27: Our daily sleep deprivation

"Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us this day our daily bread."

The thing with repeating a prayer is that your mind starts wandering after a while. But my mind wanders no matter what kind of prayers I offer, unless I stop praying after a minute or so.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

But while your mind may wander, it keeps coming back to the prayer you're repeating. It's like you suddenly become conscious of yourself saying something again, and you listen, "what the heck was I saying? Oh yeah, that."

"Give us this day our daily bread."

I suddenly realized that I was talking about sleep.

I've been a sort of insomniac from birth. It comes and goes in no discernible pattern, but I spend more time trying to fall asleep than anyone I know. I am also more fragile, more offset by a sleepless night, than most people I know.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

It seems I have a knot in my intestine, and if I sleep badly for two or three nights in a row, I get such a pain there that I sometimes can't walk straight. My digestion goes wonky. I start losing my ability to concentrate. I get headaches and I lose my voice. I get irritable and angry and depressed and unfair.

Most people have these or similar symptoms when deprived of sleep, but "deprived of sleep" can mean different things. I know people who can go three days straight without any sleep. I know people who can survive for months on end on four hours a night.

At least this is what they claim. I've done no rigorous research on these claims.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

The point is, I can't be guaranteed to get enough sleep to function well, and it ends up being a large and frustrating time-eater. And I pray about it -- it may be the single thing I have said the most prayers about. Usually around 3:30 in the morning, lying awake in bed and having surreal thought-dreams and saying, "God, what do you get out of this? How would it hurt you to just allow me to sleep?"

My mind comes up with uncomfortable answers. Either God is so set on having me to talk to Him that He will even settle for these sorts of accusations (and therefore provokes me to them), or He is somehow opposed to me sleeping.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

Indeed, much Christian tradition talks about sleep as if it were a bad thing, or at best a necessary evil. "Watch and pray", wasn't it? Like sleep being the soldier's worst enemy, and we're all soldiers. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, and a slothful person is associated with one who sleeps. The Old Testament wisdom literature already talks as if we have to do things "right" in order to "deserve" a good night's sleep -- and even then we better not try to take it too far!

Today's performance-driven Christianity is of course fraught with the sort of sentiments that make you feel guilty if you want to sleep. But the traditional church isn't much help either, with its ascetic monks and Saints who rise at 3 AM for morning prayers and practically try to outdo each other in finding ways to deprive themselves of their biological needs.

"Give us this day our daily

[rest]
bread."

At the same time, rest is vital, one could almost say central, to the Christian faith. It's what Christ promises us if we come unto him; it's what we combine with repentance for our salvation, according to Isaiah; It is one of the great promises of the life to come, and our first prayer for departed souls (Requiem aeternam dona eis...); and it is one of the ways in which the Christian can, paradoxically, be most active and productive.

"Give us this day our daily sleep."

I was on the fifth day of my pilgrimage, and very sleep-deprived.