Remembering the Call: Saying Yes to the Journey to Fly Fish. Insights From Christian Fly Fishing Guide

“Sometimes a man stands up from supper, walks outdoors and keeps walking because of a church somewhere in the east and his children say blessings on him as though he were dead and another man who remains inside his house dies there beside the dishes and in the glasses so that his children have to go far out into the world toward the same church which he had forgot”.  Rilke

From the beginning fly fishing was something that as a kid I felt almost compelled to do rather than staying home or spending time with the neighborhood crowd. As the poem above metaphorically suggests, it was as though, one day I just got up, walked away and was lost fishing in the woods. And for those who noticed I was not around that much anymore they may have wondered what had happened to me and they may have even said blessings for me as though I were dead. And I guess figuratively speaking it was as though I were socially dead.

The Rilke poem suggests that the call comes from some church far away that was forgotten. “Sometimes a man stands up from supper and walks outdoors and keeps walking because of a church somewhere in the east”.  Likewise, we may remember a time when something bigger than life spoke to us.  We may have forgotten a friend who spoke to us in some powerful manner, or we may remember an experience we never could shake off, or a glimpse of some mystery we could never explain. We might recall a lost dream, or what it was we really loved and wanted to do with our lives before the complications of life set in.  And perhaps for some of us we might even remember that as a child we loved to fish but as adults we never found the time to pursue it with all of life’s pressing concerns. But some how we still remember the smells of early morning on some river or lake, the way the first light of the day strikes the water or we remember how we once caught  a glimpse of something large and powerful lurking below the surface and somehow that adventure, once again, calls to us.   

If we ignore the call to adventure too long we tend to dry up and spiritually, in some sense, die, still clinging to our rational excuses.  We might die right there, “beside the dishes and in the glasses,”  or, where ever we have hidden and forgotten our true passion and intention for life. Many men at midlife struggle knowing what to do with themselves and find them selves confused, tired and “stuck”, and that sense of truly feeling alive is nothing but a faint memory.

I have known many folks who for complex reasons can never “get away” to fish or respond to the call to take any kind of out door adventure. Or, some of us may not even be able to hear the call anymore.  And those that do hear the call feel too entangled in “responsibilities” that they cannot leave for even for a few hours.

And some have just simply forgotten.