Faith and Fitness

The other day I received an email from Borders filled with the latest releases the company's marketing geniuses believed I just had to check out. Usually I delete these emails, but for whatever reason I actually scrolled through it quickly. To my delight, I noticed a bit about Lewis Black's upcoming book, Me of Little Faith, and a link to an excerpt. Since Lewis Black cracks me up and engages my brain (for varying results that sometimes do more to make me angry than make me laugh), I even took the time to click the link for the excerpt.

Black is spot-on about all the things about Catholicism to become enthralled by (and about the things to be absolutely appalled by). I was ruminating on some of these very same things after attending a wedding (well, there was a wedding thrown in with Mass) last weekend and about my own time spent attending a Catholic church as a kid. Specifically, when the profession of faith came up, boy oh boy did those words just roll off my mental tongue even though it's been years since I've been to Mass. And it was the words to that profession of faith that, when I was 25 or so, made me realize I have no faith, or at least did not wholeheartedly embrace the faith professed in that statement during Mass. Saying the words, knowing them by rote (not by heart--these words never flowed from my heart) doesn't make you believe them--and I mean really believe them, really trust in the statement you're making when you say them.

So when I was 25 or thereabouts (about the same time I lost my weight the first time and realized I had the potential to live my life on my own terms), I stopped calling myself a Catholic, a Christian and a believer in God. Atheist? Maybe, but not really. Agnostic? Potentially. I came to realize, especially during my yoga teacher training, that there are some really powerful mysteries out there that just...are really awe-inspiring and engender so many questions--and whose explanations really engender more questions than they answer. Stephen King kind of (I think) touches on this knowable unknowable at the end of The Gunslinger, which I just so happened to finish rereading today. Boy oh boy, that long-winded ramble Marten/Walter has in the last few pages that I recall with great clarity skipping when I first read the book back when I was in the seventh grade has so much more resonance with me now. I've ruminated on those things (had a few panic attacks because of said ruminations too) and haven't really come to any great revelations or understandings or acceptances--and that's fine. Who says you have to figure all these things out?

And I think there's a sore lacking of people in the world today who are curious about or have the desire to think about the knowable unknowable. I'm sure I'm largely prejudiced here, but I've come to believe that folks who cling to religious dogma, who wrap themselves in "holy" books or teachings and adhere to certain ways of living and thinking are just too damn afraid. They don't have the faith to accept that, as Marten/Walter puts it, size defeats us. It's all about proportion, man:

"If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for a race of gnats among an infinitude of races of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see...what must the nature of such as God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?"

Just something to consider.

But I'm not finished quite yet.

After wrapping up The Gunslinger, I bopped over to my computer to check out HuffingtonPost to see what's up at midday. One of its sections links to a NYT story about Christian gyms, which I just had to check out (and was thwarted for a bit by an interstitial ad, which led me to some other adventures, which I'll get to in a moment). After reading this piece, I found myself wanting someone to please explain to me how a person who has such strong faith in his or her interpretation/flavor of an all-powerful entity can be oh so tempted to do something against his or her beliefs/moral code when in the presence of people who wear spaghetti strap tank tops while getting hot and sweaty at the gym. How insecure--how lacking is your faith--that you need to wrap yourself up in the words and images and sounds and traditions of your flavor of an all-powerful entity when you work out?

When I see nonsense like this and other nonsense--like whether or not Muslim women should be allowed to wear headscarves or Christian students cross pendants or whatever religious iconography or mode of attire--I recall one of the most powerful tools/bits of wisdom I picked up from my studies of Buddhism: Your reaction to something is more often than not the problem, not the incident that caused your reaction. True, there are many things that happen in this world that should engender some sort of reaction: poverty, ignorance, suffering, war. But to get all up in arms and seek a separate workout facility because the women around you wear form-fitting Spandex? Wow, that's just...such wasted energy.

Also what cracks me up about the article is the disingeniousness of the argument for a Christian gym: Being around egocentric gym rats who want to attain a certain physical form (or hook up with someone else's physical form) is bad, therefore believers should go to a Chariots of Fire Spin class to be better Christians. Aren't you stroking your own ego by thinking you're a better person, a better Christian because you go to a gym where allegedly these temptations, these sinful behaviors have been removed? Perhaps rather than going to the gym in the first place, you need to get yourself to a religious education class so you can strengthen your faith so you won't be tempted.

Of course, this all calls into question the notion of a petty God who keeps score and the notion that we're all deeply flawed creations who aren't able to adequately follow the rules of this cosmic game and that the omniscient scorekeeper is just waiting to trip us up and that sin and evil are these things that exist, like sinkholes just waiting to suck us in. I rather like the nondualist notion that sin and evil don't really exist but bad things happen when we forget or turn away from our divine nature and the divine nature of all things around us. I mean, if the beefed, buffed, primed and creased guy on the weight bench next to me is divine just as I am divine, isn't it kind of hard to fantasize about ripping off those Spandex shorts, mounting him and riding him good and hard until we're sweaty and exhausted for other reasons?

Plus if ya just went to the gym, focused on getting the job done and getting out of there, could you really be tempted to sin by the hottie in the Spandex?

Oy. If only we spent all this energy on helping our fellow humans, on living the life we each have been given now instead of trying to earn brownie points to beat the guy next to you on the Stairmaster into them pearly gates....

Okay, I'd better stop there. These are ideas I could pontificate on ad infinum.

While searching for the Christian gym story, I read that the guy on trial for "assaulting" the obnoxious Spin guy was acquitted of not causing obnoxious Spin guy's neck and back issues. I also read that research is indicating eating mindfully, in full awareness of your body's needs in respect to how you use it will provide you with the fuel you need for more intense workouts and to recover afterwards. I will admit that I'm puzzled by this statement in the article:

"But muscles don’t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man’s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.

Dr. Rennie said that 10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult. And you don’t need a special drink or energy bar to get it. One egg has 6 grams of protein. Two ounces of chicken has more than 12 grams."

So when I follow my nutritionist's and doctor's advice and attempt to consume at least 60 grams of protein each day, I'm overdoing it? Then why was I unable for so long to shed weight--to get my body to let go of stored fat--despite my fairly intense fitness regimen until I started eating much higher quantities of protein? And if I continue to consume such high quantities of protein, am I only going to regain the weight I lost? My faith in my eating routine is shaken! I am perplexed--yet I'm not exactly going to radically shift my routine just yet. If anything, these questions have me all the more curious, all the more wanting to get another view of the knowable unknowable that is the human body.

(Pretty cool how I came back to that idea, huh?)