What Emerges?

 

After writing Bringing Back Eden: Meditations of a Fly Fisher, I now reflect upon what I wrote. I ask, What was I thinking?  What was I trying to say? What story was trying to emerge?

What emerged was a book about fly fishing that ended up being very existential.  I was painfully repetitive asking those same old questions: Who am I? Where do I belong?  Where is God? Does God intervene in my life? Where is home, the Eden of my youth?

I repeatedly describe casting and casting as a reaching out, hoping for some kind of a response from the fish (as though they are personally responsible for my well being). I describe a deep inner loneliness that was both a painful and beautiful experience, reminding me of my deepest longings.

In the beginning of the book I describe myself as a disillusioned Christian. Yet how can I call myself Christian when I write and talk more like an existentialist and I am more disillusioned than believing? I am more critical than affirming. I live in angst more than in peace. Yet, I can’t throw it all away.  

I describe feeling mesmerized by my own existence. I question what was I doing walking around that pond in northern New Jersey all by myself teaching myself to fly fish? What was I truly seeking? What did I want?  Did I exist merely on  the banks of the pond  or did Something else sustain me?

I live in and upon the tension of the questions and the mystery of my life. I continue to question. I continue to cast into mysteries and I invite others to do the same.

To me, this is what it means to be deeply and truly human.