[With gratitude to one CF fellow I'll call "Dallas" who responded (a bit defensively) to my final Facebook post, and to two coaches who reached out to me not in defensiveness but in kindness... Welcome to the deep-feeling Life here, if you so choose...]
CrossFit has been a haven for me for these last six years, creating (1) practice-space for me to heal from decades of ingested body-shaming and (2) community within which to laugh, lament, and celebrate body challenges-victories-wonderings. I was reminded this morning that my entrance into CrossFit community was quite unusual: a strong feminine presence with expert physical-therapist wisdom to protect me, my body. It is quite unusual to have a CrossFit mama, but that was the foundation of my introduction, practice.
In reality, CrossFit is more masculinized, even majority Republican, which today means majority MAGA. Or if not MAGA-cultish, as many who voted for Trump are not, most voters were not concerned with a broad swath of news they ignored, neglected, disregarded as ‘the liberal media.’ I say this because there are now stories of surprise and awakening of such Republican voters to the potential impending deportation of millions of undocumented in our land/economy/families, the actual price-hikes that will come with tariffs, the specter of an American authoritarianism that looms, with the proposition that we may or may not have elections in the years to come.
CrossFit is therefore a majority community now obviously out of political-religious alignment with my values: the irrepressible dignity of each human being, the necessity to prioritize the voices and stories of the most vulnerable, the necessity to listen to the stories we most don’t want to hear. I’ve grounded these values in spiritual practices of my life as a Christ-follower, a woman deeply devoted to the abundant-wisdom-resurrected Life of Jesus which is increasingly averse to the religion about Jesus, held in bondage to a primarily socialized form of civil-religion congregationalism or a socialized biblically-literal rarely exegetically-literate Modernist Christianity intent upon faith as certainty, belief and doctrine. (Deep bow to Howard Thurman here–Jesus and the DisInherited). Is it finally time for me to uncross these streams, letting CrossFit be itself and my woman's body breathe in spaces that are actually proactive for her best care/self, beyond the gaze of the masculine?
[For those unaware, I am a fully-tenured Professor of Practical Theology and Contextual Ministries at United Theological Seminary (Dayton, OH) who was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary, then in multiple fellowships via the Luce Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Wabash Center, and more. I have written four books, with my next one due out late spring 2025. I'm about as establishment Protestant Christian as you can get though I have no love for so-called 'higher' theological education, which struggles more and more to be a place of faith awakening amidst fearmongering of 'lost faith' in our deeply rooted, historic Christian global faith traditions. Protestant Christianity today doesn't know how to educate itself for community-building in trust, led by emotionally-unskilled and body-dissociated PhD's without much emotional intelligence for community-building. Yet here we are...serve Godde where you're planted, I've said these last twenty years.]
Today I therefore get to wrestle with all I did not have to see (because it wasn’t really dominant), then did not want to see, or even thought my presence could eventually deepen/awaken for Good (if not change). I get to/need to discern whether I can remain a part of a community that perceives itself to be hospitable and welcoming, even though I experience it much like the churches they attend: welcome, if you become like us. Not welcoming as Jesus was, in other words.
Protestant Christianity is mostly like that, including my own theological communities, so that’s not intended as a slam, but simply a statement of how White Christianity refuses feeling and stories that don’t align with our own socializing-narratives. White male Evangelical Christians in particular have demonstrated themselves repeatedly unwilling or unable to hold dissent well. Google "church schism" if you want to see the fruit of refusal. Google "the conscious feminine" if you want to feel the chasm between a grounded awakened woman’s body-wisdom and more traditional Christianity (that wounds both men and women, by the way). In such eyes, whatever I might say as such a woman can’t possibly be useful to defensive-wounded-white-men, let alone true, so is dismissed with great energetically-charged argument or debate. The energy is the interesting bit, for those who want to deepen in faith. Sadly, socialized Christians have few skills by which to face the inner work necessary for the deepening of trust in ongoing relationship with their God, more than static belief statements about their image of God, projected outward into orthodoxy/heresy judgments of others.
I have therefore withdrawn into the Silence so to reground in the wisdom of the earth, with safe-companions who not only honor but seek out the stories and fears of the most vulnerable in our immediate contexts today. I have paused my membership(s) so to live into this strange time with more space, time, interactions through which to discern. My own intention is to love everyone I encounter, by which I mean honor the divine spark in every human being I meet. Every person who reaches out to me I covenant to welcome with a curiosity of what I am to learn in Spirit–some valued and welcome, some difficult and potentially triggering. While I will share this post, I will not reach out, per se.
Because integrity also requires boundaries that define love in freedom (i.e., the distance at which I can love you/other and me at the same time–Prentis Hemphill). I yearn to do no harm while also living in an integrity so many American Christian traditions are losing (if they really ever had it, immersed in empire as we’ve been for centuries). Empire, Christianity, and Orthodoxy have slept in the same bed since the third century, after all. Nothing new, yet always relevant.
