A Lesson In Contemplation Pt. 2
Genesis 32:22–32
“That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel [facing God], and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.”
In this post I want to finish out this story by touching briefly on some more key points. I’ll go over the symbolic meaning of the man wrestling with Jacob, his subsequent wound, and finally the blessing given to him.
Wrestling —Perseverance and Determination:
“a man wrestled with him till daybreak”
“the man saw that he could not overpower him”
Wrestling symbolizes the immovable determination and perseverance needed in the early stages of contemplation.
When we start on the contemplative path we will soon run into a problem — it’s hard and it doesn’t yeild its results quickly or easily. Not to mention it seems kind of boring or dull… and so the initial temptation can be to give up before we get very far or reap the rewards. The fruits of contemplation are far reaching, but they are subtle and not immediate.
The words that mark this part of our journey are the words of Christ, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Contemplative prayer, like any new effort, takes much practice before we get over the hump and move past the learning curve into practical experience. But for those who know how to continually ask, seek and knock, the path is well paved to God, and though it is a hard and narrow path, they know that it is well worth the effort.
Our ultimate goal with the practice is “contemplation without effort”, or in other words it’s to work hard at learning how to inwardly surrender and let go, how to give up and allow the grace of God to infuse our effort and make it light. It takes a special balance of grace and effort, until we reach a space where grace imbues our effort with a naturally quality of effortlessness.
When we keep putting forth fierce determination and effort, grace lifts us up beyond ourselves and into the lap of God. We prove to God that we desire Him above all, and being free of attachment to all else He then appears.
After a season of consistent practice and discipline there comes finally an easing of our hearts and minds into presence & spaciousness within us. We sink deeply into Divine communion and drown over and over again in an endless sea of love, each time dying yet always running back for more of this death and more of this love.
If we keep wrestling, eventually like Jacob we will reach daybreak and the once terrifying darkness of contemplation will become light and love within us.
Jacob’s Limp — The Wound of Love:
“he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched”
Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
At some point on the journey we begin to settle into a contemplative stance and find a home within our soul. We catch glimpses of Divine union. We experience the heights of communion and the depths of love. We feast on this experience and perhaps begin to even become addicted to it a bit. So to keep us from attachment and over indulgence in this state, God suddenly vanishes and is nowhere to be found. Just as we start to aquire a taste for this new spiritual sustenance, it’s taken away from us. Now we are left to chase only His echoes and mirages.
This is the wound of love. As quicky as the day has broken and the light has dawned are we left again to fumble around in the dark. Just when we have found ourselves in the arms of our true Lover, the Lover hides from us. Now we have tasted of Divine union but we cannot have it.
We may begin to feel teased, betrayed even. It feels as if we have been duped by God into reaching for something that we cannot actually grasp. But this is for the purpose of calling us to a deeper level of faith and devotion. The wrestling continues now with even more determination to gain back that which was lost.
Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven resides within us and that it is like hidden treasure found in a field, and when one finds it they give up all they have to gain it. When one is pierced straight in the heart with this wounding love, they will stop at nothing to recover it and find it all over again.
Around this point in the process we are tempted as before to give up before seeing the fruits of our efforts, but once again our task becomes patience, endurance, and non attachment. Can we give up the results and entrust them to the One who knows what we need? If grace is to lead us back to God, then we must give up even God Himself in the process. We must learn to mature our love — to love God for God’s own sake rather than for ours. And it is this selfless love that we find to be the secret to reaching God, for as Paramahansa Yogananda once said, “The Lord is found through unceasing devotion. When you want only the Giver, and not His gifts, then He will come to you.” Or in another place that “love is the magnet from which God cannot escape”.
The Blessing:
“Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome”
“and he was limping because of his hip”
“I saw God face to face”
When we learn to love God selflessly for His own sake we eventually find Him again, and with His arrival comes the blessing that we previously surrendered in devotion to Him.
So what is this blessing? First of all the blessing comes in the form of a name change which represents a total change in identity and persona.
In the ANE names meant much more than they do in modern Western culture. Your name represented who you were as a person. It was an identity and was packed with meaning. Jacob in Hebrew means something like “heel holder” or “supplanter” — it represents manipulation and trying to get ahead by force and control. This is the antithesis of contemplation, for God cannot be controlled. But now his name is changed to “Israel” meaning something along the lines of “contender with God”. It’s taken from two root words meaning to contend/persist/persevere & God, or God-like one.
This name change represents the change in nature that happened in Jacob through this encounter. No longer is he one who controlls and manipulates God and those around him, but one who is determined to win over God and people with love and patience.
The second part to this blessing is Jacob’s limp. Now that Jacob’s hip is wounded he is forced to limp through life. But it is often in our limitations that we find the greatest blessing. Now Jacob is forced to walk slowly rather than run, to be aware and take notice rather than to rush through life. This is a natural fruit of contemplation — we start to allow ordinary things to speak to us. We take notice of the things that have become so mundane and ordinary and see instead the exquisite and the extraordinary. As a mystic we now see God everywhere and hear Him speaking to us through everything.
This is only the product of a slowed down and attentive disposition to the world. In fact, the word contemplate itself means “to look thoughtfully at for a long time”. We learn to look at things a second time and to keep looking until we see things as they are — full of love. It is only the fruit of the pure experience of seeing God “face to face” in contemplation.
