It’s Monday, the third day of my vacation, and I’m trying like hell not to panic that it feels like it’s moving too fast. I’ve read entire novels, watched the waves for hours, surfed, slept, made some new friends, and in general just enjoyed every moment. The fact that I have nearly a week left to enjoy feels extravagant and at the same time desperately needed.
On Saturday I smashed a toe while surfing; nothing catastrophic, but I’m walking with a slight limp. And like a memory long forgotten, or a dream that leaves behind only snips and snatches after waking, as I strolled the beach with coffee in hand, I thought of another guy who walked with a limp.
The story says Jacob wrestled with God all night, and in order to win, in a baffling move, the creator of the universe had to wrench his hip, while also giving him what he wanted – a blessing. Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life.
Maybe it’s a reminder of our humanity. The frailty of our human forms that can be damaged in the wrestling or the waves, the rest of the body forced to adjust for that bit that is injured. It’s a reminder that we are really, really nothing, and a slightly bigger wave could just as easily take me out completely. A microscopic virus an shut down the entire world and kill hundreds of thousands. A freak storm or fire can destroy everything we’ve worked our entire lives to build. God, if you believe in a deity, can wrench your hip with a finger or turn you to salt for a glance and the reality is we have so little control over our lives it’s almost laughable. Especially for someone like me, who plans and analyzes and prepares for every possible eventuality I can think of, and then I show up to the training site and there’s no power or water, or my instructor was mugged last night and unable to make it, or I show up to the airport and they’re all grounded because of fog or an act of terror or a global pandemic. Sure didn’t see that coming. And we get to be more flexible and resilient that we ever thought we’d need to be.
I’m engaged in my own wrestling match at the moment, and I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I wouldn’t say I’m wrestling with God, per se, because if God is real and loving then God would welcome my questions and struggles and doubts; and if not, then I don’t want anything to do with that kind of deity anyway. I would call it a reckoning of belief vs practice; of belonging, or desiring not to belong in what I once called ‘home’, where my eyes now see the loving, welcoming community I once identified as my own to be exclusive, unwelcoming to some, even hateful to others. Even just writing that I feel a piercing in my heart, a regret, a repentance, a longing for the good from that community without losing myself and my love for all humans, for this earth, for world peace and friendship.
But in the end, we’re all just making our way the best we can through this maze of life where we really have very little control of anything. My limp reminds me to respect the power of the waves, the vastness of the sea, the power of the microscopic universe, the longing to make the most of the little I am and have and offer wherever my journey ends up.
Let us begin 