In the movie, “A River Runs Through It”, there is a beautiful scene where Norman, Paul and their Father, are all fly fishing on the Big Black Feet River. We then watch as Paul wanders off somewhat and starts casting in a different direction with a different technique, and is catching fish. The narration reads, “Then I saw something remarkable. For the first time, Paul, broke free of our Father’s instruction into a rhythm all his own.”
I have been thinking a lot lately about fishing and living spiritually from the edge. Some people such as Richard Rohr are calling this edge liminal space, a space in between and how it can be a blessed, sacred and prophetic place. It can be a place of death and rebirth and therefore a threshold of creativity.
In fly fishing as well as in our spiritual lives sometimes we can get stuck into one way of doing things. The initial instruction was perhaps the first and only instruction we received; it worked (we caught some fish), so we stuck to it. But when we rely on this one way of casting for all situations we are going to eventually find our selves approaching a new threshold and an invitation to change and recreate. And this is when the fly fisher can begin to become an artist.
To move into a liminal space means we approach a new edge and consider going beyond the previous ways of doing things. It is a threshold. It is a door or a gate that we can move through. It is Paul, going beyond his Fathers instruction and creating a new technique and approach to his casting. It is in this liminal space where Paul is free to explore the possibilities and is not tied down to convention and mainstream thought.
While I personally cannot lay claim to having created any special or new way of casting I can relate to trying to go beyond standard, conventional ways of casting. Like many experienced fly fishers, I have learned techniques and approaches from other fishermen and have rearranged them somewhat putting them together in different combinations for different situations. And sometimes a somewhat “new” style emerges. But I doubt this is something new under the sun.
It seems like most of us learned how to drift a fly by quartering upstream and then mending or high sticking the line. This technique works, but eventually you get to the point where you find different ways of achieving a good drift, even a better drift, with the fly in order to fool big trout. For me personally, (again I did not create this technique), I know when it comes to fooling the biggest and most wary fish on a river I rely on an “across and down” technique to provide the most natural “fly first” presentation. This is particularly true when dry fly fishing. The trick is to present the “fly first” to the fish so that when the fish is looking upstream and overhead all the fish sees is the fly and not the leader.
Now if you are a beginner and wondering how to achieve this type of a presentation I invite you to enter that place of liminality. It is a place of uncertainty and if you try this your casting may look unconventional to others (I call my own style of casting, “slop and flop”), but I encourage you to go out there and keep at it and experiment. Be ok with looking sloppy, at least at first. Casting down and across is sort of like doing things backwards, inverted and upside down all at the same time. It is casting downstream when everyone else around you is casting upstream. It is doing an “about face” and looking in a different direction. It is deliberately stopping casts in mid air. It may also involve casting where (to others),there is least likely a fish. It is casting to that tiny slot carved out by a narrow riffle when every one else is fishing a big obvious hole. When fishing in liminal space anything can happen. Sometimes the biggest fish is lying in that narrow slot, takes the fly and then comes exploding out the water. Who could have predicted it?
We know individuals who lived in this liminal space. Gandhi spoke from and in to a liminal space when he refused to submit to unjust laws imposed upon him, even as British guards had clubs and beat him. Gandhi speaking the truth in love with a gentle voice and from a place of liminality changed history. Martin Luther King’s words of “I have a dream” echoed in a liminal space and still do. Cervante’s Don Quixote still lives on in liminal space between fiction and nonfiction, fact and fantasy, being at the same time both crazy and yet visionary, naïve and yet believing. Jesus spoke to us from a liminal space when he said things like “The first shall be last and the last shall be first”; “The greatest among you will be the servant of all”, or “He who loses his life shall find his life and he who finds his life shall lose it”, and “You must be born again”. In liminal space, things seemed to be turned upside down and paradox is common, if not the norm.
In regard to the Christian church I wonder if Christians can do this “about face” and live in liminal space? I am becoming more and more convinced that we must do this exactly and find a way to do it respectfully. We need to move out of our comfort zones to the edge. But like any great spiritual truth, it is the way of paradox and it will not make sense. It will not be easy. Expect to be lost first before you find your way. “That place among the rocks, is it a cave or winding path. The edge is what I have” (Roethke).
But this is a place of opportunity. Richard Rohr says it this way, “When you live on the edge, you are in a very auspicious position. You are free from its central seductions, but also free to hear its core message in very new and creative ways. When you are at the center of something, you usually confuse the essentials with the non-essentials, and get tied down by trivia, loyalty tests, and job security. Not much truth can happen there.”
Look for those large trout on the edge. Turn around. Cast across and down, fly first, so the trout only sees the fly. And then “hold on”, or, I mean “let go”. Rather, do both.
You are in liminal space.
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