"As If Standing on Fishes": Reluctant Fly Fishing Guide Journeys On A Wintry Gray Day

There is a part of me that has always been a bit paranoid about going on adventures. Most often there is a part of me that is somewhat scared especially when I travel alone; a feeling that something might go wrong and I will be stranded on the side of the road, get pulled down in a deep hole on the river or buried in an avalanche.  It is a sinking feeling, “as if I am standing on fishes” (Rilke).

This is a bit ironic because over the course of my life time, in spite of this sinking feeling,  I still manage to launch many solo journeys into the mountains. But before I go it often feels like a 50/50 chance I might just bag the plan. To get out the door, I have just a strong enough intuition to know that most often I have to rather abruptly, “just go”. I have to just take the first step and let go of the risks and fear. Sometimes I have to just quickly load up the truck and start down the road otherwise I will remain on the couch. And most often, or at least afterwards, it feels right to push through and go. “Moving Forward” as the poet Rilke says as the title of one of his poems.

So, on the first day of my Thanksgiving break I load up the SUV and head west up Ute pass in spite of overcast gray skies, ice packed roads, and a strong chance of snow. Oh, yes, how I wanted to use any thing for an excuse to not go. But I went even as “my feelings sank as if standing on fishes”.

Fear is a strange thing in a reluctant traveler like my self.  It makes me more observant. It makes me pay close attention to things. I look for signs of changing weather and icy roads.  I feel things deeply and strangely  as though I am in a hyper-sensitive state of awareness. .  And mysteriously, “I feel closer to what language cannot reach”, namely God.

I look for other signs. As I drive up the pass through the gray, I see a blue hole in sky. It is where I am going. I move forward. I feel more secure seeing a lake of blue in the sky opening up. “The deep parts of my life pour onward as if the river shores were opening out”.  I too open up as I move onward.

But then as I move forward, the hole in the sky closes off and disappears. I drop off again into the deep gray. “My feeling sinks as if I am standing on fishes”. Once again I feel I am on shaky ground and, indeed, a slippery road.

As I head through South Park and up Hoosier Pass, the snow deepens. I am surprised to see so much snow on the south side of the pass. Usually it dumps on the other side. Nothing is as predictable as I want it to be.  Such are adventures.  My wheels slip in 4 wheel drive. I think of the small snow shovel I brought just in case. I wonder to myself, “Should I have come”?

Where was I going? Was it to fish? To ski?  To spend some time alone?  To see? “To feel closer to what language cannot reach”? Maybe it was to simply get off the couch and push through the gray to a pond in the sky. 

“I climb into the windy heaven, out of the oak, and in the ponds broken off from the sky”.

And as I drop over the other side of the gray,  Still, “My feeling sinks as if standing on fishes”.

Still not sure I should have come.

What Color Is the Sky In Your World Where You Fish?

Well, for me, it depends. I kind of live in a bubble of my own.

I choose this bubble because for the most part I find our culture to be quite flat. Since I am a part of this culture I guess that flatness is also my fault. I am just not sure what to do about it. So, I often stay “inside” my bubble and insist the sky is the color that I see.

I find this inner world I often live in to be quite rich. It is most often quite richer than what lies outside me. It is different. In my bubble I see images from long past or from far ahead. They are preserved in my mind and heart. They remain.

I often wonder if others see the same images. I wonder what color the sky is in their world. I wonder if others have inner worlds of their own.

I know some poets who have the vision to speak of the importance of these inner images. As Rilke said, “The man who cannot quietly close his eyes certain that there is vision after vision inside, simply waiting until nighttime to rise all around him in darkness- its all over for him. Nothing else will come; no more days will open.”

To not see these internal images is to have only this world,; this flat culture we live in. In that sense, if this  is all we have, "it is all over".  As Christians we should have the richest collection of images because, at least in theory, we have "seen" some of the kingdom. "We came into this world trailing clouds of Glory", and those glorious images need us to remember them. 

