SunstonePodcast #005: Godwrestling
In this episode of SunstonePodcast, Dan Wotherspoon interviews Rick Jepson about his November 2005 Sunstone article entitled, “Godwrestling: Physicality, Conflict, and Redemption in Mormon Doctrine.”
Rick is a nursing student at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. He is married with two children. He trains and competes in several styles wrestling. He presented an early version of this article the 2005 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium (tape SL05–154).
To listen to this podcast, click here.
January 3rd, 2006 at 11:34 pm
I just finished listening to this podcast… just wanted to say how awesome it was. I don’t have that issue, so I’m sure I’m not as up-to-date as I could be about what was said, but I was completely engrossed in this discussion of physicality. I think one of the unique things about the Mormon Church is that it re-introduces the concept of ceremony and rites into our worship: the meeting of the physical and spiritual self.
Causing your spirit and body to act in concert with one another somehow seems to have great power that is unrecognized in our sterilized western culture. We see body as base and spirit as enlightened, but really, don’t they act together when we are most whole? Isn’t that the point of our receiving a body to begin with? I don’t mean this in a trite way, and I’m not sure it doesn’t sound that way. But I’ve long felt that physicality is missing from so much of what we do that we struggle to find physical outlets elsewhere.
The temple has ancient rites that many consider weird and archaic, but if anything is lost on our modern minds, it is the sacredness and POWER of our physical selves. The temple attempts to restore some of that to us, I think. Physical acts are not just “symbolic.” They are as much an indication of the state of our souls as anything, and we can weild power through them.
Anyway, this is a huge discussion and I won’t go on here… but thank you for the podcast. I’ll try to get my hands on the article.
January 9th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Dear Skyepixie,
Glad you enjoyed this podcast!
We’d of course like you to buy the magazine, but you can get the article via clicking the link at the front page of the Sunstone website, http://www.sunstoneonline.com. Or you can go to my earlier posts about the article here on Sunsoneblog. Scroll down to the December 7th or December 20th entries, and you’ll find buttons you can click on.
Cheers,
Dan Wotherspoon
January 11th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Hey Skye,
I really agree with you….especially your connecting physicality with the temple. there’s really something to DOING your worship, not just sitting and taking it in.
I don’t even know if the mechanics are important in and of themselves (although I could obviously be wrong), but using them meaningfully just does something to you.
January 15th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Just as an FYI, the Sunstone Podcast is also listed in the Yahoo! Podcasts directory. One of the neat Yahoo! features is that you can listen to the podcast in a web-based audio player…no download required!
So now you can get your Sunstone podcasts, anytime, anywhere….cool, eh?
Sunstone on Yahoo! Podcasts: http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=93947b840b129b29e605664e668be023
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Hey Rick! Yes, I’ve wondered myself many times whether the specifics of physical ceremony matter in and of themselves. Part of me thinks, “of course not! they are symbolic gestures.” But another part of me thinks, “wait a minute! This is whole trap we’ve fallen into these days: thinking that everything is ’symbolic’ only, thus stripping the importance of the physical act in a way.” We go easily from there to the idea that it’s only the thought that counts. Hmmm. interesting…
I listened to an interview with a biblical scholar recently who mentioned that one of the debates surrounding the Hebrew translation of the commandment “Thou shalt not covet” is whether it is intended truly as not to covet, per se, or perhaps really not to ACT upon coveting. Apparently many scholars feel that you can’t really have a commandment against something that is internal and only in your mind. I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “strange, this place we’ve come to. We think the only true sins are purely physical, yet the only true righteousness is spiritual and of the heart.”
February 7th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Plus, Christ is pretty explicit about that…if you’ve looked at a woman with lust in your heart, youv’e committed adultrly, etc. Obviously it’s not just acts that condemm or save us.
