The View From Here

September 21, 2023

By Peregrine Morkal-Williams, Seminary Intern

When I was thinking about how best to introduce myself to this congregation, the first thing I thought of was Aikido. I’ve only been training for about a year and a half, not a long time, but it has become a huge part of my life and spiritual development—as important as seminary.

This summer, I attended Birankai Summer Camp, five days of intensive aikido training with morning meditation sessions. At one point, caught between the hormonal experiences of stress activation, hunger, elation, and tiredness, I declared to my sensei (teacher), “My body feels like a biochemistry experiment!” There was a lesson in that feeling that was as important as the technical lessons. A guiding technical principle in Aikido is blending with, and usually redirecting, the energy of your training partner—rather than resisting it. Blending means letting yourself be affected by what your partner does; it requires an internal softening. Done well, blending gives you agency. It enables you to act skillfully in the situation that is happening, not just in the situation you wish were happening.

At Summer Camp, I learned that blending isn’t just for training on the mat. I had to blend with the experience of camp itself: to let myself move with what was happening, both the external and internal realities. If I hadn’t, I would’ve been flattened! I’m leaning on that lesson this season, too, as my fall classes get rolling and my schedule fills up. I invite you to consider the lesson of blending for any kind of challenge, schedule-related or not: let yourself soften a little. Exhale and let your shoulders come down. What is happening…is happening. We can try to fight it, or we can be affected and engage with our whole selves.