So who am I becoming as a Christ-follower moving away from Christian-identities immersed in rising authoritarian Christianity? Listening…but for any who are willing to listen alongside me, these are the questions that arise today…
So many in my current CrossFit community are faithful members of the military, who’ve I’ve really valued getting to know, to feel their implicit connectionalism yet also their guardedness in an unending war culture-at-large. I feel a LOT when I’m there, recognizing most of it isn’t mine, per se. Our military carry a lot of responsibility in shielding from…(fill in the blank). As I have befriended some of them, I wonder too: how will they respond when the military is required to round up American’s family members who are undocumented, so to put them into internment camps here on American soil? Will they resist? Will they have any challenges of conscience? How can they be supported to remain true to American democracy protecting everyones’ rights when those who do not look or act like they do/we do (and also women) are losing rights? Or can they even be supported to face this specter of authoritarianism coming present in Christian-wolf’s clothing? Isn't it more Christ-like to support the undocumented, the vulnerable, the women and children?
And the testosterone in the “box” often overwhelms the space, whether it’s in competitive trash talk or comparison and conquer or (often unconscious) denigration of the F/feminine. I see this potentially toxic-masculinity in women-athlete’s self-condemnation and disempowering self-talk, with no counterbalancing available or mirrored by coaches or other athletes. It’s a space for working out, not for engaging in any spiritual-community-awakening work, I know AND…people are people. True community that is not primarily an insular tribe requires an overt energy of welcome and weaving in. I empathize that this is really hard for such an in-out, military-mobile collective like my current “box.” But this lens also demonstrates the reigning assumptions of the presumptive whole, defined by Evangelicalism: “Why did you tag your post to our CrossFit box, given this is its major demographic?” I was asked. “Because the box is one of my current communities, for the moment,” I responded. One cannot be imagined to belong to this community unless you are willing to not challenge the dominant demographic of White Christian Evangelicalism? It would seem. Or mostly, folks just don’t want to be bothered with politics when they want a safe space with others like them just to work out. I get it. I wanted that too, which means I’m probably going to be grieving as I no longer belong.
I've done the unthinkable for such "communities." I've called out things folks don't want to deal with...so I'll be scapegoated and avoided, which is fine. I'm used to it. Besides, ironically, Crossfit is NOT church, though here it is Evangelicalism that is rigid and refusing. That's white male Evangelicalism, where men are too immature inside to face up to anything but mothers, wives, sisters and mistresses. Heaven forbid they encounter a fiercely-gentle, loving, wisdom-woman without bondage to any roles defined by men or even family. (Cheshire Cat Grin)
For myself with any of this language that is received as incendiary, my own bodysoul has been so wounded by the abandonment of the F/feminine by family, church, even God when looked for through all the world’s wisdom traditions, that no one in my current “box” feels welcoming, willing, or companionable at the moment. They may very well wish to be...but I cannot see it, feel it. Which is not a condemnation of the “box”; it’s the polarized America we’re living in today. Looking through my own woundedness, my body’s visceral reactions to the election of a felon, rapist, misogynist? All I can see with this “community” is defensiveness around “politics,” which is dissociated in embodied experiences, away from “the personal.” We white women are good at collusion and attempts at indirect power in such situations–we turn on one another in the power of the masculine gaze, so to retain our own connections. But women have been saying for decades now: politics is personal and the personal is always political. It is a statement of fact, with evidentiary claims from "both sides," that we have elected a rapist and felon who disregards women's bodies to do with as he pleases, period. With no law-and-order authorities to prevent him (now).
I take comfort in the wisdom of a Zen priest I sat with (on Zoom) on Thursday morning. “We don’t know what will happen," he said. "Perhaps I will be in a detention camp in a year’s time, as we live in terrible times not unlike centuries of humans have endured over our violent history(ies). How will I live in that moment, moment by moment, so to honor human flourishing?” Trump is in a long line of authoritarian men leaders from the beginning of time, Pharoahs rising and falling, emperors, and more. He's actually not even that interesting, or worth all the outrage, given he's so common in human history. Then from elsewhere: Trump has the attention span of a gnat, and he rarely listens to his own advisors. I had to laugh at that one.
Ultimately, we just don’t know what will happen. Practice is for the moment, where freedom means you always have a choice in how to respond.
So each of us must, in prayer/practice, ask: who am I becoming, consciously, unconsciously? Who do I want to become in this time?
Who do I have in my life that will mirror to me the things I don’t want to know or see about myself? If you’re never mirrored to in ways that make you uncomfortable, then you’re in an echo-chamber, relevant to no one but your insular looking tribe. If you’re actually a person of faith, you’ve learned to welcome all that makes you uncomfortable, with a community that can witness your pain and help you do your healing work. People of faith can hold irreconcilable opposites, particularly if Christianity is your faith. Jesus was both divine and human–utterly irreconcilable–yet held in his Person. So who do you allow to make you nervous, uncomfortable, even angry?
I’m surrounded with and even grateful for this Invitation. It’s a moment-by-moment kind of time, and so I will listen…at some distance from those who refuse to feel into any of this. I welcome those willing to feel and listen together, for a companionable way that honors the irrepressible dignity of every human being, regardless of nationality, documentation, creed or more. And if I do feel Led to return to my box, sometime in the remaining weeks of my membership or at another time as a drop-in, it will only be when I’m in a grounded, centered body-being in which I can see others there with empathy and curiosity.
But the hard truth today for a bridge-builder like I have been for ages: It may take a while. If ever.
