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Why More Priests Need To Train As Fighters (And Why We Dont See Many Boxers in Church)
The History Of Christmas OrnamentsHistory of Ornaments In A.D. 336, an early Roman calendar first mentions December 25 as the date of Jesus birth. This date was likely .....
"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not
fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it
my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will
not be disqualified for the prize." (1 Corinthians 9:26-27)
St Paul was a fighter. I don't think he ever competed in the
ring, but that wasn't because he lacked the discipline or was
afraid of the pain.
I always say that to be a fighter you need to have two things
going for you. Firstly you need to have a lot of energy inside
that needs release. Secondly, you need to be not too concerned
about your own health. This fits the profile of most of our
young men perfectly - on the edge of the drug culture, full of
testosterone, and with no thought for the future. It also fits
perfectly the profile of another group - single fathers,
struggling to gain access to their children.
That was how I got into the fight game. I hadn't taken it up as
a teenager, and I certainly hadn't been born into it. My dad was
a priest for God's sake, and an academic. Fighting had not been
my birthright. I came in through the back door of pain and
loneliness and bitter struggle.
Separated, and struggling for the right to see my daughter, I
had made one half-hearted attempt at suicide already by that
stage. And I had met with my bishop the following day and he had
told me not to 'trade off' my situation (in other words, not to
get too comfortable). I appeared to be losing my family, my
vocation, and most of my friends at the same time. Full of
emotional energy, obsessed with thoughts of self-destruction,
and drinking way too much, I managed to find my way to the
Mundine gym. It was my decision not to go under, but to fight
back.
Mundine's is situated in the middle of Everleigh Street, Redfern
- the roughest street in one of the roughest neighborhoods in
our city. Redfern is a largely Aboriginal suburb on the
outskirts of central Sydney. In recent years the government has
come through and 'cleaned it up' somewhat, which meant pushing a
Tribal MasksOriginal Tribal masks are often seen by unknowing eyes as art objects in themselves. That is ..... lot of the local residents further out west. Even so, it is
still a rough area.
I had grown up in the vicinity of Everleigh Street. My dad had
been a lecturer at the Anglican seminary located only a few
blocks from this dark heart of Aboriginal Sydney. It was always
an odd location for the seminary. The ecclesiastical community
never had anything to do with the adjoining aboriginal enclave.
On the contrary, most persons associated with the religious
community dealt with their black neighbours by practising the
same sort of avoidance strategy that I'd learnt as a kid
scurrying quickly past the end of Everleigh Street and its
environs whenever circumstances put us unavoidably within its
reach.
Ironically this strategy had to be invoked every time you got
off a train from Redfern station. The platforms seemed to be
designed to feed directly into Everleigh Street! Of course I
never made the mistake of straying down that way myself, and as
a youngster, I had heard many a nasty story about the price paid
by some of the less wary.
None of this is to suggest that the reputation of Everleigh was
based on hearsay. I had seen plenty with my own eyes.
Countless times I had seen young toddlers and their slightly
older siblings wandering the streets at night while their
parents got drunk at the local. One night I watched as a stupid
woman stopped her car after these kids had thrown rocks at it.
She got out and tried to confront the kids about what they had
done. The result of course was that they found some bigger rocks
and a couple of bricks. They made quite a mess of that car.
My brother told me that he had witnessed a roll take place from
the top of the street in broad daylight. Some boys had pulled a
knife on a university student who had handed them his wallet.
The student had then located a nearby policeman and had pointed
out the boys to him, but the copper did nothing about it. He
said he didn't want to start a riot!
I had seen the bonfires that would be lit when the new phone
books or Yellow Pages directories were delivered. I had seen the
shells of burnt out cars in the street. I had seen plenty, and
had plenty of good reasons to never deliberately venture down
that street, which is why my first walk to the Mundine gym was
like wading through water - every step being a slow and
deliberate effort. But I was determined to become a fighter, and
I'd just as soon lose my life in Everleigh Street than give up
on my dream to have my day in the ring.
The exterior of Mundine's Gym is not designed to draw attention
to itself. You'd walk right past it if you didn't know it was
there. It's missing entirely that glittering windowed street
frontage with the sleek bodies of well-groomed athletes on
display for passers-by - the type that we associate with the
sorts of gyms where you pay a costly membership fee. Mundine's
has no membership fee. I don't remember there even being a sign
out the front. Mundine's looks like just another
housing-commission block, with its inglorious entrance at the
bottom of a stairwell. But you pick up that it's a gym long
before you reach the top of those stairs. The smell of liniment
hits you half way up - that manly smell that mingles so
harmoniously with the melodic whir of the skipping rope tap,
tap, tapping its way through another round.
This is what makes a real gym the smell of liniment, the sound
of the rope, the less rhythmical thwacking of glove to bag, and
of course the fighting. When you step inside Mundine's, you know
you're in a real gym. No pretty boys. No glamour workouts. No
white-collar boxercise sessions for indulgent professionals.
Just bodies, sweat, testosterone and blood.
They play hard at Mundine's. That's governed by the sort of guys
that show up there of course, but it's also embedded in the
architecture of the gym to some extent. The ring stands in the
centre of the building and it's a small ring, made for brawlers.
There is a small assortment of bags strung around the sides, but
no fancy speedballs or floor-to-ceiling bags, such that you
could justify turning up just to have a workout on the bags.
There are a few pieces of weights equipment too, but again not
enough to allow them to become a serious point of focus. No. The
whole structure is designed to channel you into the ring.
Everything else is just padding. That's the way it should be in
a real gym.
I wore my clerical shirt and collar the first time I went there.
