The Paradox of Faith in Fly Fishing: Believing and Not Believing

Over the last 25 years, there have been numerous people I have guided in fly fishing who were trying it for the first time. Some of them had never fished before in any form. But, by the end of the day, after managing to catch some trout, they often will tell me the same story that goes something like this; “Anthony, I never really thought I was going to catch anything today. I was happy to just be here and try it and learn, so the fish I caught were an extra bonus.”  Appreciative clients are wonderful people to fish with. They are truly grateful for the fly fishing experience and I admire their humility and strangely, I even respect their lack of faith.

Such a scenario brings to mind a deeper spiritual issue that I have thought about for decades. It is the idea that when a person states he does not believe he may actually be very close to believing (or deep down he may actually believe). This reflects a strange paradox of faith, in that by not believing we may actually be believing. I know for me personally, there have been times when it seemed I believed the least, it was then that some thing unbelievable happened. There have also been times when I have been most disappointed and angry and I could only cry out, “Where are you God, I don’t believe in anything anymore”, and somehow at that precise moment of not believing I actually believed ( at least a tiny bit). And ironically, sometimes, the more intense the not believing was the more intense was the conviction that I believed or was about to believe. I also am reminded of the story of Abraham and Sarah who when at a 100 years old were told they were going to have a son they laughed in disbelief. Or was it belief?  

Chesterton said, “Christianity is a superhuman paradox where by two opposite passions may blaze beside each other”. Could believing and not believing be two opposing passions that blaze beside each other? 

Faith is a mysterious paradox.  Perhaps this paradox is no more mysterious than when Jesus spoke about the faith of a mustard seed which could grow into a huge tree or be potent enough to cast a mountain into the sea and how it would be those who were poor in spirit who would have the kingdom of God and those who would mourn would be comforted and how the first shall be last and the last shall be first and how Peter’s doubting faith allowed him to walk on water (at least, for a little while), and how a man cried out to Jesus, “help my unbelief”, and Jesus healed his sick daughter. And I think of the thief on the cross next to Jesus, who in his last hour of life probably did not believe in much of anything is told by Jesus he would be with him in paradise that very day.

So even while fishing and engaged in the rather silly task of trying to catch fish  I wonder what really goes on in the heart and mind of the fisherman. I wonder to what degree,  hope and faith are possessed. I tend to think the first time fly fisherman often may have only a tiny bit of faith (such as a mustard seed), but often it is enough. And maybe even in those situations where the client concluded beforehand that he was not going to catch anything, I wonder if he may have actually believed. Or maybe “behind” his expressed unbelief was the tiniest hope, the mustard seed Jesus spoke of.  Or still yet, maybe the moment a person says, I do not believe, grace is present and so is faith.

There are also those situations where I find myself trying however feebly to share my faith with others. I may make a statement or two and get no response or sometimes I get the angry response of , “How can you believe in anything? Look at the mess the world is in. Look at how hypocritical the church has become. And look at my life. Do you have any idea what I am going through?  I don’t believe there is a God.”  Even in such situations, where the exact polar opposite of believing is expressed, I still wonder, deep down, what a person might truly believe. All it takes is a mustard seed size amount of faith. Who knows?

I cannot formulate these experiences or ideas into any kind of a formula or principle to follow that would dictate the success of fishing or draw parallels to faith and the spiritual life.  It would be folly for me to suggest anything along those lines because real life has provided too many contradictions.  In my years of guiding I have fished with people who expressed “great” faith hardly catch anything or those who seemingly expressed no faith make great catches. I have seen the arrogant get skunked but also at times make great catches.

Added to this complexity and paradox is the fact that it remains very difficult for anyone to know with certainty what someone deep down truly believes. Can faith exist “under” a person’s statements to the contrary?  Maybe even as the atheist utters the words, “I do not believe there is a God”, there is grace and perhaps belief, or, if not belief then belief that is about to be born?   Could even in these situations there still be a mustard seed of faith “underneath” statements uttered?  

So, I ponder these issues with out reaching any conclusions. I do not claim to understand this paradox. I remain rather ignorant. Nor do I understand as a guide how my own faith, big or small, affects the success of the fly fisher I am teaching. I might only dare to say that when I meet someone and that person tells me of the great faith he possesses in regard to anything,  I tend to feel a bit skeptical and yet, when some one tells me of how little they might believe I tend to trust their belief or “unbelief” more. This is probably just due to personal preference.

In the end, my best guess is that all I can do is hope and hold on to a mustard seed of faith through out my life, and for others and hopefully that will be enough.

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Secret places on the River and of the Heart: Spiritual Insights from Colorado Christian Fly Fishing Guide

Fly fishers have “secret holes” on the rivers they fish. We can be quite hush-hush about these places. Likewise, we often have secrets of the heart that we keep deep inside and tell no one.

As Christians, it is sad that we often try to hide who we are. We harbor our secrets. We remain on a stage performing and afraid to reveal what we are really thinking and feeling. We think we need to always smile parroting religious clichés.  Yet the sharing of our secrets is our “humanness”, part of our life story, and can be a place of deep connection among believers. Our deep inner secrets, or more so, the “general” secret of who we really are can bond us together on a level that the pretending will never achieve. Maybe this is the secret, that what we present to others is always somewhat different from what we truly know about ourselves.  

It seems that even when I try to tell people who I really am they will often disagree. I am not sure why it is this way.  “Oh no, you are not like that”, they will say. Perhaps my outward persona is quite “effective” in fooling people and it keeps people from being close to me.

For me, a big secret is my general sadness with much of life. Therapists might call this depression and perhaps they are at least in part correct. Perhaps melancholy is simply my natural disposition and a part of the human condition; “I know the earth and I am sad” said the poet Pablo Neruda.  In addition, no doubt part of my sadness simply stems from   my own shortcomings and at times, my own ungratefulness. But, all these reasons aside,  I think at least  some of my sadness has to do with a great spiritual truth.  And that truth is simply that Jesus was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, and as Christians, this man of sorrows lives with in us. Somehow I think if we really believe in the life of Jesus then in some very real way we all share in that sadness and brokenness and somehow that is part of the secret that we all share in together but we don’t want to reveal because we think we have to always appear “together” and happy.

Being unable to share this secret of our sadness is perhaps what keeps us from being as close and connected as we could be and perhaps what even limits us from understanding the heart of God. It is a paradox in that deep down we want to be accepted for who we really are but we are also scared to death if we show our true selves to each other and even to God that we will be rejected.

Frederick Buechner says it this way, “What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are-even if we tell it only to ourselves –because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find more acceptable than the real thing.”

