Fencing Bear at Prayer

Our preacher Peter gave a very interesting sermon this morning. The text from was St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 1:18-25, where Paul cites Isaiah 29:14: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." "I hate being the fool," Peter opened. "I never want to be overdressed. I try never to sound pompous. I would rather be too little than 'too much.' To accomplish that, I have adopted something that I call the ' White Man Can't Jump ' fool avoidance strategy." You remember the story, right? I'm not sure I do (it's been awhile), but from what Peter said, I recall this much. Woody Harrelson's character would come to the basketball court pretending to know nothing about basketball and to do so, he dressed the fool: "random shoes, backwards baseball hat, ratty clothes. He [as Peter put it] made a calculated decision to lower expectations." This, Peter went o...

Some of you who are not fencers, maybe even some of you who are, may be wondering why, if fencing puts me through agonies such as I have been describing this past week, I do it at all. Surely there are more pleasant ways to spend my leisure time, if what I am looking for is a little fun. Why bring myself to the strip over and over again, night after night, year after year, if all I encounter there are the demons of pride, envy, gluttony, anger, lust, sloth and greed? Well, as the desert fathers who invented this list of deadly sins (more accurately, temptations) would put it, because that is where the demons are. How else will I learn to fight them? I know, this may sound paradoxical. Why put myself in the way of temptation when, by avoiding the strip, I could so easily maintain my calm? Or could I? I would, of course, like to think I could, but then, how would I know unless I were brought to the test, for example, by having to stand in a long line at the airport waiting to hear...

It's the next morning and I'm still in hell. Everything that my coaches and friends have told me over the years is a lie. "Patience," they say, "it takes time to learn to fence. You've still only been fencing for a relatively short amount of time; it takes years (six, seven, eight) before everything starts to make sense." And yet, my opponent yesterday (see previous post) has only been fencing for three years and a bit and she was in the semi-finals in a very challenging event. "You need to have confidence in your attacks," they say, and yet, she made almost no attacks and won bout after bout without fire, without pushing, without (apparently; clearly I'm missing something) setting up any of her actions except to be ready for the parry-riposte. "You have to want to win," they say. Well, clearly she did, but so did I, otherwise, why would I be in this hell--again? I cannot tell you the number of times I have felt like I do r...

"It's not about you," my opponent assured me as she yelled with victory after our first pool bout this morning. "Yes, it is," I replied, not feeling terribly sportsbearlike and knowing that I wasn't (sportsbearlike, that is) even as I said it. I wished that I could take back what I said and simply wish her well. The last time she and I had met in a tournament, a year and three months ago, I had beaten her comfortably 15-6 in a D-E for Div III. Over the last year, I had watched her results in the Divs and Vets with interest, for here was someone whom I had clearly known how to fence the first time I met her on the strip but who was consistently thereafter finishing higher than I was in every subsequent event. I was interested to fence her today to see what it was that she had changed so that maybe I could understand how it was that someone whom I considered (oh, the sin of pride) a somewhat weaker fencer than myself could make her way steadily and predic...

6:07 CST, 4:07 PST Sleepless in San Jose, waiting for it to be morning so that I can fence my first event in the Summer Nationals. Define competition. A test. An ordeal. A proof. Of what? My coach promises me that this year will be different from last, when I fenced so badly I did not even make the cut for the D-Es in either of my events. This was less surprising in Div IA, against many of the strongest fencers in the country, most at least a decade, even two younger than I and, therefore, simply stronger and faster; but it was devastating in Veteran 40 because every other time I had fenced the same women that year, I had done significantly better. Will it be different this year? Does it matter? I did not go to the qualifiers for Div IA this year, so I did not even give myself the chance to be able to fence in that event, but I did go to the qualifiers for Div II/III and did not make the cut for the national event. Does this mean that my coach has lied to me or, more charita...

It may be hard to believe from what I said yesterday , but I am actually feeling quite hopeful again today. This, I am hoping, is one of the benefits of sharing these reflections with you on a blog. When I am writing for academic purposes, too much of the day-to-day experience of learning about prayer is subsumed into an overarching, polished argument. Under such circumstances, it is easy to forget the days on which hope seemed impossible, just as on those hopeless days, it is difficult to remember reasons for joy. What is it that gives me hope today that I could not remember yesterday? Well, it isn't just that I am rested after yesterday's practice because I actually woke up feeling just as angry with myself as I had been when I went to sleep last night. Nor is it that I started to recall the strong actions I made in yesterday's bouts, despite the final scores. I could remember those at the time, but they did not offset the sense of frustration and lack of control ov...

One of the things that I hoped would happen if I started keeping this blog was that I would somehow avoid feeling the way that I am feeling right now, after practice, having lost a bout to one of my clubmates that, in my pride*, I feel that I "ought" to have won. Well, there goes that theory! What is vexing me now is that my friend told me afterwards that she had been reading my blog and found what I said about being fully on the strip, not worrying about anything other than the action of the moment, really helpful** and that she had been thinking about this while we were bouting. And, indeed, she fenced very well and quite appropriately won. Throughout the bout, she stayed relaxed but focused, such that even when the score reached 10-14 against her, she was able to play each touch, one at a time, and come back and win the final touch with the score tied. On the one hand, I am encouraged (not to mention, flattered) that she found what I wrote made sense and was able to ap...