May 19th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
[...] It’s with great pleasure that we introduce Rick Jepson as our newest Sunstone permablogger. Many of you will remember Rick as the author of the November 2005 Sunstone cover article, “Godwrestling: Physicality, Conflict, and Redemption in Mormon Doctrine,” and for the SunstonePodcast interview that followed (SunstonePodcast #05, see 29 December 2005 blogpost). Rick is also the editor of a new Sunstone column that debuts in the coming issue of the magazine. The column is called “Bounds and Conditions” and deals with the intersection of Mormonism with science and health issues. [...]
December 9th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
what does the sunstone mean?
December 14th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Hi Jeffrey,
Not a question that yields a simple answer. A good history of sunstones are their meaning is this article that Sunstone published several years ago. It’s probably more than you’d ever want to know, but it’s quite interesting!
For me, the reason the founders picked it to represent the organization and its aims was for the Nauvoo sunstone’s enigmatic nature, recalling the quest for light and intelligence along with a sort of mystical feel, as well as for the fact that it referred directly to a work of art, which was something that Sunstone’s founders were very interested in as a subject for the fledgling magazine to explore.
Best,
Dan Wotherspoon
Editor, Sunstone
December 15th, 2006 at 6:44 am
Hey Dan, I just opened the link you referenced on the history of sunstones. Wow! I hadn’t ever noticed the two trumpets above the sun in the illustration presented. Lots of additional meaning there for me! And it’s not even creepy.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Glad you enjoyed. It is and interesting article. The author is both an artist and a scholar—an all-too-rare but wonderful combination.
Of the trumpets, I kind of like the possibility he mentions in passing that they also could be cornucopias.
Cheers!
Dan
December 16th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Dan, I’ll have to get to know this author artist better!
As for the trumpets possibly also being cornucopias, that doesn’t ring with me. What caught my attention was “two” trumpets. I had long had the image of the singular angel atop LDS temples (presumably Moroni), but not two. The idea of two trumpet tones is what resonates in me from a 1967 dream and its 1973 poem: “. . .where golden tones once pierced my sleep . . .”
Rick, ever since I first read your 2005 “Godwrestling” article in Sunstone, I’ve wanted to tell you about a 1978 dream trilogy poem I call At Penuel–A Dream Trilogy. I believe you know about this place, since you and I have wrestled recently in another thread on this blog space. The first relevant poem in the trilogy is called Thief in the Night. Here is the part that has wrestling in it:
. . . So he began his reign in chaos:
picking fights and throwing things
and soon the battle raged to tables turned
and people’s screams and scattered everywhere!
I entered in against the prince to take him on
and soon it came to him and me . . . just him and me.
I gained advantage, and as I did he quit the fight!
Then came up close, disarming simply with a youthful smile
(quite human now) and made his first request:
“I’m in trouble with the kingdom,”
he easily confessed (without a trace of shame)
“will you help me restore order?”…
May I send the rest of it to you?
December 18th, 2006 at 12:27 am
Eugene, i wrestle with everyone eventually and in one way or another. Hope you didn’t take it personally.
Please send the poem to bounds.and.conditons at hotmail dot com
Gracias,
Rick
December 18th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Rick, as a fellow virtual wrestler, I always welcome a good joust. But how can such bouts NOT be personal? When Jacob wrestled the angel at Penuel, he failed to get the angel’s name, but received a new one for himself. Some folks way back in OT times even pinned God’s name on that challenging being and the world is still suffering from that hubris. So, let’s DO keep it personal!
I’m eager for you to challenge the poem.
Namaste’!
Eugene
December 18th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Well, for me it’s actually not personal. Never. I wrestle (both on and off the mat) for myself.
Anyway, I look forward to reading it. May be a few days before I can respond.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
That’s a big difference between us, Rick. While I also always wrestle for myself (in order to grow and understand), it’s always personal. I suspect this is due to my feminine side. See if your understanding of the poem I’ve sent bears that out. My big problem in taking all enounters with others so personally is one of ego. I’m always wrestling with that self-aspect to keep it in its proper function, which is service–not leadership.
