On Being a Created Creature

Tonight, I started working out the bare bones of a proposal for a chapter that I may be co-writing in the new year. It was only later on after some time that a kind of fatigue has set over me, and I have to put everything down and get a good rest. Yet still--I lingered on, dawdling and thinking that if I  could only get past the first 'hurdle' of proposal-writing fatigue,  then I will be perfectly fine and ready to keep motoring! But it isn't like that at all: quite simply, I am only physically exhausted from the day's chores and errands, and my body is definitely saying it's time to pack it in and get sleep.
   I think it must have learned the term 'creaturely' from a theologian at one point or another, though I can't quite remember who it was. It might have been Paul Tillich, but more than likely it might have come from Matthew Fox or Parker Palmer. In any case, I think 'creaturely' refers to the fact that human beings are not just creators of their own experiences but are also (and just as often) created as well. This means, in a sense, that people are always under the influence of their biological needs and unique conditions in doing what they set out  to do. My tiredness is not a fluke, but is part of what it means to be me at 11:59 at night. Similarly, 'creatureliness'  refers to all those things which make us subject to the causality of the body itself. There is no sense fighting off sleep if one's mind needs sleep to function, for instance.
  Why this is so important to note is that there is certainly a difference between idealizing about who one is, and really attempting to embody it. To embody an ideal is always infinitely harder than to spell it out on paper, and part of the reason is that one's ideal is often only a visual representation in mind. The same is true with writing itself. A proposal might look really neat and tidy, with few loose threads, but actually engaging in the writing itself can be an unpredictable process, where some ideas start to get shaped or even scrapped over time. Designing a proposal might be similar to a divine eye view of the project itself, whereas the actual writing of the project can be subject to all matter of twists and turns. But the joy of being a creature is that it gets a person away from perfection of ideals and shows them what those ideals really start to be like in the midst of so many conditions and circumstances. But it also reminds a person to exercise good judgment when executing plans, and to consider the many factors that constrain individuals in their pursuit of goals or ideals.