Speaking From the Edge To Those On the Edge: A Reasonable Request For Dialogue

If our Christian faith teaches us anything at all it teaches us that real dialogue should or could be restored. We should be able to talk to one another. We should be able to talk to one another about what we honestly experience. We should be able to talk with depth with one another. Yet, often this is not the case.

If we feel as though we are on some edge and we express what that edge feels like I would hope there are folks out there or in my life who understand that feeling and feel the sharpness of that edge.

If we feel misunderstood we should be able to talk with one another about that misunderstanding with out it being a big ordeal; without being labeled or judged as being “off”, crazy, negative or lacking faith. In other words, if we feel misunderstood there should or could be people in our lives who have felt this pain to a common level that they get it and they help us out of our own self pity.   

If we share with others a general feeling of being alone even as we live and breathe with friends and family and belong to different groups, hopefully there are those in our lives who can join in and share in our loneliness and our “not-at-home-ness”.

If we feel as though we belong in another world and this present world does not make much sense, then I would hope we could talk about those feelings and try to understand, together, why that feeling just might be true.  Ironically, that feeling of some deep homesickness could be our common ground as “He, (God) is the great homesickness we never shake off.” Rilke.

If we feel tired of trying to play a game that really does not resonate with our souls we should be able to talk about that uneasiness and perhaps together, as small communities, we can agree where, how and to what extent we are to engage in the world and yet be salt to the world.

Lamenting about the fact that we live on this edge could be a common experience among those of us who believe.  Jesus spoke of the blessed ones as being those who mourn. In fact, grief could be the foundation of our spiritual experience with one another. Rilke the poet understood how we waste the opportunity to grow from pain and yet it could be our foundation with one another, “How we squander our hours of pain …though they are really our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen, one season in our inner year-, not only a season in time-, but our place and settlement and soil and home”.

If we feel as though “it has been our lifelong longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off” and that we have “always wanted to be on the inside of some door we have only seen from the outside” then we need to know that this is “no mere neurotic fantasy but the truest index of our real situation,” (C.S. Lewis) then we should be able to talk about that feeling of being on the outside of some place at such a depth that the very place we stand together, even on a narrow edge, is a place of togetherness, foundation, community and “home”.   

I choose to experience what I experience as what I experience without trying to change that experience just because it is lonely or difficult. I don’t want to distort my experience because if I do, I may be distorting reality itself and the truth of our real predicament and others who might be feeling the same experience and trying to find such a community, will not be able to find  their way “home’. .  

I put forth this reasonable request for dialogue. Anybody out there on the edge? Anybody  want to talk about it?  We can stand together on one of those narrow carved out places we call rivers.

Christian Men's Fly Fishing Group: Embracing the Messy Edge Areas of Our Lives

In the old Iron John tale a beast is hauled up out of a swamp and put in a cage. The cage is moved into the court yard of a castle for all to see. The beast is all locked up and named Iron John. .

One day a young boy is playing with his golden ball. The ball accidentally rolls near the cage. Iron John picks up the ball. The boy approaches the cage and asks for his ball back. Iron John says, “Not unless you let me out of the cage”.

Robert Bly, in his book “Iron John: A Book About Men”, comments that the golden ball represents a radiance and wholeness that we lost at various points of our life. Some of those significant losses took place when we were quite young and we probably were not aware of the loss. Then, often men unconsciously spend the rest of their lives trying to get the golden ball back and of course, looking in all the wrong places.

Bly comments that the first step in getting the ball back is, “To accept firmly, definitely- that the ball has been lost.” To take this first step is not that easy for many men. It requires honesty. It requires self awareness. It requires paying attention to one’s feelings.

It requires vulnerability.

Some Christian men have done some wonderful work authentically paying attention to their own brokenness and looking to Christ for wholeness.  I too embrace this truth. Yet, sometimes I get the feeling that we think we just need to fall on our knees one time and ask for forgiveness that we will then be automatically whole again. Life will be wonderful and golden all the time and the blessings will flow. I just don’t think true  Christianity as that simple or easy.

For me to accept firmly that the ball has been lost means to see the truth that my own life is broken and messy. I am not as I ought to be. To accept the Gospel of Jesus is to embrace the brokenness and messiness of my own life and those around me. It is not about life being golden.

For me, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about believing or acting a certain way so that I can then have everything be golden and have blessing after blessing come my way.

Jesus came for the sick, the broken, the lost and for those who mourned.  