I personally have grown weary of the edited version of myself and I have grown bored of the edited versions of others. Maybe, (and I need to start with myself), we can learn to share the secrets of our hearts with one another and that might somehow make our own lives and our relationships with others a bit more authentic. And then we would all share in a similar knowing in the same way that when we reveal our secret fishing holes we would find out that everyone already  knew. It was not a secret after all.

Bad Habits On the River and in the Spiritual Life

              There is a fascinating tale called “Skeletal Woman” where a fisherman snags into what he believes is a huge fish that will feed him and his family for quite some time. With great excitement he reaches for his net only to discover that he has hooked into a skeleton from which he cannot escape. This is a tale that teaches us about life/death cycles that are a part of our being, a part of nature, and a part of the spiritual life (Clarissa Pinkola Estes has an insightful commentary on this story).   

 Fly fishing (with its intimate experience of the cycles of nature), and the Christian spiritual life can both teach us that all things occur in cycles. There are seasons to fly fishing. There is a time to match the hatch to a specific mayfly. There is a time for the lizard to shed its skin. There is a time for us to shed our skin to find new life. There is a time to let go, a time to let things die for new growth to occur.  Jesus said, “He who keeps his life shall lose it and he who loses his life shall find it” and, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it will bear no fruit”. But, it is difficult to allow our old ways to die. When Jesus spoke of his death the disciples wanted to hear nothing about it. Neither do we.            

           While guiding some times my client will catch a fish on the first cast before I can teach the proper technique and then the bad technique becomes ingrained because it is reinforced by the catch.  This most likely happens after the drift is over and the fly fisher swings the fly to cast again and then the fish strikes. So, in essence the fish strikes when the fly is not dead drifting and the fly fisher just got ‘lucky’.  This bad technique of not properly drifting the fly can then become a habit and it is hard for me as the guide to talk the client out of what he is doing because it just “worked”.  The fly fisher will keep simply swinging the flies in all day long instead of concentrating on good drifts.  Any bad habit that “works” is difficult to break, whether on the river or in life.

           Likewise, in our personal lives we can develop strategies that make life “work” but are not necessarily developed from the right motive. By “work” I am referring to the development of a life strategy that leads to acceptance and a way to impact others. In essence the life strategy helps us find our niche or place in the world.  Often, these strategies developed when we were young to avoid pain and they gave us a sense of power and control. The strategy adopted usually involves our strengths and even our spiritual gifts.  These strategies can continue into adulthood with out us even being aware and without questioning.   

            So, why question it? Is this not how life is supposed to work especially since we are not talking about a “bad” life style? Here is where I think we must be willing to be honest about how we might use such a strategy (no matter how good it looks on the outside) for the wrong motive of trying to be independent of God. At the deepest level such a strategy can merely be a defense mechanism to protect us from being vulnerable to God and others. Often it is not necessarily the behaviors that we need to let go of but it is the “rational” for the strategy that must be transformed.  Larry Crabb, a Christian counselor has written in depth about how when we find a place where we are loved and impact others, life “works” but he questions the deeper motives of the heart by which we developed these strategies. He speaks of a “deep repentance” of these strategies because the strategy itself can be of our own creation, some thing the individual devised independent of God.  It is this “independence” that can be in conflict with the authentic spiritual life even though on the outside we look pretty good, our lives “work” and we feel pretty good about ourselves.  As is often the case, the spiritual problem is an issue of the heart.

               In the same way it is hard to break a bad fly fishing habit that actually catches fish it is even harder to let go of an ego centered life strategy that “works” for us.  Yet, true deep spiritual growth involves letting go of the old (at least the motive) through repentance and honestly examining how each one of us has tried to figure out a way of making  life work without God. Perhaps the ultimate arrogance is in the thought, “I can make life work on my own. I do not need God. I can do it my way. I can find my own way to find love. I can find my own way to impact my world”.

            C.S. Lewis, in his fictional story titled “The Great Divorce” describes people who after getting off of a bus are trying to climb a mountain to get to heaven and they are met with angelic beings that try to tell them how they must let go of their old ways.  The more they hang on to their old life strategies of the heart the more “flimsy’ and ghost like they become. But the individual who lets go of the old life strategies begins to grow more solid and can continue up the mountain. These are the ones who turned and were willing to face who they really were and knew they needed to let go of their old life. They were honest enough to look at their naked “skeleton”.

              When we look back at the tale of the fisherman who snags into a skeleton we see that he cannot get away from the skeleton he has hooked. Frantically he paddles to shore and yet it follows. He runs across land but the skeleton follows. Exhausted he dives into his snow-house and he thinks he is finally safe only to find that the skeleton is right there beside him.  But as he faces the skeleton and no longer tries to flee the fisherman begins to change. He feels compassion for the skeleton. He starts to untangle his fishing line from among the bones. And then as sometimes happens in tales, a transformation takes place as the fisherman gets a new heart and the skeleton new flesh.

              We must examine our strategies of the inner heart. When we turn and face our selves honestly, even our skeletons and turn to God, our heart is transformed. Our repentance is more intimate, honest, and of depth.   

               And as fly fishers, as we let go of our bad habits we learn new ways that change us and we learn to become more versatile fly fishers. It is not just the “bad habits” we have to let go of.  Perhaps if we let go of some of our old ways of doing things that catch fish, even lots of fish, (and recognize that success can sometimes be the greatest block to innovation) we would learn innovative techniques that would transform us.

               And we might become artists. 

If you wish to dialogue with Anthony about this essay please email me at suragea1@aol.com

Fellowship On the River: Insights From South Platte River Fly Fishing Guide

Wendell Berry wrote a poem about contrariness and in one of the lines he writes, “When they told me God was dead I said, No he’s not, He goes fishing every day on the river, I see him often”.

I often feel a bit of the same contrariness in regard to things pertaining to faith and church. When “they” tell me I have to go to church to find fellowship, I say, (in the spirit of the poem), “No, I have fellowship every day on the river while fishing. I see them often”.

One would think that those of us who share a common Christian faith and attend church regularly would experience a deep meaningful fellowship with one another. Sometimes this is the case, often it is not. Many people can still feel very lonely while attending church where often the depth of fellowship does not go beyond the ritual of greeting your neighbors in the pew with a hand shake.

If I were asked where I have experienced the most meaningful, and deepest level of fellowship I would have to answer that those friendships often have taken place on the river. I don’t really know what is almost magical about fishing together with someone. Surely it is more than simply trying to catch fish. Perhaps it has something to do with spending time in God’s creation, watching the sun rise, or set and all the different shades of light on the landscape or,  two fishermen glimpse a rainbow or notice the sunlight dancing on a riffle. Maybe it is listening to the sounds of the river and watching it flow by over and over again. Maybe it is watching spring snowflakes the size of half dollar coins falling on the river as trout sip blue winged olive mayflies. Or maybe there is something about watching clouds of millions and millions of tiny glistening trico mayflies fall to the river and then watching the fish gulping them off the surface.  Maybe it is the excitement of when your friend hooks a large rainbow and it leaps out of the water and peels off line. At least at times, somehow these experiences shared can bond fishermen together in ways much deeper than many typical church services.

