It's All in the Hip

I haven't written lately. I've reached that point in middle age where one begins to ask, "What's the point?" As the country spirals toward calamity, I only really want to stop long enough to say that I've torn my hip labrum and potentially damaged the tendons along that right side.

It isn't like I can afford to go to the doctor. The affordable health care act saw to that. Not only am I paying $18,000 a year for insurance, I have a $3500 deductible on top that will only then take me to an 80 / 20 match. In other words, about 30% of my family income goes to insurance and deductibles so that I can then purchase the right to pay another couple thousand on a 10K surgery. I'd rather limp to be honest. Another 20% goes to taxes, so our family is actually bringing home less than half what we make annually.

I'm on my third insurance plan in five years, since the ACA was passed. Changed doctors numerous times too, against my wishes. I've watched as my options shrank rather than grew. Premiums grew at 10 times the rate of inflation since the law was passed. Deductibles did to while maximum out of pocket insurance payments dropped.

Whatever. I can deal with it, but let's not for a second assume I am not angry about it.

Despite the downward pull, I never felt in the hole enough to vote for a man like Donald Trump. Ten days into this clown's Presidency and both America and the Constitution are poised to be torn apart at the seams. Things are going to get even more nasty before they're course corrected, so I think I will take what I have left of my hip and at least be able to stand up in pain.

As a theologian, I happen to know a little bit about hips. In our tradition, a dislocated hip is indicative of a wrestling match with God as evidenced by Jacob in the book of Genesis. Timely and pointed are truths such as these.

I've said many times before and know it's true that "most men are not good enough to seek the dark, nor vile enough to make our nests there, we instead sit lukewarm in the mouth of that which has been written, quietly disbelieving and hollowly accepting the old familiar blasphemy: the shadow of what we know we could become."

Familiar words to me, long since committed to a place deeper than memory. It seems there is a certain fortitude to looking into an abyss and I've found that most men lack it, or least cannot look long enough without that same abyss looking back through them.

It's no surprise to me that so few in positions of sacred or religious power know the wound of wrestling with God. They honestly lack the stomach for it... but all clergy aside, we really aren't raising men anymore anyway, regardless of profession. That's why it is so easy to take the collective fear of the nation and channel into a series of self-proclaimed gods we don't really understand.

I've also said and written for years that "the entry to damnation always lacks the savage intensity of its content." Whether you're banning Muslims at airports or protesting against the demagogues with signs and banners, there's a "wholly other" degree of pain and despotism awaiting. That's an intensity with a twenty-thousand year old root and until we've wrestled there, we have little inkling as to where the bottom truly is.

Jacob knew. You see, in the sermon I will probably never preach, there is a stage being long set prior to the fight with God and the dislocated hip. Jacob's brother, whom he had cheated outright of his father's blessing and inheritance, is on the warpath. Jacob is nearly shitting himself with fear. He does what any good man does when faced with brute and barbaric strength banging at his gates -- he prays.

We're not a praying people so much anymore. It's too easy to make signs and pussy hats and take to marching, replete with Starbucks coffee in our off-hands (a little antiseptic hand lotion in our pockets) and a secure ride home with a pre-paid plane ticket if things get really physical. God forbid if somehow in all the community organizing, someone drops his friggin' knees and begs God for a little mercy.

Jacob wasn't wired up to anything but pray. His brother was bearing down on him and he knew it. His sins, perhaps more egregious than most, were very clear to him. There wasn't anything about "deserving" a blessing or "being worthy" in his prayer. Read it yourself. Hubris was gone, his hairy brother - the 'skilled hunter' and killer of things - was at the gates.

Jacob was always a momma's boy. The story says as much in multiple places. He would need more than a can of ramen noodles to get out of this one.

After praying, Jacob decided to send his angry brother a peace offering. That's pretty damn important if you ask me. He could have easily sent over a receipt for the soup he cooked and traded Esau's birthright for. Jacob could have reminded his brother in a letter (signed in triplicate) that while Esau was out working and hunting food, he learned the value of being domesticated. That domestication would now become the new birthright is perhaps the most hidden truth of the story. (Lord help me, I hate spelling things out all the time.)

Jacob went to bed that night a terrified, domesticated man who'd made his comfortable living off of the labor of his brother. No wonder he prayed. With swords on the march, his lack of fighting prowess haunted him, as did the hairless comfort he enjoyed as one of his culture's most educated (heck, have you read how he cross bred his animals to increase his wealth?).

Thankfully, God did show up that night for Jacob. But this showing wasn't exactly what he expected. Jacob had to get off his ass and put up a fight. Who could blame him? It all came down to this moment, this thought that Jacob had that he would actually HOLD GOD HIMSELF DOWN until GOD FULFILLED HIS PROMISE. That is a set of balls and Jacob found them. There was no "trickster" or "deceiver" here (which is what Jacob means in Hebrew). There was only a fight for the ages. God vs. Man.

In the end, it seems there was less a reason to fear than Jacob imagined. Esau loved his brother and missed him. Perhaps the two worlds (wild man vs. domesticated man) aren't nearly as far apart as they seem. Perhaps what they need is an opportunity to reconcile. In our current political climate, it is hard for me to imagine much different....

...with only one exception. In today's word, the domesticated man no longer prays. And when he refuses to pray, he refuses to fight in the right ways. And when he refuses to fight in the right ways, he is easily mowed over.

I long for the day to see my brothers join me with a limp. Reveal the vulnerability and know the limp can only come, and peace itself can only come, after a long night of violence with God.

That's the lesson of Jacob. It's all in the hip.