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:16 am
I should clarify. it feels personal during the wrestle. But it isn’t. For example, if I argue with you on this forum, I sure as hell mean it. But a week later I won’t remember what it was about and a month later I won’t remember that it happened. Still, if I grew from it, that’s great. That’s the goal. Same, of course, on the mat. I have to feel like its personal to choke someone or to struggle out from under him. But for me that feeling goes away when the timer runs out.
And actually, it’s that way even in “real” fights. Just got in one a few weeks ago right outside of the hospital where I work. I choked one guy hard and the other hit me REALLY hard in the head. It sure felt personal. But when the situation de-escalated and we all went our separate ways, I gave a friendly slap on the butt of the the guy who punched me as if to say “good game”–the same way I would on a wrestling mat. Once the struggle was done, it was no longer personal.
Does that make more sense, maybe?
December 26th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Perfect sense, Rick. Remind me to avoid your hospital.
December 28th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Rick,
I don’t know if your comment #17 was written before or after my sending you my poem trilogy “At Penuel”, but I read again your “Godwrestling” paper and then listened to Dan’s Podcast interview of you. I was looking to see if these publications better addressed my blog question for you.
I have wondered about your motivation for wrestling. You have mentioned more than once in both your publications what it means to make one’s “calling and election sure” and how spiritual and physical wrestling (versus fighting) throughout the ages may be the origin of that concept. This morning I saw in the news where Saddam has written a letter in response to his impending execution expressing his belief that he has won his place in heaven. That seemed to me to be his version of believing he as secured his own “calling and election.” Dare I ask: who’s to say he hasn’t?
My question for you has to do with attitude: is it one of conquest, control or domination in contrast to partnership, stewardship or personal relationship? I see the former as vertical interaction; the latter as horizontal. Having listened to your podcast, I’m pursuaded that your attitude is more the latter than the former, but not simply one or the other–as if it should be There is still a lot of the vertical in your stated ten year wrestling goal. Is this not so? Maybe it’s really a question of finding a practical balance between vertical and horizontal. Yes?
December 30th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Mostly I wrestle because its fun and I’m actually good at it (unlike any other sport I’ve attempted).
but I do think there are deeply significant facets of the activity. A friend of mine called a few days ago and we talked about how since he started doing very serious yoga, he’s seen less and less distinction between yoga and submission wrestling. I agreed with him: yoga is like wrestling alone and wresting is like partnered yoga. However, I was surprised when he disagreed with me that the two activities also have a significant overlap with sex. This is particularly true in the style of wrestling I train in–submission wrestling, where are the positions are the same as are used in love making (e.g. guard, mount, backmount). In fact my signature position resembles a sex act closely enough that it’s name is too obscene for me to state on this type of a forum (and my wife groans when she sees me doing it on the mat). This is also true in standard folkstyle wrestling done in high schools and colleges–there are a handful of positions named for their sexual counterparts (one pinning move, for example, is called the “saturday night ride”)
It’s bizarre to me because I feel like I’m fighting when i wrestle….trully. But it’s also an intensely intimate activity. I don’t feel like it’s homoerotic, it doesn’t feel that way. Even being sweaty and half naked in positions so similar to bedroom scenes that they are named for them. And even the Turkish Oil Wrestlers who oil each other up and have a whole series of moves that involve sticking your hands down your opponents trousers….even they don’t feel that it’s a homoerotic experience (and are in fact repulsed by the popularity of their sport among homosexual fans)
But even though it’s not sex, it’s certainly intimate and certainly bonding. I have a very hard time not thoroughly liking someone that I’ve been able to wrestle (win or lose). And I end up physically wrestling nearly everyone I become close with (much to the disdain of siblings, buddies and my poor, poor wife–cracked her ribs last year)
As you know, I’ve tried to use that mixed experience as a metephor, “Making Love, Making War” to describe how I feel about several other types of struggle, particularly my relationship with the LDS church. I don’t know how successful I’ve been at expressing it. But personally it remains an important metaphor and one that reminds me that i can muscle through a boring lesson in elder’s quorum or deal with institutional sexism and other descriminations and problems I have with Mormonism because even though I’m fighting the church, I’m also embracing it.
