“As a young
boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early
that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst
he was in her womb. … Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his
scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the
boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning
their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, ‘I
will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.’”
(from A
Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin)
I wrote that I
sometimes wondered what my younger self would think if he could see me now. If
he could have seen me last Thursday evening, he would have been astounded.
First he would have seen me at evening prayer in a long white robe, in a square
chapel, holding a priest’s garment while he walked round to incense the altar;
then taking the censer and swinging it at the priest and the lone seminarian
whom we could call the congregation (doing some violence to the etymology).
My younger
self might have eyed all this sceptically, for it is not true (as has sometimes
been supposed) that he ‘needed to see things’; some argument and an intense
dose of poetry was required to open his eyes to the beauty and validity of
sensory expressions of the sacred. Even my contemporaneous self (that would be
me) is more moved by the aspect of order than by free-floating shininess.
Be that as it
may, my sensitive and tender-skinned younger self would have been even more
stupefied on seeing me, divested of my alb, run upstairs, change into sports
gear, and get into the car for krav maga practice.
Krav maga, or,
as I prefer to call it, קְרַב מַגָּע
(I’m just showing off here; do tell me to stop) is a form of martial arts developed in the
1940s by a Hungarian Jew. Imi Lichtenfeld happened to be a boxer and a
wrestling champion, skills which he put to use and modified in fights against
fascist gangs to protect the Jewish community. After he got into trouble with
the local government (which was not pro-Semitic), he left and ended up in
Israel, where he started training paramilitary troops from 1948 onwards.
Unlike most
Japanese martial arts, which have a certain elegance and focus on specific
movements (as I understand it, having no experience with them), krav maga
focuses on maximum efficiency in realistic attack situations. Every defensive
move is accompanied by a simultaneous offensive move (and followed up by a few
more). No holds are barred: all weak parts of the body are exploited (though,
obviously, safety in training is observed: you don’t actually get to punch
people in the face, which is a small price to pay for not being similarly punched
yourself).
I have been
training since the end of January. I had been saying since last Summer that I
wanted to do some form of martial arts, and some friends encouraged me to try
krav maga. So during my last exam month, I considered it was probably going to
be then or never; and faced with that dilemma, I took the step. The fact that
Deacon Prins practices kickboxing (and derives satisfaction from it in moments
of pastoral challenge), and that Fr. Hagen once served with the Dutch Marines
(and has learnt to kill people with his bare hands, as he told me afterwards),
helped me to cross the threshold.
Since then, I
have gotten scrapes on my toes, knuckles and elbows, my arms and wrists have
been jarred by blocking movements, my lips have bled, my self-confidence has
gone up, and it’s been great fun overall. One particularly fun moment consisted
in meeting a person who had gone on the diocesan pilgrimage to Rome, in which
around 800 people participated. I knew him from the pilgrimage as a father of
two kids (including a young one that was kissed by the Holy Father!); he knew
me as a seminarian, and when we saw each other again at the training centre, we
had difficulty recognizing each other.
It has been
educative as well. After the second lesson, you think you are stronger than the
world; after the fourth, you find out you are not. The confidence boost comes
with a realization that most attackers are stronger, faster, more resilient,
and more merciless than your own hero fantasies make them. It’s good to
discover that while holding a solid punching pad.
Yesterday I
filled out and sent my subscription form to the national office of the IKMF (International
Krav Maga Federation). In the evening I went to Haarlem for training. Around
the beginning of the lesson, because of an unlucky foot movement by my partner
(I think), part of my toenail tore. It took me a while to notice what had
happened; we were concentrating on something else. Small droplets of blood were
all across our corner of the room. I went to the reception, where I was
skilfully bandaged by a concerned lady, and spent a significant time scrubbing
my own blood off the mat (I almost wrote ‘mopping’, but it wasn’t that bad).
Then I resumed training.
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