Over the past year, I’ve thought a lot about the story of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. In the tale, Jacob spends an entire night wrestling with a mysterious figure, traditionally believed to be an angel. Then, just as the dawn breaks, the figure maims him so that it can get away. Jacob pleads with it not to leave until it blesses him, and the figure mercifully grants his request, giving him a blessing in the form of a name-change: Jacob (meaning “supplanter”) becomes Israel (meaning “God perseveres”). Finally, in the dramatic punchline of the story, the newly named Israel calls the place where he has wrestled “Penuel” because, he says, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
I’m drawn to Jacob’s story because I think it perfectly captures the ideal learning process–academic or otherwise. That is, trying desperately to pin down the unknown and, successful or not, discovering afterward that doing so has given one, first, a new name or a better articulation of one’s identity and, second, a glimpse of the divine or an epiphany about something bigger than oneself.
This blog is my attempt to turn my own learning into a re-enactment of Jacob’s story. In other words, it is my attempt to wrangle with some of the topics that baffle me and in the process to see the divine and to rearticulate my identity and my beliefs.
A little information about my background may clarify my hopes for this blog. First, a word about my hope of “seeing the divine.” I’m a PhD student specializing in the English literature of the Renaissance and, in particular, in the intersection of English literature and religion during the period. Since I’m particularly interested in religious issues, I promised myself when I began graduate school that I would make my education in literature not only an intellectual exercise but also an opportunity for spiritual enrichment. To put it briefly, then, this blog is an attempt to keep my promise.
And second, an explanation of my hope of “rearticulating my identity and my beliefs.” I grew up in a traditional Seventh-day Adventist home (To learn about SDAs, look here.), and I am now in the process of trying to sort out my relationship to Seventh-day Adventism and to religion and spirituality generally. Friends frequently question me about my religious convictions, but I am usually unable to explain myself to them adequately. This blog is an attempt to rename myself and my beliefs in a more articulate way.
Rembrandt’s artistic representation of Jacob’s story, “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” (below), nicely captures my goals for this blog. In Rembrandt’s painting, Jacob’s meeting with the angel is a sexual encounter. Rembrandt’s angel is strikingly feminine, and “she” holds Jacob in an undeniably sexual position. Indeed, the biblical story lends itself to such an interpretation. Afterall, Jacob meets the mysterious figure at night, and they “wrestle” until daybreak. I don’t think Rembrandt means to be sacrilegious or crass in highlighting the sexual innuendos in the story, and I certainly don’t mean to be in talking about his painting. I think Rembrandt merely wants to capture an important idea in the story, an idea that I hope I will re-enact in my blog: that is, that the experience of wrestling with the unknown is fundamentally a creative endeavor that gives birth to new life–a new identity and a new vision of God.
