What follows is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a new wrestling friend--

If we found the opportunity and gathered the nerve to wrestle on the mats where I work out, I'm sure we would dress in more than just the briefs there as well: t-shirts and shorts? full sweats? or maybe singlets? Again, I despair of this ever happening. I doubt we could pass ourselves off as wrestling coaches or even former high school or college wrestlers, not without a good bit of work beforehand. I'm right there with you, Mark: "Why is this such a freaking stigmatic sport?!? Why can't guys our age and size just drop down in the gym and go at it without being judged and questioned?" Again, no valid reason exists to differentiate a friendly wrestling match from a pick-up game of basketball.

Last year, I was riding a bike down the Virginia Creeper Trail, and when I was stopped in Taylor's Valley for one of their wonderful hamburgers and their fabulous chocolate cake, I overheard a conversation some of the locals were having in front of the cafe. They were talking about wrestling at the factory or garage or someplace where they worked. They talked about these two guys in particular who seemed to be the featured match during every lunch break. They laughed at one's dirty tactics such as pulling his opponents shirt up over his head and trapping his arms, leaving him open of a working over.

That brought up another idea. Is wrestling more stigmatized in the white collar world than in the blue? Does the proverbial white collar demand that its wearer remain cool and remote from something as earthy as wrestling? What about education? Does that remove us from that cultural zone in which me might freely enjoy a good wrestle without fearing condemnation or ridicule? I think of being in country stores or even some suburban stores--convenience stores, I mean--and seeing men, mostly young but some older, come in only their jeans and shoes. I laugh to myself, trying to picture me standing in line with my bottle of water or my honey bun and wearing no shirt. But these guys have no problem with it. Not that I want to go into a store without a shirt, but I seem to see some connection between the mindset that could allow a man to do that and the mindset (and culture) that would allow a man to wrestle without social consequence.

A couple of final notes and I'll stop: Also connected to these ideas are the current cultural stigmatizing of the overweight and the untanned. Have you seen the Subway commercials that show people ordering non-Subway meals like this: "Uh, I'll have an order of spare tire and a side of big butt"? These obviously slam the eating habits of the overweight, but they also further ingrain the prejudice against big bodies. Well, to connect this to what I said above, one recent commercial has a guy asking for an order of "Don't take your shirt off." So, big men get the message that they shouldn't take their shirts off in public, not unless it's at the swimming pool. The guys in line at the convenience store haven't gotten that message. As for the untanned, a group of which I definitely am part, I wonder if I could more easily think about being shirtless in public if my big belly and love-handles were tanned to a socially acceptable level. I doubt I could be the fish-belly white big man on the wrestling mat any more readily than I could be the same standing in line at the Circle K.

Wrestling in the Spirit

I always thought of myself as a spiritual person. I could feel that so strong in nature and with friends (although, sadly, not so often in church) and when I was playing or listening to music. Part of this feeling of spirituality was a decent prayer life. I was consistent and serious in my prayers, and I tried to keep them alive by not praying by rote or habit.

But more than a decade of education that took much of my non-physical energy (and much physical energy as well) wore away my sense of spirituality. I don't know if it did so by not leaving enough energy to focus on the spiritual or by leading me into spirit-numbing doubt. Possibly it did both. And my prayer life suffered as my connection to my spiritual being weakened. I found myself slipping into prayer as mindless repetition performed as a duty. Such prayer was so ineffective that I woke and worked and played and slept without any conscious prayer at all.

I'm beginning to recover my spirituality to some degree, but my prayer life has yet to be much affected by this recovery. But something happened this morning that might, if I can hold on to it, reawaken me to the efficacy of prayer.

I was up early and in my favorite local park walking and running before sunrise. About halfway through my workout, the sun cleared the mountains to the east. I had a little less than two laps to go when I noticed a young man on the park's grassy knoll. He wore a dark red short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans that had not faded. His brown hair was down over his ears and a fashion that struck me as very 1970. He stood with his shoes in his hand and stared at the sunrise. He moved forward toward the edge of the hill and stared at the sunrise. He crouched on his calves and stared at the sunrise. All the while moving forward until he was at the point where the knoll turns downward and falls away in a hill toward a small pond and the lower parking lot. Here he sat down. He sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I'm not good at intruding on people's solitude. Even though I felt this young man was in some kind of distress, I didn't make any special effort to come nearer to him, letting myself fade downward along the paths to the parking lot. I got in my car, started the engine and swung around toward the exit.

But I stopped at a point where I could see this young man through the trees, see him where he sat there facing the sunrise. I could think of all sorts of things that might be troubling him--a death in the family, a great decision to be made, the loss of a girlfriend or boy friend. It could be anything.

And then I started to pray, and I tried to do so in earnest, with an open spirit that would allow my prayer to go outward instead of just circling around inside my skull or remaining squeezed inside my heart. I prayed for this young man's comfort, for God or an angel to be close to him, close enough that he could feel the presence.

Just then, as I was praying, a woman walking her dog--she could've been in her 20s or her 40s--left the path and approached the young man dog first. The young man reached out and appeared to put his hand on the dog's head, and the woman stood there a leash apart from the the two of them. She seemed to be talking to the young man, but I was too far away to say for sure.

I thought this was good. A dog to break through to a troubled heart. I wondered if the young man and woman knew each other. I wondered if they were strangers. I thought her much braver than I, especially if she didn't know him. I thought her smart to lead with the dog.

I thought her an answer to prayer. And maybe an answer--or the beginning of one--to my prayer problems.

Next Wrestling Events

After a summer without wrestling (my last match was in May), I've made a couple of good new contacts. One fellow is from St. Louis, and we've been communicating on and off for a couple of months now. I'm hoping to meet him in his town toward the end of October. More on that later.

I've met another online wrestler just in the last few days, and we've already struck up an interesting acquaintance. And we have a match scheduled--Friday, 5 October--in his town, about an hour-and-a-half drive from me. Our interests in wrestling are similar, but we have one big difference: although I haven't wrestled all that much, I've been wrestling for over 10 years now; he's a novice, as far as the physical act goes, but if he's anything like I was, he's experienced in his mind. I'm going to try and keep aware of his newness, helping him into this great experience.

Next: More of Antaeus