Two people who share a common faith sitting Sunday after Sunday in a church pew looking forward listening to a sermon, ironically may not enjoy such a mysterious depth of friendship. Perhaps the problem with sitting in church is that it is far too passive for anything of depth to develop. In contrast, fishermen on a river are actively engaged in a common task of trying to catch fish and there is an intimate sharing of ideas on how to achieve this goal.  Of course in some sense it could be argued that this is not a very big mission at all; in fact, it is a bit silly if one thinks about it, yet for anyone who has fished, often times something undeniable takes place between fishermen who are actively engaged in this task. The two people are bonded and changed in some way and usually somewhat “better” for the experience.

While trying to catch fish, there can be a lot of encouragement that goes on among fishermen on the river. I often hear people say, “nice fish”, or “great cast”,  or “well done”.  Sometimes I can even hear the Reverend Maclean as in “A River Runs Through It”, say to his son on their last fishing trip together when Paul was holding up his trophy trout, “Wow, you are a fine fisherman”.  Sentiments are expressed on the river that perhaps normally could never be spoken any where else.  

Strangely I don’t even think the fishermen on a river have to talk about important things for something meaningful to take place. Some times to simply fish together is enough. But of course it is on the river where fishermen will often share stories with one another, describing what they do not like about their jobs, or the fight they got in with their spouse, or some unlived dream, or about the hope that is in their hearts.  The river itself may have a way of listening, perhaps even speaking and drawing people out in ways that rarely happens in church.

While fishing, the Maclean’s seemed to have this special almost metaphysical  relationship with each other and with the river. It was Norman who while watching the  river noticed the heat mirages dancing on the river and said, “I  could feel patterns from my own life joining with them“, and that,  “It was here while waiting for my brother that a story had begun near the sound of water.”  It seems that for the Macleans, being on the river together had provided a medium in which a depth and love could develop in their relationships and this was all part of their story.

And then later in this story while Norman and his father were watching Paul fight a large fish and Paul had to swim across the river to get to a better place where he could land it, there was a sense that they were fighting the fish with Paul. Norman Maclean describes it this way, “We lived in him, and were swept over the rocks with him and held his rod high in one of our hands”.  

“We lived in him”? This may sound a bit too spiritual and metaphysical for a family or a group of friends fishing on a river or even for two people sitting in church to have this kind of a relationship with one another.  Yet, I can’t but help think of what Jesus said in the Gospel of John about his hope for us. He hopes that we would all be one. He says, “I in them and Thou in me that they may be perfected in unity”. 

Such a depth of unity seems mysterious to me and yet I believe such a bonding is possible. It intrigues me. But, when I think of the organized Christian church and my own experience of trying to connect to various churches over the decades, I must confess that I have not even approached such a depth. And yet I believe it exists even as I have not seen it or experienced it.

At best, I have only been on the fringes of this depth and mystery and even this has only occurred while I have been on the river.

If you would like to dialogue with Anthony in regard this essay please email me at suragea1@aol.com   

Imaginary Fish: Perceptions as Acts of Faith

While guiding I have often said to fly fishers, “It sure helps if you can see the fish,” and I will often add, “But if you can’t see the fish imagine where the fish should be and cast to that fish”. Sight fishing, to a specific fish, real or imagined, is an art in which constant micro adjustments have to be made to get the fly to the fish.

Over the years, I have learned that not everyone can see the fish and nor can everyone read the water and imagine where they might be.  It can also be difficult for the fly fisher to picture where the fly is during the drift and where it is in relationship to the fish. It is critical to have the fly in the exact feeding lane of the fish and (if wet fly fishing) at the correct depth.  I try to tell people, if you can’t see the fly, try to imagine where the fly is drifting (picture it in your mind through out the drift), and at the same time try to  imagine where the fly is in relation to the fish.  But in trying to teach this skill I have noticed that if the fly fisher cannot perceive these things then most often his casts will be “off” target. And as a guide, I have to then say many times, “a little more to the left… to the right” etc. An accurate perception of these dynamics comes with years of experience and some imagination.

I think a vivid imagination helps in these situations. There are times when I cannot see the actual fish, nor my fly but I can still perceive about where they are (or hopefully should be). It is almost like a 6^th sense. Sometimes after making the proper cast and then while the fly is drifting, I can just sense the exact moment when the fish, even if I cannot see it, is going to take the fly.  I follow the fly through out the drift and then I get that sense, an indescribable perception that the fish is going to take the fly in the next moment. This of course does not happen all the time. But when it does it is a bit mysterious, a wonderful almost magical experience and one of the joys of fly fishing.

Maybe such imaginings are really at least in part, about having faith and hope, mixed in with some wishful thinking. Perhaps there is something to be said for acting as though something is already there…as though something already happened or is about to happen even when we can’t see it. Perhaps such imaginings, such vision and faith are all mysteriously related to when Jesus said , ”the kingdom of God is with in you”, and if the kingdom of God is really here or about to be here,  then we should act accordingly.

When I was a kid I played baseball in a “kingdom” of sorts mainly in my imagination.  I would go to a baseball field with a bat and ball and would play entire baseball games all by myself.  I would throw the ball up and hit it and depending on the quality of the hit I determined if it were a single, double, triple, a home run or an out. I batted for both teams, I retrieved every hit ball and played inning after inning. I played for hours.  I kept score. There was a lot of imagination to such games as I had to keep track of invisible base runners in my mind to score the games properly. I had to picture those runners in my minds eye.

Perhaps keeping track of imaginary base runners in one’s mind is similar to keeping track of where the fish are lying in the river. In your mind, in both baseball and fly fishing, you have to juggle several dynamics all at once.  And just as one can picture when that short fly ball to left field is going to drop in and that base runner on 2^nd is going to try to bolt home, the fly fisher can also picture when that huge rainbow, at a precise moment, is going to take the fly.  Perhaps this is all related to having faith and hope and playing within the kingdom of God.  

In all these things it sure is a lot more fun of you can see those invisible base runners;  if you can see that guy getting ready to sprint toward home.  It also is more fun if you can imagine where that 20 inch rainbow is lying among the rocks  and when it is about to take your fly.  

Maybe even just the perceiving itself is an act of faith.

