Time to Wrestle
Photo courtesy of Freepik
It’s been awhile since I put anything out in this blog space. Due to a variety of things going on in life, I reluctantly put on hold the rhythm of writing for my blog. Weeks on hold turned into months and then years, and now here I am feeling the insistence to write in this format again.
It sure is difficult to lay something down for awhile and then pick it up again.
When something is living, and we set it down…
and then when we go back to it…
It’s not often the same
and neither are we.
The question comes to mind, how do I return to this blog? How do I hold this blog? How do I let it work on me as I pick it up again? How do I work on it when I feel like it and see what seems like plate tectonics shifting before an earthquake?
I’ve been wrestling a lot lately… and I believe that I am not alone in my wrestling.
My older brother wrestled in high school so I sort of understand the way the “sport” of wrestling is conducted. Because so much of the sport is promoted to be about the “result” and the “win” or “who outperforms”, sometimes, or maybe I can go so far as to say that most of the time we miss— what is actually happening inside the persons who wrestle and inside the act of wrestling.
The way I see it…
Wrestling is working with resistance.
Wrestling is looking for new paths forward out of a hold.
Is wrestling really about dominating?
OR
Have we simply been conditioned to believe that lie?
Perhaps, wrestling is about getting stronger.
Not stronger than…
but simply stronger…
maybe stronger in…
not stronger over.
Sometimes I read back through my journals to see where I was or what might have come to me at a certain time or just relive some memories. Here is an example of my wrestling from a partial entry in my journal on Thursday, May 26, 2022.
…Why must we have power over others? Why? Power over begets violence. Violence begets more violence. Violence begets trauma. And trauma begets all kinds of responses and coping/defense mechanisms… seen and unseen… today, tomorrow and all of tomorrows’ tomorrows.
I know I am not asking questions that others haven’t asked before and maybe “Pollyanna” is performing again to make me hope it will all just stop somehow and people will know how to treat one another with love and kindness without stirring, stoking, or stroking the fear or violence or power over monsters.
Many societies around the world see life as a game, competition as a must have, fast-paced as the only speed, efficiency as king with greed grasping for the throne… the throne that runs circles around the “Joneses” and hides the difficult topics or undesired away with a lock and no key and sealed lips.
Now seems apocalyptic! There’s a great revealing going on. It’s as if the sealed lips are leaking; someone has found the rusty key, and the curtain has been pulled to expose all the historical wrongs from every century that have not had a voice all these years. This is a moment in time that each of us must reckon with — not because we lived in the past, but because we are a part of the present that can shape the future in ways that we hope can make a difference. However, the past must be heard, seen, and reckoned with first before the present and future will find their way.
We must slow down! We must take time to lament, and process pain and loss on a personal and global scale. We must examine our part(s)— whether it be how we treat someone different to us, the clerk at the grocery, our neighbor, an older person, a coworker, a partner, a stranger, a child, a dog, a grown ass kid who’s pushing our buttons or a slow driver on a two lane highway, or even ourselves. We must consider our part(s) in wider systems and policies that continue to widen instead of shrink these systems. Searching for and creating compassion in ourselves towards ALL, and we can still have compassion for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be a race, a war, or an either/or.
People individually and collectively are responding and reacting in today’s world from years of multiple and collective, multi-generational, multi-faceted, and multi-layered trauma.
Why are we so surprised when people do bad things? The existing systems promote power over everywhere one turns! What will it take to see all these connections? How can those who see the connections between the violent act and the fear and the defiance communicate clearly enough to be heard? There are connections between the shape of the power over of yesterday and today and the new shapes seen and unseen of the power over structures and postures of tomorrow.
May we all wrestle in ways to find new paths forward in the many places and spaces where we make choices and decisions that will shift these crippling power over structures towards something stronger… stronger with… stronger in… stronger for… stronger together for ALL of creation.
