Copyright © 2012
by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use
with attribution of author and blog site.
During my
workshops I like to use two metaphors for different ways of thinking about
spirituality: hang-gliding and mudwrestling.
Some think of
spirituality as hang-gliding high above your troubles and the troubles of the
world, giving you perspective, so that, like God in that popular song years
ago, you can see everything “from a distance.” And there’s some truth to this;
spirituality can give us perspective in which we see the larger picture, the
grander scheme, the wonder of it all.
But spirituality,
to me, is often the task of mudwrestling, in which we wrestle with the powers
that be, whether within our own psyches, within families and faith communities,
in the workplace or the public square. We also wrestle with
suffering and failure and disappointments, with disabilities and limitations
and challenges. Some few wrestle with success or wealth or attractiveness. And
this shapes our souls for good or ill. But whether they warp or enlarge our
souls is the choice of the conscious spiritual life.
For many of us,
religions in which we were reared caused the very pain with which we struggled.
A friend, brought up as a biblical literalist, felt compelled to burn all of
his family Bibles to embrace a new way of understanding scripture.
Yet I believe
it’s in the Bible that we find people and a God willing to wrestle with one
another. The spirituality of the Bible is more mudwrestling than hang-gliding,
from the depiction of a God who wrestles mud into human shapes in Jewish
scriptures to the depiction of creation itself groaning in childbirth in Christian
scriptures.
Most obvious is
the myth about Jacob wrestling with God in the middle of the night. “I will not
let you go unless you bless me,” Jacob tells God. Thus Jacob is renamed
“Israel,” which means one who strives with God.
I thought of this
story one Sunday morning when reading The New York Times Magazine, featuring
stories of how “Health is All in Our Minds.” Daniel Smith wrote about his and
his brother’s lifelong struggle with debilitating anxiety in an article
entitled “The Maniac in Me.” He eventually concludes with Kierkegaard that his
anxiety is his “best teacher”—but not of itself, rather because of his
“lifelong effort to think clearly and act well in spite of it.” He writes:
My brother and I grew up in a Jewish but largely secular home. Each of us had a bar mitzvah, but we managed to emerge from childhood with little understanding of, and littler faith in, religious texts. [My brother] is convinced that our lack of religion has handicapped us psychologically. “It’s not really fair, when you think about it,” he told me…. “We’re surrounded by people who came into this world with these portable little bundles of certainty, these neat foundational texts. They don’t have to go rooting around for comforting words. What do we have? What did we get? Nothing. A handful of movies and a few of Dad’s jokes. We’re at sea. We’ve always been at sea.”
On reading this I
immediately thought of all the great characters in Jewish scriptures these
anxiety-ridden brothers could have identified with: the stammering Moses, the
reluctant Jonah, Jeremiah with feelings of inadequacy, Isaiah of the “unclean
lips,” but especially the struggling Jacob.
That’s what I saw
in the Bible growing up—people like me, wrestling with God, wrestling with the
powers that be for acceptance, respect, equality, justice, and compassion. My
own struggle shaped the soul I am today, shaping a spirituality within me of
acceptance, respect, equality, justice, and compassion. What I wanted I now am
better able to give. And I daresay many of you will identify with that
sentiment. That’s probably why you’re reading this.
+++
Tax-deductible
donations to this ministry may be given online through the blog site or by mail
to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232, designating in the memo area, “For
Progressive Christian Reflections.” Thank you for your support!
No comments:
Post a Comment