“The way through the
world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.” Wallace Stevens
I easily get bored sitting around thinking about the world
to come or to what lies beyond. I get even more bored when I have to sit in
churches and listen to people pontificate on how to find the way to heaven and
how great it is going to be. I have
little interest to sit around listening or discussing such matters.
However, I think I understand why we might choose merely to
sit around in heavenly contemplation.
Although terribly boring, it is far easier to sit around and talk about
a way beyond this world than to find a way through this world. It
can be easy to sit back, disengaged from life, trying to “save” others under
the pretense that they must find the way to the heaven beyond with its streets
of gold.
Nevertheless, to find a way through this world requires my full engagement, participation and
that I am fully human. It requires
passion and a great love. If I sit
around, only thinking of lofty heavenly states, it disengages me from life. I have
come to believe that finding my way through the world even by fly-fishing is
far more difficult. Yet, this is the task granted to me and that I embrace.
Fly-fishing requires that I make a commitment to journey,
find my way through the world to a river, and learn of God’s creation and the
world of fish. For it is while fly-fishing that I have to find my way through my
fly boxes and find the right fly and I have to use the proper techniques and
casting presentations that allow the fly to drift properly. Fly-fishing my way
through their world, this world,
allows me to stay focused on the fly as it drifts down a current seam-line. Perhaps a fish takes the fly, and allows me
to know, if only briefly, that I have found the way, my way through the world.
Sometimes, as I am finding my way through the world, fly-fishing,
I contemplate deeper tugs that come from down in my soul. I do pay attention to
these deeper tugs. These tugs help me better understand the way even if others
might misunderstand me. If I talk about a spirituality and faith regarding fly-fishing,
then some folks might assume I am only sitting around waiting for the next life
to come. No, I enjoy this life too much and feel deeply responsible to respond
to the beauty all around me in this world. Therefore, I fish and
try to find my way to the fish.
I love to cast to the elusive beautiful forms swimming under
the currents, as I try to find my way through the world. I prefer the wonderful
sensations of this life; the strong pulsations of a large fish hooked on the
end of my line, surging downriver. I choose to find my way through the world,
this world; engaged in life, this
life, reading the mysterious waters.
Yet, at times, I know how difficult it can be even to find my
way through my own home and life’s complications, to get to the garage to rig a
fly rod. Harder still to turn the key to my truck and find my way to the river.
And, then if I get there, I might take a fall or get in a tangled mess and
catch nothing.
Yet, all of this searching, struggling, falling and rising, tugs or no tugs,
catching and not catching, are finding my way through the world and perhaps in
the world to come.
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