Wrestling With Your Faith: Looking Below the Surface

I am grateful for the story “A River Runs Through It”, not just because it is story about fly fishing but because it is story about real faith. The novel of course was written by the eldest brother Norman Maclean. He tells the story of living in Montana, fishing with his brother Paul, and his father the reverend Maclean. Faith, life and fly fishing weave together with a river to form a beautiful and yet tragic story climaxing in the death of Paul, the younger brother.

I most deeply appreciate the fact that at no point in the novel does the author offer any kind of an explanation for the tragic loss of his brother. Nor, does he include any explanation given by his father, the reverend, a man of faith. This omission offers a refreshing contrast to simplistic explanations to life events I often hear spoken by people of faith.

Sometimes believers will offer explanations to the events of their lives that are far too simplistic or moralistic. Years ago, I once had a gentleman comment to me in regard to A River Runs Through It, that he was glad, “the right boy died”. In his mind, he made a moral judgment. In trying to be “moral” he missed the deeper heart of the issue. Not only did he miss the deeper heart of the issue but he also seemed to diminish the mystery of life and the heart of God. He reasoned incorrectly that it is somehow more “fair” that if a young man lives “recklessly” that it would be “better” or at least more fair that such a person is supposed to die rather than the elder brother who perhaps lived a “better” life. . In his mind, he skipped over the teaching of Jesus about making judgments and how God “causes rain to fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous”.

Over the years I have heard Christians offer all kinds of simplistic explanations for the things that happen to them.  I must confess that I have done the same until I got tired of hearing my own stupidity, arrogance and irreverence. Most things cannot be explained so simplistically and in terms of our own egocentric interpretation of God’s providence.  Life cannot be reduced to clichés such as “God is just testing me”. Or, “This happened because God is blessing my obedience” or “God is punishing me because of such and such” or even, “God is really at work here”. Often there are other explanations for life events, (our own stupidity being one of them), and we cannot be certain of much of anything. And sadly, as I have written elsewhere, our simplistic explanations are often the product of our own egocentric wishful thinking expressed thoughtlessly and superficially with meaningless, worn out Christian clichés.

These overused clichés are one of the clearest indications of an immature grandiose narcissistic faith. Such faith refuses to embrace the mystery of life and of God. It is a controlling faith rather than one of surrendering and typical of individuals who have not wrestled deeply with their faith.  

In contrast, Fredrick Buechner spoke about the need for a deep wrestling with one’s own faith. He went onto say, that until we do, we will not truly understand what “believing” means and we might be fooling ourselves and others. Buechner writes:

“If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up and ask yourself, ‘Can I believe it all again’? No better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read the New York Time, till after you have studied that daily record of the worlds brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be no because the no is as important as the yes, maybe more so. The no is what proves your human.”

Unfortunately, many churches do not know what to do with mature believers who might say the “no” five times out of ten. Many churches are not very good at handling the deeper questions about our faith.  They misinterpret such wrestling as an indication of being negative, angry,  faithless, rebellious, ungrateful, backsliding or,(you can fill in the blank). The response is usually some predictable cliché and the vital paradox about faith is missed.

And there is a paradox going on here. Jesus often spoke of paradox. “The last shall be first and first shall be last”. “He who keeps his life shall lose it, he who loses his life shall find it.” There are others.  And, I think there is a paradox in regard to believing. Unfortunately, many of us are sort of conditioned to think that we have to work ourselves up into some dramatic expression of great faith and only then will God hear us. Yet perhaps this grandiose faith is not what God is looking for. And yet, on the contrary, when I hear a person say, and sometimes with tears, “I just don’t know if I believe in much of anything any more”, my ears perk up. And I think, if God hears our prayers at all, he is more inclined to hear the humble in heart.  I am reminded of the man with a sick daughter in Mark chapter nine crying out to Jesus, “Help my unbelief”, and Jesus responded. Perhaps, “less” is “more”.

When I read through the last pages of , “A River Run’s Through It,” I also see Norman Maclean remaining deeply human and refusing to use simplistic religious clichés to explain the loss of his brother. Norman feels it all deeply. He feels the pain. He feels the sadness. Norman wrestles with his faith and questions if he could have helped his brother. But he cannot answer this question. Nor, can he understand what happened with complete understanding.   In writing this novel, Norman Maclean leaves his family story in the realm of mystery which is where it should be.

Norman Maclean, right up to the end of his life remains deeply human and only suggests  “small” hints of  faith saying he “hopes that a fish might rise”, that, “eventually all things merge into one”. Anyone who has ever fished knows that fishing is really, at least in part,  about hope and faith. And the words, “Eventually all things merge into one” echoes scriptures that speak in regard to the “consummation of all things” that will some day take place. And in the end Norman is aware of the word, the logos, that his father was so fascinated with.  And like his father, he knows that in spite of everything that has happened, and in spite of what he does not understand,  that the word is “under the rocks” and under everything. The logos that is under and behind all mystery. 

Principles Verses a Living Dynamic: Which Came FIrst the Water Or The Word?

When it comes to the deep spiritual issues of the soul few things in life are as foolish as  merely following Christian principles for the sake of following Christian principles.

In “A River Runs Through It” we see the Reverend Maclean pondering deep spiritual issues. He asked deep questions to himself and to his sons Norman and Paul wondering if the water or the word came first. He would often sit along side of the river with his Bible opened to the first page of the Gospel of John contemplating the Logos, the word that become flesh. The reverend was aware that to the ancient philosophers, the Logos was the underlying unifying force of reality. It was beneath everything and with in everything. It was the “glue” of the universe.  I am sure the reverend was aware of other scriptures such as the verse in Colossians 1:17 where it is written, “He is before all things and in him all things hold together” or the verse in Hebrews 1:3 where it says, “He upholds all things by the word of his power”.  It was this Logos that fascinated the reverend as he pictured it being under the rocks of the river he fished.   

In the novel, the eldest son Norman tells of a conversation he had with his father. The reverend Maclean says to Norman, “In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning; I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water”. Norman logically counters, “That’s because you are a preacher first and then a fisherman. If you ask Paul, he will tell you that the words are formed out of water”.  The Father then responds, with these powerful words, “No you are not listening carefully. The water runs over the words.”

I think the reverend’s response is significant because it indicates that he is not a man who merely follows Christian principles. His connection to the divine is much more. It is much deeper. It is a living breathing dynamic relationship. He does not believe in what he believes, as Norman suggests, because he is a preacher of certain church doctrines. He does not believe in what he believes because of his religious social status. In essence he does not believe what he believes because he should or because he has to or because someone told him what to believe.  He believes in what he believes because he has listened carefully; he has heard, and he encourages his sons to do likewise. He is one who has learned to be still and to listen carefully to the divine, even as he listens to the sounds of the river.

 “No you are not listening carefully,” he exhorts his sons. And all of us.

