Grapples with Wolves

"Would you be interested in learning hapkido?"

I couldn't possibly know how much I was hazarding with that one question.  Martial arts require unflagging dedication.  If mastery is the endgame, a student must be exceedingly discriminating as to which of the many disciplines receives their focus.

We had been working a job site together for about a week.  I was on the roof in disrepair; he was at the tree being felled.  It wouldn't be too long before we became fast friends, but we didn't know that yet.

"Maybe.  Have you ever heard of Gracie jiu-jitsu?  You should check that out and get back to me," he said.

Of course I had heard of jiu-jitsu.  But I wasn't interested in all that rolling around and ground nonsense.  I was as disinterested in his nudge as a cat is in a bath.  However, I was desperate to train again.  This fellow would be an ideal partner in grime.  At the very least that much was clear.  Was I willing to condescend to this lowly art that had nothing whatsoever to do with Koreans?  Because I absolutely love Koreans.  More on that later, maybe.

The following month was like passing a gall stone (which I have never experienced, thank God, but I have heard the stories).  No matter where I looked, jiu-jitsu continued showing itself as the best of all possible worlds.  No matter how many handicaps and advantages I gave to hapkido, it never won the day.  I knew the truth early on in my deliberations, but it would take all of that month to get me to admit it to myself.  

Long story somewhat shorter: I gave myself to the study of jiu-jitsu.  Matthias and I started our own Gracie Garage, along with his brother Paul.  The conditions were abysmal.  No air conditioning, plumbing, electricity - no amenities of any kind.  But we had wrestling mats, although they just barely represented that form any longer.  We had scrounged them up from the landfill at the outskirts of Dante's Inferno.   Oh, and we had goats.  Real, live, actual, defecating goats.  They left their mark on our mats often enough.  Cleaning was more of a box-checking ritual than it was an hygienic accomplishment of any kind.  In case you're not familiar with the rigors of the grappling arts - your face comes into contact with the mats... a lot.  This place was entirely unsuitable to human usage.

We loved it.

That was 7 years ago.  Time and circumstance would eventually dismember all of us from the Goat Dojo (not before some tournament victories under that moniker!).  Fast forward: just a few days ago, I got to play along during their testing for blue belt (Matthias, Paul and Mo).  One of the greatest injustices in this world that I have ever witnessed is how long it took Matthias to get his blue belt.  He was better than me from the very beginning.  Still is.  But time and circumstance, again, would keep the promotion just out of reach in spite of his progress through the discipline.  It was a matter of ceremony, really, nothing more.  Now I can wear my own blue belt with less shame.

Why all the reminiscing?  Well, mostly, I'm just ecstatic that my friends got promoted.  They earned it.  And it's fun to watch your buddies take off and go.

Then I remember a thing that fills me with delight and sadness all at once.  You see, the Wolves are not Christian, although Matthias and Paul were raised by an Orthodox priest.  Our conversations have been rife with high-spirited disagreements over all manner of libations throughout the years.  Yet, no matter how hot the argument, our friendships never, and I mean never, came up against the peril of ending.

What conflicts me, emotionally, is how I have experienced more open friendship and hospitality in the company of the Wolves of Vinland than I have with most church parishioners I have shared a sanctuary with during the same time.  It's not entirely accurate to say that our worldviews are polarized, but they are divergent.  Nevertheless, we have always been able to meet where we could, and we have always enjoyed it there.  Jiu-jitsu has played the largest part in our having anything to share in common, no doubt.  But our camaraderie surpassed that something-in-common long ago.  They are on my short list of people to call whenever life gets "like that."  There have been a few times when I was that guy for them, too.  It has been a beautiful thing, really.  That's why I have such a hard time mean-mugging in the photos with these guys.  I just can't.  I am bursting with joy whenever they're about... and, well, it's also true that I'm just not as tough as they are.  No room for pretense here.

People of Christendom, please, hear me.  You must learn to extend more open fellowship with one another.  "They will know that we are Christians by our love for one another."  If you have the rare privilege of doing life with a community that exemplifies that statement, I envy you.  Most of us would be better identified with "They will know that we are Christians by our vociferous Facebook arguments with one another."

The Wolves and I disagree about plenty.  Sometimes we play that out.  Usually, however, we just enjoy each other's company.  And you know what?  I always look forward to seeing them.  Whereas, God bless... far too many Christians, many of them ministers, make me cringe at the thought of encountering them again.  These people live for their disagreements.  They are hucksters of haranguing, vigilantes of vicissitudes, denizens of detraction.

Hasten the day when we heed His words and look more like Him.  People were clamoring to be wherever Jesus went.  He was the life of the party, the favored candidate for king, the greatest threat to the authorities - the one that everyone either hated or loved.  No one was indifferent to Jesus.  His gravity was inescapable.  It still is.

Are the people around you clamoring to get in?

-Wailer