Sometimes all I can do is agree that my own life is at its best, messy. I can admit it. That is the first step. But, then, what do I do about the messy areas?  Can I move toward those places?  I don’t know if I can because it is those messy places, those “edges”, that are fearful places for me. They are not fun or make me feel comfortable and they do not feel like “blessings”. .   

As a group of men this past Saturday fly fishing the Platte, we tried to begin to talk about those edges. It was not easy. But, for some of us, it was a first step in admitting and knowing that our golden ball has been lost and life is not whole even as the fishing was golden. .

Women Saying Yes to the Journey of Fly Fishing

I think women are generally better at certain things than men. Simply being able to say “yes” to participating in a fly fishing and faith retreat seems to be one of them.

The Reverend Jim White and I have been doing these fly fishing retreats for several years now. Women have been the most responsive. In talking with one of the participants this past weekend, Chris, said, “When I saw the invitation I just said yes”.  I have to admire such decisiveness. Men should be as decisive but often we perpetually waver caught in between stagnation, fatigue, desperation and perceived responsibility. “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation,” said Thoreau.

Poetry by e.e Cummings seemed fitting as these women all said  ‘yes’ to the adventure to fly fish under  the beauty of a blue sky.  We felt the soulfulness of his words: “I thank you God for this most  amazing day, for  leaping greenly spirits of trees, for a blue true dream of sky above, for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is, YES.”

Poetry:  Another area where women are generally more moved in their souls and have a  greater depth of understanding. And these women knew poetry, literature and seemed to have access to the inner life.  

Community: These women could talk about what they felt inside with one another and were readily expressive.

Thankfulness: Once again, I think women are generally more thankful for life and its opportunities. This even seemed to be true in regard to fly fishing as men can be too wrapped up in performance. These women often said, “It does not matter if I catch a fish”. Women generally just love to be on the river trying something new and taking in their surroundings. They are generally more holistic and intuitive in their approach and will often catch fish even as they are not focused on catching fish. .

So we casted our flies on the river and as they sank slowly and tumbled along the bottom we hoped for a tug. At times rainbows and browns took the fly. In a similar fashion we dropped our thoughts, words and prayers into the mystery which we call God and hoped for something to stir in our souls.  I don’t know if there was a response or what that response could be as I am mainly ignorant of such matters. But I do know we sat still in silence. We sat still in contemplation. We hoped.

In the end there was thankfulness for the adventure and the time together. There was thankfulness for this most amazing day and for all these brave women who simply said, “Yes”.

Fish Stories, Tales, And Bible Stories. Literal or Not Literal?

Toward the end of the novel, “A River Runs Through It”, Norman Maclean tells us that his father once asked him, “You like to tell true stories, don’t you?" And Norman answered, “Yes, I like to tell stories that are true”. Then he asked him, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it”? and then added, “Only then will you understand what happened and why.”

I’m not sure what to make of the Reverend Maclean’s comment.  While I have a few ideas I am not certain how writing a fictional story would help anyone understand a family tragedy.  Apparently Norman was not clear what the comment meant either.  Norman remembers the comment in a series of questions his father had asked which left Norman confused. He says, “Once my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have known.”

The comment and questions caught my attention because I love stories. I use stories when I teach, when I guide and when I counsel. Stories do help me and others understand complex issues. And of course I know Jesus used parables.

When Jesus told his parables, most often he did not explain how they should be interpreted. He did not say whether they were true or not. He often just told the story.

He did not say, “You need to take this story to be literally true”. But he also did not say, “Now, you cannot take this story literally”. He just spoke. He just told the parable and let it be. He knew what he was saying was the truth and that was enough.

Sometimes I think people get so hung up on making sure they and their listeners believe a story to be literally and factually true that they can ironically miss the true meaning and power of the story. Without knowing it, their qualifying comments dim the radiance of the story.  And at the same time there are those who are so afraid of being labeled as a fundamental Bible believer that they say again and again to themselves and their listeners, that the story cannot and should not be taken literally.  In a similar manner but for different reasons, they also can miss out on the depth, power and meaning of the story. In essence, I think we can ruin a story and empty it of its’ power and as C.S Lewis once said,  miss out on its “Mythological radiance”, by making too many qualifications, apologies and explanations.

I know when I tell stories to kids and they look at me with those knowing eyes and ask, “Is this story true”?  I then know that with their question they have answered my own question about stories. While I usually do not answer their question I most often say in my mind, “Of course the story is true”.    

Jesus just told the stories. The Bible tells us stories. We are best to just tell the stories or listen to them and perhaps only then will we understand.