Letter from the Editor – Ascension 2022

In January of 2021, Luke Day was named as the new strength coach for the University of South Carolina football team. At a press conference which introduced Coach Day to the wider public, he was asked about the inspiration for his mantra “Struggle Well!” Coach Day remarked that the mantra came from some personal “big-time life setbacks.” Both his charisma and brutal honesty had me hanging off his words as he went on to aver the inevitability of struggle in life. Certainly, my own experience of struggle has been arduous, life-long, and at times traumatic.

As Coach Day began to speak, his words sounded like wisdom from the monastery ‘playbook.’ He explained that we live in a culture that looks for the fastest, easiest, and most convenient way to solve problems, striving for the least effort possible. We tend to de-value the experience and process of struggle because if we’re honest, struggle isn’t always fun. Yet it is in such struggle that we build the stamina to obtain our goals. Struggle in a sense makes the goal valuable. Coming from a strength coach, this message about the value of struggle makes sense. But I also see many similarities to my life in this Monastery. I am reminded of the story where a man asks a monk, “What do you do inside the monastery all day?” The monk replied, “We fall down, and we get up. We fall down, and we get up!” In many ways, the monastic life and the wider Christian life require a sober engagement with struggle.

Struggle is a place where God readily engages us. Scripture is filled with examples of God in our midst, encouraging, sharpening, and yes, even challenging us. One of the most explicit examples of this comes from the Old Testament in Jacob’s encounter with a divine being (Genesis 32:22-31). While Jacob is traveling, he encounters a man who engages him in a struggle. The two spend the long hours of the night wrestling, and eventually Jacob overpowers the man. Before conceding defeat the man dislocates Jacob’s thigh and exclaims, “Let me go, for day is breaking.”

But Jacob perceives something about this man. Aware that this is no ordinary encounter, Jacob asks his holy opponent for a blessing. The man declares that he will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, “for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” The name Israel means “a man seeing God.” The story continues: “And there he blessed him. So, Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his hip.” The struggle has been a place of divine encounter.

Our founder, Richard Meux Benson, reminds us of the divine purpose of struggle: “The soul that listens to the voice of God finds God calling it to actions which seem to be impossible. It would be of no use for God to call unless the actions were impossible. God calls us on to something more than we are.” While our struggles are never simple (or they wouldn’t be true struggles), God is in the midst of them, with the desire to bless us by giving provision, encouragement, and even rest — taking on all that which is too much for us to bear. While none of us gets out of this life alive, we are given the hope of glory in which our labor and struggle in this life will be transfigured. As we struggle, we shall become more and more the person God created us to be. Like Jacob, we will sometimes bear the scars of our struggle — certainly I do — but we also will limp away a new person, one who has seen God in the fray.

The past two years have been a time of great struggle for all of us, not only individually, but corporately. A global pandemic which has claimed the lives of millions, the brutal scourge of racism and the senseless death of our Black brothers and sisters, the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, and many more tragedies accompany the unseen and unfathomable difficulties that many of us bear in our personal lives. Sometimes it is hard to see how we will come out of all this struggle. Surely, the struggle will test our resolve.

Yet, it is my prayer that in these struggles, God will give blessing and provision — making us stronger, more resilient, and transfiguring our discouragement and complacency, to make us more like Jesus. In his struggle, Jesus bore his cross and gave himself as a sacrifice for a hurting world. Through his resurrection and ascension, he paved the way for us all to transcend through the struggle, discovering on the other side (wounds and all) the Life that awaits. 

I give the final word to the inspiring Coach Day: “Struggle in life is inevitable, and engaging in struggle is essential to making life experience great. So, struggle well!”