CROSSING
Crossing: The Struggle for Identity is an investigation of Jacob and Jabbok. Of course, that fateful night is not just about his encounter with the stranger. It is about several generations of trauma, family issues, relationship crisis and the struggle to find his own identity. In this regard, it is also our story. Until we see all the elements that contributed to Jacob’s wrestling, we will never know who he was fighting or why it has to be here on this night.
Reading Crossing will take you deep into the lives of the patriarchs and their wives. It will challenge you to examine your own history in a new way. And it will guide you to answering one of life’s fundamental questions, “Who are you?”
Mazel Tov!
This book is awesome! I’m willing to bet you’ve never thought of the story of Jacob in this way before (I know I didn’t), and it will definitely make you examine aspects of your life through a different lens. It’s fascinating and thought-provoking. Highly recommended!
Thanks for the endorsement, Amanda, and for the help with proofreading. Your efforts made it a better book.
Please forgive me, to anyone out there: FREE–
But: I am so diligently trying not to be wasteful in any manner! IF THERE is anyone out there that wants several years of Skip’s websites that I printed , all straight and clean, I will send them to you, if you will pay the postage. I have in front of me, what I wrote as 2006 and 2007. I am sure there are more around that I have not yet found.
I must clean out all things so I can put my house on the market by Feb. or March. It is hurting me so much to part with most of things that I care about; and yesterday my daughter and son-in-law came in a real truck, and filled it with furniture to take to my granddaughter and family that just moved to Dallas. So step by step, I hope to continue to get rid of “stuff” that I can not take with me.– Love to each one of you. LaVaye Billings —let me know if you want any of the printed pages, with your mailing address.
Thank you Skip!
Hi Skip, I love the new book. I read it in a few hours unlike your othrr books I’ve read. I just wish it had been longer. It is hard to understand ‘how’ or ‘why’ YHVH chooses those He wants to further His purposes. Any insight you could share?
Glad you liked it. There is probably a lot more to the story. Perhaps another book. But the point is that it is a story and needs to be read like that, and then we discover it is OUR story too.
Crossing
A book..no a lifeline from Skip Moen.
This book is a great perspective of resurrection life. Not the mystical escape from reality often portrayed in religious thought but the clash between the identities imposed agreed and even created by our life and lives experiences with the greater hope and discovery of who we were made to be. It is the biblical story of our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob set in the midst of real family dynamics in a familiar and family culture. Their lives, stories, failures, traumas and choices culminating in Jacobs choice to set himself apart from all this and step into the terror of losing all that he thought he was and had into the more terrifying space to place himself in the hands of God.
This was profoundly meaningful for me. I have lived in the debilitating pain and fear of abuse and trauma for almost 60 years. Well-meaning and truly caring people have offered counsel, advice, perspectives, yet their words seemed more of a foreign language. Believe and receive, just receive; I would look at them and say how and they would look back stunned and offer clichés like just open your heart. Trust me if I could have I would have. I deeply treasure all the help, support and love that was invested in me. It was not their efforts that fell short it was my ability to perceive and honestly without their love and support I wonder if I would even be here today.
The short version is that at age 5, I learned to block and control memories and eventually use memories as a surrogate for life. I could create feelings with memories without having to encounter vulnerability. My safe space; but in reality it was the prison I constructed for myself. Living in the narrow confines of the memories I approved of and deemed safe.
God is love and life and love and life confront death. I was dead in my sins and trespasses, the bible did not say I would die it said I already died and I died at age 5. The journey to life has been amazing rich in His faithfulness, sovereignty, chesed, and love. Love did not confront the fact that I had misused memory but rather confronted the more. The fact that we have a storehouse of memories and that scripture is a doorway into this storehouse of relationships and memories, memories of God and His love for all of us and the rich emotional memories of the deepest of life’s experiences. This book opened the door for me to grasp more of this collective memory. It is in part an example that answers that burning how questioned. To come into dialogue with God, into the fullness and richness of our original design and emotional / relational bandwidth and to do so in the safety of scripture not in the experimentation, perils and pain of social experimentation.
Crossing is both a relevant biblical story, insights into the heart of God and a primer on how to access the rich storehouse and treasury of communal memory. It is a book that invites us to join with others who have gone before us and even step beyond our personal terrors into what might appear to be even more terrifying but has proven to be life, abundant life, the resurrection life. For me it was a key that unlocked a door closed for a very very long time; the key to intimacy. John Lennon got it right, “All You Need Is Love”.
Thank you Skip
I don’t have a Pay Pal account. My credit card is not being accepted. I have no trouble buying what I need in town, so I can’t understand the problem. Evelyn
Are you trying to use your credit card to buy Crossing on my web site? If it isn’t working for you, then you can either call PayPal and see what the problem is on their end, or you can just send a check to At God’s Table. If neither of these work, then let me know and we will see what can be done. But since many others are using the web site purchase through PayPal, I suspect it is some problem with your card and PayPal.
Thank you for responding. I will check it out. I’m looking forward to reading the book. Your TW’s are a daily blessing, and I thank God for you and pray His blessings complete you. Evelyn
With this book, Crossing, I believe Skip Moen has crossed over into the realm of unpacking myth. Not to say this story is not true, but ‘myth’ in the sense of its original use, which was to initiate humans into what being human entailed.
The world has constructed countless myths in an attempt to come to terms with the problem of what to do with our consciousness of ourselves, or, identity. Ancient myths of all cultures were designed to instruct the adolescent as well as the lost in the complexity of dealing with the double whammy of our inherited psychological baggage as well as the inevitable trust issues that arise in our lives, mainly from the trauma of our childhoods.
The brothers Grimm, and Anderson too, I think, tried to whitewash and re-represent the initiating myths of our culture as mere tales, useful to entertain (as well as to scare) the young – totally inappropriate, by the way – but I think we now find ourselves in a culture that is lacking any mythical explanation of the problems of consciousness, as well as devoid of any systematic attempt to initiate the young into what it means to be human.
This may not be such a bad thing, because it can force us to go back and start over with what we find we have left, which, in the culture of the West, consists of, mainly, the Bible. What remains is instruction in how to use the stories in this Book as a template we can lay over our own lives as a means of instructing us on why things are the way they are, as well as what to do about it. The tales of actual people in real life situations that we find here provide trustworthy patterns for us. In this book, Skip Moen unpacks such a story in a way we can use to initiate ourselves into what being human means. It can answer the question: who am I?
Jacob at the Brook Jabbok contains every element of an initiation myth. Moen recreates the emotional under- and over-tones of this story in terms of the genetic and social history that produced the man, Jacob, and he illuminates Jacob’s struggle to transcend the chains of his past and to transform the traumas and betrayals of his life into strength.
This story is, essentially, a classic Eastern pattern of initiation into what it means to be a human being. By facing, struggling with, and ultimately vanquishing the elements of his character that he had constructed to protect himself in what he perceived to be a hostile and unloving world, Jacob was able to thereafter be reconnected to the strengths of relationship in all dimensions toward God, himself and others, that only the security of a tried and tested trust can provide. Jacob the Supplanter’s true identity as Israel, the Overcomer, was realized only at the bottom of his own weakness, for it is only here, where trust was lost, that trust can be restored. This is the story of all of us.
Thank you, Laurita. I am glad you found it worthwhile.