Sports And Genetics And God

*Spoiler*

This isn't really about science as much as it sounds from the title. If you want science, you should probably keep on looking.

*End spoiler*

I'm watching snooker.

And here's the thing - I know who the guys are who are in it - when they show the last names, I know the first names. I can picture some of them. I know that the World Championship is called "The Crucible" because it's held in the Crucible Theater (or maybe the other way around - I'm not obsessed). And I'm sad that Stephen Hendry is out. He's my favorite snooker-er, perhaps because he kind of looks like a wolf when he's leaning over his cue to make a shot... VERY cool eyes. And, let's face it: when you're deciding which snooker-er to root for, how much like a wolf his eyes look is just as good a criterion as anything else.

Probably more of you than would like to are aware of how I feel about what is called a "sport" and what's included in the Olympic program (I'm building momentum - slowly - for a place on the IOC), and there is no way snooker is a sport. But it's really hard. The tables are huge, the pockets are small... I remember playing snooker with Brock a couple times on a normally-sized pool table with somewhat more generous pockets, and it was still tough. I can't do it. So I kind of like watching these guys who are absolute masters at it... they make it look so easy, and I wouldn't even know the difference if I hadn't tried it myself.

So that makes me think about things I've tried that have turned out to be far more difficult than I would have expected:

• Throwing pottery (though it would have helped if they would have told me the wheel went the other way for left-handed people on the first day)
• Golf (also not a sport)
• Math (what's up with that, anyway?!?)
• Keeping my daughter in the same country I'm in
• Speaking (include reading, writing, and understanding) French
• Finding decent prints of Flemish Primitives (yeah, it's a Wikipedia day)
• Or, on a related note, painting

Conversely, there are some things that have been much easier than it seems like they should have been. Not that I've mastered these, but I probably do better at them than I should, given my training and knowledge:

• Drumming (really - you just count to 4 over and over and try not to get faster)
• Public speaking (a lot like normal speaking, but hopefully more people are listening)
• Photography (though, as a friend mentioned a couple weeks ago when seeing the lens I was using, "oh, that's why your pictures look so good!")
• Writing (in English, thanks)
  

But here's the really odd part - prayer, for me, has been in both of these categories at one time or another. Much more often in the first one, unfortunately, but not always. And as I've been reading about it, and thinking about it, and studying it, and doing it to be able to speak coherently about it at YAGS, I've been mystified by how it can be, at the same time, the simplest and most mystical thing I do most days. As easy as breathing. As difficult as requiring God to die to make it possible. Sometimes involuntary, sometimes demanding an act of will that seems to go against everything inside me.

I'm tempted to concoct some thin analogy relating prayer to the snooker match that's on, but I need to go. Maguire is just finishing up a century, and I need to watch.