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
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