The Fisher King

Often while at my work or trying to relate to people or sometimes even while fly fishing I feel weak and ineffective. In some sense, I feel like the lame and wounded “fisher king”, who is in need of healing.

During such times it is quite easy for me to think nothing of royalty, kingship and power. How powerful could I be if I can’t catch a fish or make the simplest of decisions needed through out the course of the day or how I don’t want to be bothered by anything or anyone because I feel so ineffective?

Yet, no matter how weak I feel I cannot completely forget about certain verses in the Bible that speak of being part of a “royal priesthood”. I wonder if somehow,  I am spiritually wired to know something of divine royalty even as I feel a bit crazy for even entertaining such thoughts. I laugh at myself and think, “Royalty?  Kingship?  What do you know of royalty when you feel so weak”?  But then again, as crazy as it all sounds and how contradictory my experiences might be, I cannot shake off some sense of royalty deep in my blood.

And as is often the case the poets help me. Theodore Roethke asks, “What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance”.  I wonder if that is why life feels so strange to me? Is that why I feel a bit crazy? Is my madness simply the nobility of my soul at odds with circumstance?

Williams Stafford describes how difficult and lonely life can be for the individual and particularly for one who might have a sense of royalty deep in his bones. He writes how, “When the great wind comes and the robberies of the rain leave you standing on the corner shivering”;  and how we can  “watch the people who go by and how we wonder at their calm”. And how people can, “Miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind”.

And for me, like the poet, the whisper inside my head asks me again and again, “Who are you really, wanderer?”?

“And the answer I have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around me is, maybe I’m a king.”

A wounded king in desperate need of healing.