So….that’s probably not an answer to your question, which I don’t entirely understand anyway. I will say, though, that despite all that metaphor and deep, emotional importance to me…..despite all that I mostly wrestle because it’s fun.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:22 am
December 30th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Post script. Got so excited about wrestling last night when I wrote the above response that I ditched work this morning and hit the mats for two hours. Wonderful experience. Really reinforced everything I tried to express last night.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Hey Rick, it’s your buddy. I was thinking about it after I read one paragraph and I realized that it was first Yoga that I was into seriously and then I started wrestling. I feel it has made all the difference. If I had wrestled first, I don’t think I would have gotten the same carry-over from Yoga to wrestling. And being a wrestler first, I probably would have made the mistake of carrying that over to my Yoga and it would have made it very impatient and sloppy. Therefore, I probably never could have honed in on the essence of what I was doing moving from posture to posture.
For me, the real thing that overlaps between Yoga and Wrestling is that centeredness. It is a place of no-thought at all. I’ve heard you (Rick) and so many other fighters refer to a state of thinking and calculating when wrestling. That would have been my mistake too if I had not first learned Yoga.
I missed the stated difference between wrestling and fighting. To me they are one and the same, in many respects you can even say fighting is dancing when it’s done properly. But to be done properly, it must be something in the form of free-dancing rather then choreographed dancing. The greatest thing I learn from Yoga and wrestling (& surfing) is how to be in the present moment.
I gotta be honest, I got a little shot of creepiness when I read the references to calling and election made sure. that concept as a “goal” is weird to me now that I haven’t been to Church in so long. I like the comments on ceremony. It’s a problem to take ceremony so lightly and casually that it might as well be reduced to “it’s the thought that counts.” In my feeling, the best thing the Mormon church has to offer is real ceremony which is quite a relief considering the void created by contemporary western society.
If “calling and election made sure” is ultimately a ceremony that takes place to be bestowed upon a person, I imagine that the experience itself must be so transcendental and so out-of-this-world that it would make us laugh hysterically that we’ve been throwing around a catch phrase such as “calling and election made sure” to describe something that we know nothing about.
I also imagine that any soul enlightened enough to be worthy of such honors, could never have attained it by conscious ambition. In other words, it could not have been their ego that earned such a merit.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
thanks for the response; always great to hear from you.
I actually agree very strongly about the feeling of centerdness. I find that I wrestle differently standing than on the ground. The Greeks believed that two seperate Gods invented wrestling—one invented the moves for stand up and the other for ground moves. If that’s true, that first God doesn’t care much for me…..because (as you kow) I suck at the stand up game. I find that when we’re both up, I’m constantly thinking, plotting, head-spinning. But on the ground (whether I’m winning or losing) it’s very “otherworldly” sometimes. Very centered. I frequently realize I’m doing something well into the action as if it was a natural, unplanned response to the circumstance. I think it’s as close to meditation as my mind gets (being, I must admit, confined by Western tradition)
I also agree with what you’ve said about calling and election. I’m not sure what that term really means. But whatever it is (or whatever enlightenment is or being “saved” is) I imagine is surpasses any expectation we might have.
And, one more thing to agree on, I continue to believe that ritual is the one thing we do really, really well as Mormons. Or at least potentially do (maybe we get too caught up in the mechanics of ritual sometimes instead of experiencing the power behind them). Our ritual has often been the only thread I’ve got left connecting me to the church and I often find that I only muscle through a three-hour sunday so that I can still have the permission slip in my wallet that says I can go to the temple later that week.
Thanks for stopping by to post. Hope I see you here again.
January 5th, 2007 at 3:35 am
I think this is a good forum here, I can only imagine the breathe of fresh air it must be here for some Mormons. Your comments got my wheels turning and I gotta go but I can sure empathize with the difficulty of practices like sitting meditation. It’s so ridiculously hard for me to sit down and quiet my ceaselessly thinking mind. I almost require some sort of strenous physical or rhythmic activity to get me still.
