Hoping to Lose

I recently heard a story about a young philosophy student, and an old monk, Father Makarios.  The conversation went something like this:

Student: "Father Makarios, do you still wrestle with the devil?"

Father Makarios: "No. I used to wrestle with the Devil all the time. But now I have grown old and tired, and the Devil has grown old and tired with me. So now I leave him alone and he leaves me alone."

Student: "Then your life is easy now?"

Father Makarios: "Oh no. Life is much harder now.
For now I wrestle with God."

Student: "You wrestle with God and hope to win!?"

Father Makarios: "No. I wrestle with God and hope to lose."

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I used to wake up in the middle of the night, with the sheets soaked with sweat. Every. Night. For whatever reason, my dreams would lead to the feeling of suffocation, and I would wake up in a panic, and feel the blankets soaked with my own fear. I had a common nightmare of being apprehended and assaulted by an invisible violence, and I would wake up more exhausted than when I laid down to rest. I would learn later that my dreams would often lead to me swinging, kicking, and punching the darkness...

For years, I thought it was the cosmic struggle of good verses evil. A spiritual war against the forces of evil; surely Lucifer and his angels were hellbent on my destruction! I would read a chapter out of the bible every night before bed, only to have vivid dreams of sex and violence and shame and preaching and laughter and tears and in the end it was like rearranging chairs on the deck of the titanic, because this ship was sinking. I had been cast into the inevitable collision of an iceberg into a monstrous sea, and the saltwater was filling my lungs and I cannot breathe and I am drowning!

On the other side of the some glad morning, I have begun to realize that perhaps my struggle was not against the Devil. Maybe I had been swinging in the dark toward the embrace of my Heavenly Father, who was pinning me down with the chebod of His love. I see now that the scars inflicted from years of resistance, were self-injurious. There is a story behind each scratch, each bruise, each scar... "and here is where I landed on my knees." Then, pointing out another, "and this one is from the time I tried to outrun my shame." Unwrapping the bandages covering the battle wounds: "...and this scar is when I tried to run to freedom, only to be cut down by friendly fire." 

I am not alone in this struggle. This is a part of the narrative into which I have been cast, beside my brother Jacob. He too struggled with God in the midnight hour, and walked away with a permanent limp. Because the struggle is to learn and grow and be decimated into a blessing; our struggle is to allow ourselves to be pinned down by an avalanche of cosmic love. 

Why am I so resistant to allowing God to love me? Why do I shower others with grace and forgiveness, and yet harbor resentment and rage toward myself? Perhaps my struggle with God is not predicated on the objective to win, rather my victory comes in surrender.  Because when I am weak, I am strong enough to put down my fist and say yes and amen. My Hosanna was born in a furnace of doubt; my glorification comes as a collapse into the arms of the Victor. 

When Jacob had a dream of a ladder, corresponding with God in the middle of the night, the Hebrew Scriptures articulate that "the sun had set" (Gen. 28:11). It was, in the words of St. John of the Cross, "the dark night of the soul." Years later, he would wrestle with God in the same midnight hour, and walk away with a permanent limp. And a few chapters later his story continued, "... and the sun rose" (Gen. 32:31).

And as the sun rose in the morning, he stumbled onward toward the eastern horizon with a new identity... the name given to him by the Victor: "Jacob." Which literally translates from the Hebrew, "he who struggles with God."