Likewise, I have found in fly fishing that there are times when even the best of us get caught up and locked into following principles. It is common to see fish “rising” to caddis and the fly fisher immediately assumes that he must use a dry fly when often the fish are actually chasing the swimming pupa below the surface. Or, many fly fishers insist on following text book principles to presenting a fly by quartering the cast upstream when in reality often a down and across presentation is far more effective. Fly fishers are taught to ‘match the hatch’ yet there are times when it is better to not match the hatch.  There are countless other examples of fly fishers following rigid principles that do not work in every situation.  The river and the fish are a living dynamic. Fly fishing is a living interactive dynamic that requires countless adjustments to an endless set of changing dynamics.

Living the day to day spiritual life is also a living dynamic and merely following principles, even “good” Christian principles is often not only ineffective but it can be out right disastrous. We cannot lock ourselves into following principles for the sake of following principles (or so we look like “nice” Christians) because the principle then becomes an idol. Sometimes Christians get caught up in the principle that they must always be “nice”, never say no, and can never be stern or must always…. (fill in the blank). Or some times Christians apply some “moral” principle (which amounts to a judgement) to situations when something difficult happens to someone else. Can we see how disastrous it can be to only follow a principle? There are countless other possible situations where following some kind of a principle is just not going to be enough.  Nor is it wise.  

 I hope instead we can learn to “listen carefully” to the living logos under the river and  under the rocks and under all things. 

If you would like to dialogue with me about this post please email me at suragea1@aol.com

  

Saturated Waters

One of the most difficult kinds of fly fishers to guide is the one who knows just enough to not know that he does not know. This is the fly fisher who has spent some time dining in the saturated theoretical informational waters of fly fishing.  This is the fly fisher who has read various fly fishing texts,  books, on line blogs and taken fly casting lessons and perhaps various other classes ranging from “Entomology” to, ‘How to read the water’, and, of course has seen, “A River Runs Through It”. But often this fly fisher can be one who has lacked time alone on the river to figure out things for himself. He only does what he has “been told”. In this essay I am going try  to draw a parallel between the fly fisher who lives in the saturated waters of having easy access to all kinds of fly fishing information and the Christian who lives in the supersaturated culture of ‘easy religion’ and also has access to all kinds of information about the divine and the Christian life. .  

Ironically, I think one of the biggest obstacles to genuine spiritual growth in the modern Christian church is that we live in saturated spiritual waters. We have such easy access to Church services (both live and on the “big screen”), Bible studies, fellowship groups, prayer groups,  CD’s, books, programs, and on-line Christian blogs, facebook, emails, that a person can easily over saturate their lives with “spirituality” and all kinds of teachings  and yet miss out on true spiritual “meat” that causes real growth. In essence, this is the Christian who is never alone, “naked” before the divine.

In such a culture of saturated spiritual waters, it is very easy to NEVER be alone to think and feel for oneself. It is very easy to never have to deal with one’s own true thirst and hunger because it is so easy to be over saturated and falsely satisfied.  It is easy to just become part of the “mass culture”,  even the “Christian” culture; something Jesus never did because the spirit of Christ was abundantly counter cultural. The spirit of Christ is still countercultural today but often we are not aware, because we have become a part of the mass Christian culture ourselves. We can’t see because we are too close to it.  

What do you do if you are a believer who lives in these saturated waters and who partakes in these various Christian activities and yet most of the time you find yourself bored, unmoved, unfed, and thirsty. Or worse still, what do you do if you find so much of the rhetoric to simply not be true or at the very least irrelevant to the deeper issues in your own heart.  In such super saturated waters it is difficult to discern what is good for your soul and to know what is true. I advocate that perhaps the best thing one can do is pull oneself away from it all and go sit alone to pray and ponder things.  

When we live in such saturated waters it is difficult to even be alone to pray. I have become convinced that until the Christian church learns to be quiet in prayer, alone, and to empty oneself of all the “teachings” about God  that we have conformed to that we will remain  spiritual immature. How often have I heard in church such lofty prayers (sometimes they are like a grand performance) filled with so many words. And as church members we often are expected to just adopt this prayer as our own and how this person views God and how God works. We almost have to conform to it.

 Jesus had some different things to say about prayer.  Jesus specifically said that when you pray to not pray in public but to go in one’s room and pray in secret. He said we should not go on and on and babble to be heard by men.  He also said that when we pray to be heard by men that we have received our reward in full. In other words, whatever we get out of praying these lofty prayers in public that…that is our reward. That’s it!  That is all we get!  This is a legal phrase and means that we have received our reward in full.  It is a done deal in the same way that when a court awards compensation to one party, that no more compensation shall be given in the future.   

I think the Christian church is at a time and place where if we are going find something authentic in prayer we will have to “unsaturate” ourselves of much of what we have been taught and test what remains.  In the midst of prayer, we will have to empty ourselves. We will have to empty ourselves of all the thoughts, concepts, metaphors we have about who we think God is and who we want God to be and all the things we have read and heard.  We have to pull back our projections. We have to acknowledge the limits of language. We have to be silent. We have to be still.  We have to let go of the idols we have collected in our supersaturated Christian culture. The most deceptive and difficult idols to let go of are the ones that are highly valued in the mainstream Christian culture. These are the most deceptive idols to let go of. Rilke the poet describes our images of the divine this way, “We heap our images of You upon you until they stand around you like a thousand walls”.

It is well known that one of the most misused scriptures in the Bible that is taken out of context is found in Revelations chapter three verse 20. “I stand at the door of your heart and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and He with me”.  This verse has often been used in “alter calls” to those who do not believe and yet the verse is actually written to a church of believers. What could this mean to us who live in supersaturated Christian culture? The answer might be found in the verses just preceding this verse. “Because you say, ‘I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked”. Could these verses not be applied to our modern Christian churches? Maybe this is what happens when without discretion we dine in a supersaturated Christian culture. Perhaps it like eating nothing but cotton candy; all fluff but no substance and we remain immature parroting the “party line”. Perhaps this verse is a call for believers to use discretion and heed the call to feed on true spiritual meat. Perhaps it is a call to empty our selves of our “wealth”; to empty ourselves of all we have acquired in terms of concept and thought about God. Perhaps we need to remember and know that when we let go of our Christian idols and all our clichés about God, that we then realize how “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked”, we really are. (V.17)

And then, perhaps we need to sit alone and feel our nakedness and poverty and start all over. This is exactly what I have to sometimes do when I teach others how to fly fish. I just have to start all over and undo what has been done.  

