I recently signed myself up to be slapped about the face 2 or 3 nights a week. I am learning as much as I can from each smack and surprise wallop to my cheeks, after all this corporal wisdom does not come free.

But it has quickly surpassed a “get the most slap for the buck” responsibility; I really think I need to learn something new about my stance in life and relation to others… plus it just feels good to be taught by a confident instructor.

I have been threatening for years to start down the path of becoming a ninja, well now is the time… and Bruce Lee is my teacher.

I finally walked all the way to my local dojo; which is about a block and a half from my house… my neighborhood just gets more awesome every time I choose to discover it.

Waiting at the Ambrose Academy was Rocco Ambrose (Sibok, or Teacher), with a confident, ready smile and lighting fast (yet gentle) smacks to the face. Wing Chun Do is the class, but humility and surprise is the teacher.

I am just now starting to realize how many years I have been treading water in so many do-it-yourself learning environments. Modern life can be horribly insulating and our tools of ready information retrieval continue to subtly trick us into thinking we do not need people anymore to learn anything.

Sure, I could fire up youtube and watch countless hours of horribly produced (and a few decently produced) instructional seminars on martial arts… but nothing will ever come close to the pleasant satisfaction of trying to punch Sibok Ambrose and have him block my feeble attempt and deliver three consecutive chops to my neck and face before I have the time to blink.

The isolation and disembodied culture of the emerging e-learning universe can not lay a finger on this type of experience. It’s like being parched and trying to drink an old bucket of jello compared to the fresh water of a live teacher.

You’re too stiff, loosen up… how are you going to be able to react to anything when you are so stiff…

~Sibok Ambrose

I could read this in a book or watch it as a lesson in a video, but until I have to practice against an embodied attempt to punch me in the face… this is the sort of wisdom that my person simply cannot absorb in any sort of significant capacity.

Maybe that is something of what Jesus was getting at with His personal analogy to that of Living Water… there is a well of religion that we return to out of necessity, and if we are paying attention we may actually be able to meet in person the source of all wisdom and life sustaining power.

13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

~John 4:13

This is the sort of thing that makes Christianity a difficult, perhaps impossible, experience to enter into on our own power.

When I was growing up in the church there was a constant emphasis on having a deep and abiding “Relationship with Christ”. More often than not, this advice would spin me down the mental pathways of trying to conjure a special imaginary friend named “jesus”.

These mental games of trying to create a person out of my conscience, random searchings for evidence of The Holy Spirit, and aftermath providence interpretations of God’s plan for my life composed my personal integration of the Trinity.

But is it real? Was any of it real?

These are the moments of honest inquiry that can completely shipwreck a make believe faith… as they should.

To be honest, it can still leave me feeling queezy when contemplated.

To say Thou art God, without knowing what the Thou means–of what use is it? God is a name only, except we know God.

~George MacDonald, The Knowledge of God

He who does that which he sees, shall understand, he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness…. It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other. It is not intended by the speaker of the parables that any other should know intellectually what, known but intellectually, would be for his injury–what, grasped, perhaps even appropriated. When the pilgrim of the truth comes on his journey to the region of the parable, he finds its interpretation. It is not a fruit or a jewel to be stored, but a well springing by the wayside.

~George MacDonald, The Way of Understanding #108

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Categories: Learning, Teaching, Knowing, Wing Chun Do, Understanding, Bible Study, Neighbors, George MacDonald, Books
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