition today. I am sorry that my bear's brain seems to be running to nothing but diet; my human brain has been carrying around all sorts of other thoughts these past couple of months. But somehow when I sit down to write here, all I can think of is, "Carbs!" It is a persistent demon. I can't say that I have been having cravings, but I have had regular nightmares the past week or so in which I find myself eating something that is not on my diet at the moment (if, perhaps, ever, now that I understand the effect that the sugars and starches have on me). It's odd, be...

"It should be uncontroversial (though, given the mood of the times, it probably is not) to say that if the teachings of Christianity were genuinely to take root in human hearts--if indeed we all believed that God is love and that we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves--we should have no desire for war, should hate injustice worse than death, and should find indifference to the sufferings of others impossible.  But, in fact, human beings will continue to make war, and to slay the innocent and the defenseless with cheerful abandon; they will continue to distract themselves from themselves, and from their mortality, and from morbid boredom by killing and dying on a magnificent scale, and by exulting in their power to destroy one another.  And human society will continue, in various times and places, to degenerate into a murderous horde, even if it remains so civilized as to depute the legal, political, and military machineries of the state to do its murdering for it.  ...