If you would like to dialogue with me about this essay please email me at suragea1@aol.com

Waiting Without Hope

 

The inexperienced fly fisher in his eagerness, wishful thinking and determination to catch a fish may misinterpret events.  I have seen fly fishers “fight a snag” thinking it was a fish and then when the hook finally pulls free of the rock, he still might persist with his belief saying, “Ah, he got away”.  An impatient fly fisher while nymphing may set the hook at false strikes and mess up the natural drift for a “real” fish that may have been considering taking the fly.  Or when dry fly fishing he may see a fish rise and he wrongly assumes the fish was rising to his fly and he sets the hook only to spook the other fish that may have been looking at his artificial fly.  Each time he may yell, “Ah, I missed it”, when in reality there was no fish on his fly. Or, worse yet, he might set the hook with so much  enthusiasm  that he breaks the leader or the whole leader flies out of the river and wraps around the rod resulting in a ‘birds nest’ mess.  Such mistakes are common to the inexperienced. When I guide such folks, I have to love their enthusiasm and even their ignorance. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ even if it is a bit delusional and they often make a mess of things.

In contrast, mature, experienced fly fishers have the patience and art to allow the fly to drift naturally without false striking.  They are less prone to having false hopes. They know how to discern between snags and fish. They are able to stay attune to the drift of the fly, patiently waiting it out, waiting for that precise moment when a fish truly takes the fly. They have poise. They try not to allow “the wrong thing” distract them or give them false hope. They are not easily fooled. The mature angler knows how to read the signs and distinguish false signs. They do not overly react. They react perfectly. In essence, they know the discipline and art of fly fishing and have learned to wait with authentic hope.   

Perhaps a parallel can be made between the tendencies of beginner fly fishers and immature Christians of the church.  They both have impatience and have a tendency to misinterpret events. They both tend to want drama to the real thing. Being an enthusiastic, impatient, wishful thinker and even a bit delusional in fly fishing is one thing but when it comes to our spiritual lives such wishful thinking can  keep the individual (and church communities)  in a state of spiritual immaturity.  And instead of just ending up with spooked fish and a mess of tangled leader we have Christians making a mess of how they try to communicate their “divine experience” to a skeptical world.  The writer to the book of Hebrews states, “Spiritual meat is for the mature who through practice have their senses trained to discern good from evil”. The mature Christian as well as the mature fly fisher has discernment and this discernment marks their maturity.

Both immature groups, the inexperienced fly fisher and the immature Christian, do not have the art. And as Dante said, “Far worse than in vain is he who leaves the shore and fishes for the truth but has not the art”. In essence, such a person who does not have the art does not do this merely in vain. In other words, the result is not just some useless thing. It is far worse. He makes a mess of things both in fly fishing and in his spiritual life. The immature would be better off not ‘leaving the shore.’ He would be better off learning to wait…..and to wait… and to wait.  Do nothing but wait. But the immature are not good at waiting, both in the church or on the river.  

The human ego, greedy for experience, both in the physical realm (in this case, fly fishing), and the spiritual realm (the immature Christian demanding to experience the divine)  has a tendency to impatiently grab at false hopes and grab for the wrong thing. The fly fisher wants so badly to feel a fish pull and the Christian wants so badly to feel the divine. The words grabbing or snatching seem appropriate to describe this tendency accurately. In both cases, it takes the mature authentic individual who can wait in hopelessness and learns to value the waiting in and of it self. The mature individual knows there are no guarantees of either experience. The fly fisher learns to remain focused on the natural drift of the fly and disciplines himself to not allow anything to disturb that focus. He waits and waits for the right moment and only the right moment.  The mature Christian in prayer like wise remains in silence and focused on the flow of things; the flow of all thoughts, expectations, and anxieties down the river as he empties himself,  waiting for the divine moment;  the narrow gate where God might enter.  

T.S. Eliot had something to say about waiting and not being deceived or distracted by the “wrong thing”. He said, “I said to my soul, be still and wait, wait without hope for hope would be hope of the wrong thing. I said wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing. Wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing; Yet there is faith but the faith, the hope and the love are all in the waiting.”

It seems to me that both the immature fly fisher and immature Christian can impatiently hope for the wrong thing. And yet they do not know it is the wrong thing. They have not learned,  (because they have not been taught) the art of waiting. Waiting in both cases is a holding out for the real thing, In a sense, the mature is one who refuses to settle for anything but the truth. He waits for an authentic experience even if that experience is felt as silence and nothingness. He delights in only a pure event. As Donald Nicholl said, “Delight in the truth. Truth tastes better with each illusion that evaporates.”  This process of negation is an old tradition called the via negativa. It holds to the idea that God can perhaps be known, only by first learning to discern about what He is not.  The individual engaged in this process in a sense says, “No, this is not it, No, this is not it,” again and again. He waits and he waits. He has discretion and he is anything but negative. On the contrary, he is of  a “honest and pure heart”.

In this silence of waiting all wishful thinking fades. Only a true faith persistently remains in spite of what is not experienced.   And sometimes out of seemingly no where, a fish takes the fly.

If you would like to dialogue with me on the contents of this essay or any other essay on this blog you can write me at  suragea1@aol.com

Fish Stories On the River and In Church

“Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes”  Don Marques

I notice when I go fishing with friends or guides and we split up and then come back to talk about how well we did things can get distorted rather quickly. There is pressure to make sure one looks as good as the other guys. So, two fish becomes 5 fish, a fish of 16 inches becomes  20 inches, fish momentarily hooked become landed fish, and the one that got away was at least 2 feet long,  And so on. I think we have all done this and told fish stories or at least told exaggerations of the truth. Maybe such exaggerations are harmless and just a part of the fishing experience. However, at the very least we have to acknowledge the distortion of reality that takes place as we are left wondering what each person truly caught and experienced. In essence, we don’t know the truth.

Human nature being what it is, I have become convinced that a similar phenomenon can occur in the Christian church as individuals claim to stories of experiencing the divine. There is pressure to look as spiritual as everyone else. So, if someone tells a story about how God answered a prayer or about how God caused something to happen, then there is a natural reaction in the listeners to try to match the story. And if those listening don’t really have a story that measures up then the exaggerations begin. I think there can be enough pressure to cause people to flat out make up things or at least distort things. When Christians get caught up in giving “testimony” it seems that no one is ever supposed to question the validity of the claims made. Discernment is not allowed otherwise one might be perceived as being “negative” or not being “spiritual”.  This is unfortunate because the discerning individual rather than being judged as being cynical and lacking faith can actually be the person of great faith and one who is holding onto an authentic image of the divine.     

I am no longer shocked or appalled by the possibility of Christians distorting the truth and losing discernment. It happened at the early church of Corinth. Each member was trying to ‘out do’ the other and things ended up rather chaotic and immature. My guess is that this sort of thing still goes on in many church fellowship groups just as men will commonly tell fish stories on rivers.   

