Soul Wrestling
by Dawna Wall
The
Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. —Nancy
Wynne Newhall
It is often unsettling to
realize anew that the distance from joy to despair is so short and also so
long. Jesus, in offering himself for the cleansing ritual of baptism, has
listened for and heard deep inside his soul that he is beloved and this
knowledge spurs him toward the soul wrestling that devastates and renews. Soul
wrestling is a familiar story in Scripture—we think of Jacob and the angel, of
Hagar in the wilderness, of the many unnamed women and men who cry out, reach
toward the healing love of God and limp forward, changed and blessed.
In our wrestling
places we might ask for a sign, a promise, some hint that the anguish of this
present moment is not all there is. Mark’s Gospel shrinks the story of Jesus’
wilderness time to a few sentences, but between the lines there is a world of
experience. As there is with ours too. “It’s a long story,” we might say,
without telling it. That’s where Jesus is—coming to terms with the hunger of
body, mind, and spirit and, as he wrestles, reciting to himself the promises of
Scripture that he knows by heart. All while listening deeply to what God is
revealing to him in the wilderness.
As we seek to live
well through Lent, we too will need to confront our wilderness places—wrestling
again and again with the insecurities, the frustrations, the hungers that leave
us feeling less than and not enough. Like Jesus we listen and watch for signs,
in glimpses of rainbows, in refrains of Psalms—words and images to help us
remember the way from despair to hope.
Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama writes, “To engage
with the text this way requires careful and heartfelt reading, noticing the
nooks and crannies where the imagination can lodge, paying attention to the
curiosities that emerge and creating a stopping-point there” (Daily Prayer with
the Corrymeala Community, p. 61).
Honoring the stopping points, the rest areas, and the
lookouts are all opportunities to assess where we are on our faith journeys.
How we live well in the midst of deep sorrow and unexpected joy. Making space
where our “imaginations can lodge” and engaging in curiosity as we look around
and listen for where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going,
are all ways that we honor those angular parts of our stories, the wrestling
and the resolution.
Living
Well Through Lent 2021
Copyright
©2021 Scott Stoner. All rights reserved.
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