I think that the greatest fundamental key you can take from Yoga and apply to wrestling is the ability to balance effort with surrender. Most people blow their wad in a transitional moment by tensing too early/long/ or often. The other aspect has to do with keeping that centered, relaxed state even when conditions are the harshest. You know what I mean by harshest. Like being stuck under the funky spell of one of your favorite homo-erotic wrestling positions and maintaining total cool and in fact feeling as if I’m always 1 checker move away from breaking your arm in return.
There are so many little talking points forming around your points and I gotta go. The greek myth would be fascinating to read about. Later!
January 5th, 2007 at 9:31 am
I always think about UFC 1 when Royce beat that huge wrestler (well over 300 lbs). spent the whole time smothered under him and suddenly….BAM….choked him out.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I can’t remember that one but there were so many just like that. How about Gracie/Severn
There were days when you could have truthfully said that “Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the only true and living artform on the face of the octagon.” Eventually, it’s limitations were recognized and since then, both BJJ and MMA have evolved simultaneously.
But today even at the highest level of BJJ… if you want to even consider a title, you need to have gone outside of your world to learn the vital, missing skills which seem to be just about anything when you’re standing on your feet. Yet when I look at MMA, I see an offspring of a grappling art not a striking art. I have personal experience to back it up too. When I was training over at the Kickboxing Academy, MMA seemed foreign to them. They talked trash on it and obviously felt themselves as in a completely different vehicle. However, every grappler you know considers himself a budding MMA star…
I’m only bringing this up because it’s interesting to look at it from an evolutionary perspective. We should revere BJJ and not look down on it because it was surpassed by some superior form. It continues to live in that form and yet the new form is something totally different (given way by less rigidity). Likewise, MMA will continue to evolve bringing in new techniques (in my opinion, Judo has barely scratched the surface of entering the sport). But I sincerely believe that ALL systems eventually die. The unidentified essence however, will live on forever. Long live the Mormon Church.
Also at the gym, you can see signs of MMA looking more and more like an artform alongside with being a sport. It’s an interesting observation to make.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
p.s. I correct myself… there was a time when you could say that BJJ was “the only true and living SYSTEM on the face of the octagon. It just seems like there’s a big difference there.
January 19th, 2007 at 12:06 am
“every grappler you know considers himself a budding MMA star”
that’s certainly very true. I feel like I stand out when I say I don’t aspire to fighting at local MMA venues. People are almost like, “then why do you grapple?” it’s funny.
And, I frequently hear people calling a sub match a “fight.” Like, “hey, good job winning that fight” when it’s just a sub match. I don’t think that, in most sub grappler’s minds, there is much difference. Maybe a difference of rules but not the essence of what you’re doing. Like Pride and UFC have different rules but are both MMA. I really think most grapplers now consider submission fighting to be MMA without striking. And, ironically, boxers, kickboxers, karate guys, etc., seem to feel alienated from it.
Not to overdue this, but the fact that we refer to sub wrestling as “fighting” and at the same time are wrapped up with each other in pseudosexual positions…..it really is a powerful thing for me. It really represents all the things I hate and love…all the things I make love with and make war with. I think it creates a beautiful, powerful metaphor.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I like to use the razor-sharpness of my shins, knees and elbows against the tender parts of my opponents physical organism. I do that in bed a lot too but it’s always on accident. Nice photo!
January 25th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Rick, sorry to go on and on about systems but I find them to be fascinating. I think we can probably agree more then we acknowledge. I think it’s because when I say that “all systems eventually die”, in a weird way I know that that’s not absolutely true. In a bigger picture, death is probably more accurately viewed upon as a passing phase and so the death is illusionary.
But the reason I still have no problem saying that “all systems eventually die” is because whatever the new, re-emerging form is, you do both the new form and the old form a dishonor by identifying them as the same thing. Imagine how horrible it would be if everyone knew you for who you were in a past life. Whether you were criminal or hero, it would be a burden and a dishonor to who you are NOW. So if we could just remove the negative connotation to the word “die”, I think it’s a true statement, don’t you?