A big part of the problem is that I think we have a limited understanding of how God can be experienced.   We hope that God is there with us every step of the way, always speaking to us and taking care of us, comforting us and making us aware of his presence in our lives. There is nothing wrong with this desire. The problems occur when we demand to experience God according to our own agenda and terms and we try to match our experience to fit in with the group. And then when God does not conform to our ways or the agenda of the group, then the pressure to measure up causes people to misinterpret their experiences.  We can then distort reality. We try to make something out of nothing or misinterpret the nothingness experienced.

 It is precisely here where many of us have not been taught properly about how to experience the absence and silence of God.  This is a misunderstanding of how God uses emptiness and silence (basically, the “experience” of NOT experiencing God) to teach us true faith. This misunderstanding not only causes Christians to distort and exaggerate but it can also cause the Christian church to rely on old worn out clichés that have lost their vitality. Somehow, we think the old clichés will clothe our nakedness and keep us looking and feeling spiritual when in reality we may feel an aloneness and emptiness that is beyond words (Ironically, the fact that the emptiness and silence of God are beyond words is the clearest indication that such an experience might be genuinely divine)  The clichés comfort us and keep us at the same level with those who are also using the clichés but at the cost of authenticity.  

In a sense, these clichés used to try to express the experience of the divine can have about as much credibility as the fish stories told by men in old clothes. They no longer mean what they were intended to mean and they only prop up individuals and keep others from viewing them as inferior. It is easy to hide behind the clichés and use the clichés as masks. It becomes very difficult to come out from behind these masks and to be honest and authentic in such circles. How could an individual dare say ?  “Lately I feel only God’s silence and absence in my life” when so much spiritual drama is being shared. It would be like a fisherman admitting, “I caught nothing”, while his buddies reported all kinds of fish stories.   

I think Christians fall back to using clichés in Christian circles similar to how fisherman use old fish stories to make sure they measure up. Phrases such as “God spoke to me”,  “God is really leading me to….”,  “God is really convicting me”….”God is calling me to” , “I just know God wanted me to”… and many other similar phrases, have become almost meaningless and in some cases offensive. And sadly God gets “blamed” for doing many things that I doubt he had anything to do with.   

Some how it is assumed that we know what someone is talking about when someone says “God spoke to me” or “God did such and such in my life” .  Do we really know what this means?  If we are honest, we have to admit that when we use these clichés we often  don’t know what we are truly talking about and neither do our listeners for the ways of God are a mystery and remain hidden. (see I Cor 2:7 and Romans 11:33 )

I strongly believe that Christians need to develop a new sensitivity and a new language in communicating about the divine experience. There comes a time when our Christian language (the “lingo”) needs to be redeemed. Divine experiences should be communicated with the deepest humility, reverence and honesty, otherwise it can  not only be offensive, but it causes  things to get distorted in the same way that fish stories distort how good the fishing really was on a given day.

 If we continue to merely use old worn out clichés the same way fishermen continue to wear old clothes then our fellowships becomes very similar to how fishing can be merely  a “delusion surrounded by liars in old clothing”. And what should bind us, only alienates us and keeps us deluded.

And then no one knows how the divine is truly experienced or how truth is distorted.  

Thousands of Casts

Martha Graham spoke of the long time it took to learn the art of dancing. She said of the dancer Nijinsky that there were “thousands of leaps before the memorable one”.

I often think about those words while fly fishing and how long it takes to learn this art. Often on a fishing trip, especially to some new water, it may take thousands of casts before I hook a fish. Or, while guiding a beginner, I try to encourage the client that there may need to be thousands of casts before the ‘memorable one’ and a fish is hooked.

Perhaps a parallel can be made in our spiritual lives. Thousands of prayers, hopes and dreams and thousands of days waiting before something memorable happens. And then and only then, after all the waiting, we might be given a glimpse of the divine. Both in fly fishing and in our spiritual lives we have to do a lot of waiting. It is a discipline and it is rare for us to be met with immediate gratification.  

Unfortunately, our culture does not like to wait. We want it all now!  And sadly this need for immediate gratification can creep in to the Christian church. I don’t think the art of fly fishing or the genuine disciplined spiritual life were meant to be so easy. As Norman Maclean quotes his father in “A River Runs Through it”; “All good things-trout as well as eternal salvation- comes by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”  All too often in the church we get the feeling that we will easily experience the presence of the Divine, moment by moment, day by day, and that this rich divine experience  is the norm.    

I have concern for this easy shallow experiential form of Christianity. We live in an age of easy “religion”. We have such easy access to books and cd’s, and prayer groups and Bible study groups and meditation groups and fly fishing web sites and fly fishing classes.  We tend to think we can walk up to a river and not only catch all the fish but also easily experience the divine.

I may be a bit cynical but I have learned to be a bit more discerning in regard to what I might credit as being an experience of the divine and what I might call art.  If it were so easy, where would the need for genuine faith be?  Where would the discipline of waiting be?  Where would be the discipline of all the work and practice that goes into truly learning an art?  We are told to ‘test the spirits’ and likewise, we should test the waters with thousands of casts and also test the claims made by others both on and off the water. But most importantly, we need to test and examine ourselves. As Dante said, “Far worse than in vain is he who leaves the shore and fishes for the truth but has not the art”. If we want to be authentic we have to be truthful and we have to learn the art of waiting. And when we learn to wait we learn that the experience of the divine is to be found in the waiting. But “far worse than in vain is he who fishes for the truth and has not the art”.

So while I fish  I often  pray,  Yes, it is my hope that I might get a sense of the divine in the beauty around me. And after ‘thousands of casts’, there is also ‘the hope that a fish might rise’.  In the end, all we can do is keep casting and to have hope and then a fish caught and the divine experience will truly and genuinely be memorable.

Perhaps There Remains

In looking back over 40 plus years of fly fishing I have tried to draw parallels between the spiritual life and fly fishing. Looking for spiritual meaning in our lives and the activities we find ourselves engaged in is a difficult task and “tricky”. One must wade in these waters carefully.

I have no intention of writing about lofty, divine, spiritual experiences while fly fishing. I have not been so fortunate to be able to make any such claims. Nor do I easily experience the beauty of God’s creation while fly fishing. But I have experienced “something” that perhaps we could call spiritual and I will try to communicate this experience.  

I look to the existential poet Rainer Maria Rilke for help in understanding this experience. In his most significant work, a set of poems called the Duino Elegies, Rilke opens the series of poems with the question; “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angel’s hierarchies”?  In these poems, Rilke asks the tough questions about life. Are we alone? Why is life so fleeting? Where do we belong?   Rilke poetically tries to answer these deep questions but in a way that may surprise us.