Even now I don't think it was an entirely stupid thing to have
done. I wanted to be up-front about who I was and where I was
coming from. Even so, I hadn't really thought through the effect
that this was going to have on the other boys at the gym, most
of whom were, initially, very reluctant to hit me. They got over
it though, particularly after they realised that I had no qualms
about hitting them. Within a couple of weeks I was coming home
each night bruised and bleeding from head to toe, and I knew I
was one of the lads.
Is it just me, or does every man need to go through something
like this at some time in his life - to know the joy of falling
into your bed aching with the wounds that your sparring partner
has inflicted on you that evening, and sleeping soundly in the
knowledge that your ring brother is likewise doing his best to
sleep off the impression that you made on him? I had many a
glorious sparring session during those first weeks and months at
Mundine's. They weren't pretty to watch I suppose, but they were
epic struggles of the human spirit so far as I was concerned.
Finding God In The Clouds"In the Bible, clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, suffering, or providential circumstances, within or without our ..... There are few things in life more deeply satisfying than a good
fight. A hard night in the ring is an enormous catharsis for a
man who is struggling with life, but it's more than that too.
When you step into a ring you're making a decision to take
control of your own destiny. The forces that oppose you are no
longer vague powers that threaten to overwhelm you from a
distance - the law, the courts, the system. No. Your opposition
takes on a clear material form in the shape of the other man
advancing on you from the other corner. To get into that ring
and to stay in that ring is to make a decision to give it a go -
to put your body on the line and to stand up to the punishment
like a man. Fighting is more than a sport. It's a way of life.
It is the defiant decision to confront your pain directly and
not to be overcome by it. Mundine's gym taught me that, or at
least it played a significant role.
There was another vital lesson I learnt at Mundine's - perhaps
even more important than what I learned about fighting. I learnt
to respect the fight community.
The fight community is a culture all of its own, and was
certainly spawned on an entirely different planet to the church
community. I'm sure that some Anglican church-goers must have
wondered why there are so many doctors and accountants in their
congregations and so few fighters. The truth is that most church
people just don't speak the same language as fighters.
The converse is also true. The fight community, as far as I can
see, has very little idea of what the church is on about. I
don't mean that fighters aren't spiritual guys. On the contrary,
some of the most godly and inspirational men I have met have
been fighters. And yet they have no point of contact with the
established church. The two groups just don't understand each
other at all. Never was this made clearer to me than on my
fourth visit to Mundine's gym.
I had turned up quietly in my tracksuit and was wandering over
to the bench at the side of the ring where we tended to leave
our gear while we were training. A group of guys were huddled
there talking, and there was nothing particularly private about
the volume of their conversation. I think they were discussing
relationship problems, though I didn't overhear everything. What
I couldn't help hearing was one guy say very clearly 'So I
grabbed her, and I punched her in the fuckin' head'. He said it
loudly and enacted a downwards punching motion as he said it.
Then he noticed me standing nearby and suddenly felt very
self-conscious. 'Oh, sorry Father' he said. And then he
corrected himself. 'I punched her ... (and he said it very
slowly and deliberately) ... in the head'.
If I'd had my wits about me that night I would have said
something clever like 'I don't think the Lord really gives a
fuck about your language brother, but I think He does care about
your wife.' As it was, I didn't say anything. I think I
responded with a feeble smile. At the time, I just couldn't work
out how this guy had ever got it into his head that, as a
priest, I would be more concerned about the fact that he swore
than I would be about the fact that he beat his wife? Nowadays I
take that sort of perception for granted.
I think it's the church that has to bear the responsibility for
the communication breakdown. So much of the church nowadays
reeks of a sort of insipid middle-class moralism that really
does care more about smoking and swearing than it does about
domestic violence or world hunger. I don't think the Lord Jesus
or St Paul ever intended to spawn any of these Christianized
golf clubs that call themselves churches. Personally, I suspect
that Jesus and the apostles would feel more at home in the
average boxing gym today than they would in the average church.
Of course they wouldn't like the threats and the violence, but
they would love the honesty. Fighters are very honest people.
One guy, again from the Mundine gym, summed it up for me.
'Around here nobody stabs anybody in the back', he said to me.
Then he pointed to his heart and added emphatically: 'You stab
here!' That's why I have so much respect for the fight culture.
I know I can trust fighters. I know they won't stuff me round -
smiling to my face but stabbing me in the back when I turn
around. I wish the same could be said for all church people.
St Paul was a fighter. 'I do not fight like a man beating the
air' he says. They had the ancient Pankration fighting in his
day - a vicious form of no rules combat that was concluding
event in the original Olympics. Those guys certainly didn't
'beat the air'. When Ulysses came home from the Trojan War,
legend has it that his own mother didn't recognise him.
According to my friend and former trainer Kon, legend has it
that when the Pankration champion came home from the Olympic
Games, his own dog couldn't recognise him! Those guys knew what
real fighting is about.
St Paul would have made one tough bugger as a fighter. What I
wouldn't give to be able to jump into the old Pankration ring
with him to go a couple of rounds! You'd never knock him down
though. I suspect most of the apostles would have been like that
- warm big-hearted men, but as hard as nails in the ring.
I have a secret hope that when I get to heaven I'll be able to
take on some of those boys and try my luck. I guess it's not
everyone's idea of heaven, but it is mine.
About the author:
'Fighting' Father Dave Smith - Parish Priest, community
worker,professional fighter, father of three. Dave is the only
Australian in Holy Orders to turn pro boxer to help fund his
work. He is Parish Priest in Dulwich Hill, Sydney,and has
received numerous awards for his work with young people
Get a free preview of his book, 'Sex, the Ring & the Eucharist'
when you sign up for Dave's newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
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