Today I was meditating on the parable of David and Goliath,  I never realized it was a parable.  I viewed it as a story about the young man versus the giant, winning with his slingshot against great odds.  

In the story, Saul gives David his beautiful armor and a sword.  David hasn't tried it, so he casts it off and gathers instead 5 smooth stones to put in his wallet.  Goliath, the giant of Gath has been appearing before the Israelites for 40 days offering to fight just one of them with the winner determining which people shall be subjected to the other.  There are no takers.  David, s shepherd, has been sent to the battle arena to find out how his brothers are faring.  When he hears Goliath call and offer again to fight one person for dominance, David believes that he is the one to do that.  King Saul sees him as an untried youth, but David tells Saul he has slain a lion and a bear that menaced his sheep.  David sees Goliath as nothing more than a beast, not anointed by God. (Uncircumcised).  Goliath sees David coming with just his staff and jeers at David, asking if David thinks Goliath is a dog to come at him with a staff.  You know the rest of the story. David slew Goliath with just one river stone.  Then he used Goliath's sword to cut off his head.  The rest of Goliath's army fled when they saw him decapitated.

Some ideas came to me in meditation.  Was David's casting off the armor Saul gave him important to winning the battle?  Would he have won if he was fully armored, instead of relying on the feeling that God was guiding him to Victory?  The giant was well armored and battle tested.  David never wavered in his faith that he would succeed.  His weapon was a natural substance - a smooth stone.  He did not rely on armor.

Is our armor like our defenses?  When I studied psychology and biofeedback, we used to use the term body armor to denote how our psychological defenses seemed to take root in our bodies resulting in certain stances in our journey through life.  One example off that would be the tension carried in the shoulders, neck and jaws when the person carried fear/anger into their encounters with life's lessons.

I remember a woman who had constant headaches and presented herself to me for biofeedback treatment to reduce the headaches.  Her body was so tense that as I used the sensors to monitor her shoulder tension, the reading was so high I thought it to be in error.  As she learned to relax her body, she began to have a new awareness.  The tension started when her son died in a car accident.  She saw the accident, as it occurred not far from her home.  She had tremendous guilt about the accident, thinking if he had a better car, he might have survived the accident.  

With her softening of her body armor, she began to have dreams of her son.  Shortly thereafter a relative had surgery.  She and her husband sat in the hospital room as he recovered.  While he was still groggy with anesthesia, the relative began to engage in a conversation with someone.  They could only hear one part of the conversation, but it became clear that it was their son talking to the relative.  She asked a question that only her son would. know the answer to, as she felt incredulous that this could be happening. In the conversation he let her know that he was happy and safe.  He told her he had a job in "heaven" and it was much like a shepherd.  Although she did not understand, her headaches left and never returned.  When the relative came fully out of anesthesia, he had no memory of the events.  She would not have believed any of it was real, except that her very skeptical husband had witnessed everything.

So what kind of body armor are we wearing?  What is monster we are fighting?  What are we afraid of?  Is it our vulnerability, our weakness to survive against the ever-present threat of that monster inside?  What is it we struggle with repeatedly in this life?  Is it the monster addiction to alcohol, sex, drugs or food?  Is it a need to feel superior so our friends and relatives don't see how insecure and weak we think we are?  Are we chasing material wealth as a defense? Are we constantly keeping busy with goals and lists so as not to hear our own deeper level of thinking? Do we keep deep relationships at bay with the knowledge that intimacy would bring our monster to the fore? 

 Intimacy has been defined as letting another person "into me - See?".  Honest relationships bring a mirror to us highlighting the parts of us that we cannot see on our own,  like looking at a reflection in a dressing room where we can see all sides of our garments. 

Does the armor we create to defend against the monster really keep us engaged in the battle?  What would happen if we let go of the armor and trusted in Spirit to keep us whole?  

I remember a man who came to me for psychological treatment.  He had never had a girlfriend.  When we talked further, he had never really even had a good friend.  He was often ill with gastrointestinal problems.  He wanted to be close to someone and to have a wife more than anything.  As we worked together to help him design a program of meeting people and developing a relationship, he would frequently eat things that made his GI problems flare up.  He decided to join his church as a volunteer greeter.  He met an older widow who found him to be delightful.  In his dance with intimacy, he would take one step closer and then fall back into  eating things that provoked his illness.  Then, because he felt sick he could avoid anxiety laden situations  which also upset his GI tract.  Gradually he became aware that he was unconsciously using the illness to defend against intimacy.  Over the course of a couple of years he was able to continue the dance of intimacy, one step at a time, to becoming engaged and eventually marrying the widow.  I remember how he described his fear of physical intimacy.  How could he tell her that at middle age, he had never had intercourse?  When he finally found the courage, she was not aghast or judgmental, she was delighted.  She looked forward to being with someone who had no experience.  And so he slew his giant.  There was a strength within him that he had never relied on before.  Each time he started to test the strength, his armor returned keeping him "safe".

In the story, David cuts off the giant's head, so it can never return.  How many times have we battled our giant, and thought the war was over, only to have it roar back to life  like a giant weed that still has deep roots in us?  We haven't "cut off it's head" so to speak.  Our growth in this life seems to be one that is incremental,  moving just one step toward wholeness at a time, frequently doing battle with the same issue.  Sometimes when we face the same issue again,  and again, we feel like we have made no progress at all and just want to give up.  But if we let go, our tenuous progress is erased, like slipping down the mountain in the snow.  Perhaps we need to find another path, if the one we chose was too slippery.

What does it mean to cut off the giant's head for me?  I am not certain. The body armor for me seems to be my physical size.   It does seem like I have fought the same battle many times with addiction to sugar.  As I drop the pounds away, something inside says I am not strong enough without being bigger.  If not sugar, then alcohol can soothe the monster.   That causes other problems.   What is it I need to learn?  

Thanks for listening.  Warmest wishes for your success on your spiritual journey.