Rilke’s poems suggest that he finds some spiritual comfort to these big questions, as I have, in performing some simple task over and over in a familiar place. He writes, “Oh gently, gently, performing with love some confident daily task,”  and,  “Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we take into our vision; there remains for us yesterdays street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease that when it entered in it never left.” In some sense I almost have to laugh at Rilke’s “revelation”. Is this it? Some tree on a hillside? Some familiar street?  Is this your answer to the great existential questions of life?  What spiritual comfort can be derived from this?

Yet, while fly fishing, I find some truth in Rilke’s prose.  I realize that the most significant aspect of my own fly fishing experience (that I might dare call divine) is to be found in the simple tasks and places that every day, while I fished, I took into my vision.  And those experiences remain with me. These are the images that will never leave me. They comfort me.  There is the memory of a street I walked over and over as a young boy to get to a little pond where I taught myself to first fly fish. It was there casting rhythmically for hours, days, years, that I learned the art of fly casting.  Those memories as well as countless other images of specific places on the South Platte River I have internalized and will stay with me for ever.

For Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It” , the depth of his  fly fishing experience also  seems to have been developed from being in  a specific place accomplishing a simple task over and over. These were the memories that never left him. As an old man in the end of his novel, he is casting alone in the Blackfoot River and he writes, “Then in the arctic half light of the canyon all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four count Rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise”. It is here in “his” river that he has fished for decades all alone, where he experiences the Logos, the ‘Word’ that sustains all things, is the basis of all things, and is under everything. He ‘hears’ from listening so carefully his whole life that, “under the rocks (and under everything) are the words”.  

Perhaps for us there also can be something divine about fly fishing the same places over and over.  The repetition of familiar simple rhythms in familiar places become “loyal habits” that keep us, “at ease” and when they enter in us, they never leave us.  Perhaps, in time, we too, when we lay quiet our anxieties, begin to hear the ‘word’ that sustains us and will never leave.

I find it is a bit of a paradox that something so powerful can be almost hidden,so non-dramatic and yet  found in such simple things.  But, then I remember that Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God being like treasure that is hidden in a field. Perhaps, the kingdom of God remains hidden in the simple places and tasks such as to be found in certain rivers while fly fishing.  Perhaps.

Forty Plus Years: Guiding Insights from "The Old Man and the Sea"

40 Plus Years

Guiding Insights from “The Old Man and the Sea”

When one has been fly fishing for 40 plus years and guiding for 25, there are changes in one’s perspective. In Hemingway’s “Old Man”, a young boy admires the old man Santiago and says that he is the best fisherman, to which the old man replies, “No, I know others better” and then adds…..”I may not be as strong but I know many tricks and I have resolution”.

In thinking about this resolution I have wondered as a guide of 25 years and a fly fisherman of 40 plus years what I have “resolved” in my heart.  

Just as the old man Santiago denies being the best fisherman I gladly do the same. I am resolved to the fact that I am not the best fly fisherman, nor, guide on the river. Being resolved on this issue takes a lot of the pressure off and frees me up to simply enjoy fly fishing and guiding much more. And of course, I am resolved in knowing how ridiculous it is in trying to define a set of criteria that would determine such a label and distinction. Such honors and distinctions are fleeting at best and at their worst, completely meaningless. Even in the tale of “The Old Man and the Sea” we see the fleeting nature of making a great catch. The giant marlin that the old man finally catches is then attacked by sharks and the old man goes home with nothing but the skeletal remains. Fishing and guiding has a way of humbling even the “best”, bringing us to “bare bones”.   I personally, while fishing or guiding,  have broken off, “mis-netted, “mis-guided” or in some fashion lost more fish, fallen in the river, and did just about every stupid thing imaginable in the realm of  fishing  that there is absolutely no room for boasting. I have been humbled far too many times to ever make a claim of being the best or any where close to it. And often when my clients have make wonderful catches they happen in such a manner that it really has little to do with my instruction. I have had clients do exactly everything I taught and yet fail to make big catches and at other times the client does everything wrong and defies all my instruction only to make a wonderful catch. When one had been guiding for many years you learn there is a lot of irony in fishing. And I am resolved to accept such irony.

We see another wonderful quality in the old man that is closely linked to humility that can also come with age. While Santiago was battling the great marlin Hemingway writes, “Then he began to pity the great fish he had hooked”.  He wondered about the age of the fish and wondered what the fish was thinking and planning to make its’ escape. He considered the fish as being mysterious and wonderful and he respected it.  

After guiding on the Platte for 25 years I am also resolved to pity the fish and to have respect for the resource and to do all that I can to protect it.  As I have written elsewhere I am resolved to the fact that “catching and counting’ as many fish as possible separate from some form of pity and concern for the resource is sheer stupidity. Over the decades,  I have seen many fisheries “pounded to death”. I have seen fly fishers and guides standing in the same exact spot for 6 hours day after day without moving.  As guides we must have some bigger vision of what it means to teach others about fly fishing and this certainly means taking some form of pity on the fish and having concern for others. I am resolved that guiding should involve teaching in such a way that leaves the client with more knowledge, skills, and  fascination and respect, rather than a claim of a certain number of  fish netted on a given day.

Besides having resolution, the old man Santiago does make one other claim that old age has brought him. He says that “he knows many tricks”. Obviously, these are tricks that only come with old age and years of experience. These tricks will compensate for his waning strength.  The tricks of older guides can mean many things and I guess they would no longer be tricks if I spelled them all out. Nor, could I.  All I know is that after guiding and fishing for decades there are simply certain things I have learned in order  to deal with an ever changing set of variables that might occur on the river on a given day. These tricks take into account the conditions of the river and the skill level and attitudes of the client and countless other variables. The veteran guide simply knows when it is time to move, maybe only a step here or there or knows when it is time to change holes completely; knows when it is time to change a technique or change the fly; knows when it is time to speak and instruct and when it is time to back off and remain silent. And even when the client has broken off his 5^th fish in a row the veteran guide knows how to patiently and calmly reinstruct without making the client feel bad. I know I could not do these things in my younger days.

I think perhaps the greatest “trick” and form of resolution that a guide can possess is to be resolved to the fact that the fishing trip is NOT about him. It is not about the guide. It is not about the guide’s ego. It is not about how many fish the guide netted or how many fish could have been netted. Nor is it about how many fish the guide could catch or how many he caught last week or last year.  I guess, if nothing else, the old age of 40 plus years of fly fishing brings the veteran guide to a place where they have nothing to prove anymore to anyone; not the client nor one’s self, but can only give and offer to the client what decades of fishing has taught him so the client can then go out on one’s own and learn their own tricks and their own place of resolution.

As a guide, I hold out my bag of tricks and offer 40 plus years of fly fishing experience to those willing to learn and  knowing all along,  it is not about me.