Perhaps the images need us as much as we need them. The images need us to continue to hold on to them and reflect them in the world.  If we think this flat superficial Christian culture is all we have for our inner worlds; if this is all there is to the kingdom, then we have settled for a form of religion. In fact, we have settled for a very boring form of  religion.

These images I see before my heart give me hope.. They comfort me.  They are deep and loving companions. They promise to rise before me as long as I invite them, wondering if somewhere the sky is a deeper blue.

A deep, deep blue sky over the rivers I fish.

Casting Shadows On The South Platte River: Reeling in Projections

I remember thirty years ago my first adventures up into Cheesman Canyon. I quickly noticed how if I cast my shadow over the fish they were gone. Spooked.

Over the years I have done my share of spooking fish by carelessly projecting my shadow on to the waters I fish. I continue to do so. I have also done my share of casting shadows on people and have scared some folks away.

Projecting my own shadow on to others quite simply means I take what I don’t like or accept in myself and cast it on to someone else. Many of us are pretty good at this and we don’t even know we do it just as often times we don’t know why the fish have moved out of a particular run.

The Christian church (and I include myself), has done its share of projecting. We all have. Show me a group of any kind and chances are they project their disapproval on to others. What bothers me the most is not that the Christian church projects but rather we seem to largely be unaware about the issue in spite of some rather strong teachings from Jesus. Maybe this is because Christians are often paranoid of forms of psychology. Some times I get the feeling that if I were to start talking about casting shadows, projections or mention the name of Carl Jung that people would think I was being “unbiblical”.

Yet, ironically, I find no better argument on this topic than in what Jesus said. He spoke of first taking the log out of our own eyes so we can then see clearly. He spoke of the fact that when we judge others we will be judged with the same measure.

How could I be judged with the same exact measure? I have wondered what this verse really means.  I don’t think this verse means that God will personally judge me “back” or that people will judge me back with the same measure in which I judge others. That sounds too petty of God. Perhaps what it means is that the same measure will be used to judge myself because IT IS I WHO IS DOING THE JUDGING ON MYSELF WHEN I JUDGE SOMEONE ELSE.  I am really judging myself. I am really disliking myself. I am really disgusted with my self and I don’t even know it. But I am doing it with the ‘same measure’ because when I point my finger at you I am really pointing it at myself. It is in exact measure. Insult for insult; condemnation for condemnation.

In some sense I know this is not rocket science but why is it so difficult to pull back the projections. Why is it so difficult to reel it in? Why is it that 30 years later I am still casting shadows all over the place?

And why can’t I approach that pool with big rainbows laying on the bottom with out my shadow being cast all over the water?

We need a different approach. Anyone have any ideas?

Winter Enduring Foliage: One Season In Our Inner Year

 “Let my joyfully streaming face make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you, inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair.  How we squander our hours of pain. How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end. Though they are really our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen, one season in our inner year, not only a season in time, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil and home.” Rilke

Last week I wrote about the melancholy nature of the Fall season and how at least for me is a time to allow myself to contemplate. It is a time to slow down and deal with some of the pain in life. It is a time to not “squander my hours of pain.”   It is a time to grieve over what I have lost. It is a time to consider my failures and disappointments. 

As I try to contemplate during this Fall season it occurs to me how difficult it is to do this  in our fast paced superficial culture that forever wants us to stay “positive.” It is almost impossible and men particularly are told they can never grieve. With our elder system largely dismantled, most of us have not been taught how to grieve. We lack a ritual to move us into and out of deep sadness.

Without such a ritual we are left to figure it out on our own or ignore our disappointments all together.   My guess is that many don’t even consider such a process and just “keep going”, living each day ‘outside’ their inner souls, cheering on their favorite football team, staying positive and keeping a perpetual smile. “I’m doing fine; thank you very much.”

Rilke powerfully speaks to this lost opportunity and how we often “squander our hours of pain”.  It describes how when pain or sadness enters our lives we just “gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end”.  My feeling is that “gazing beyond” is not the same thing as “going with” or “being with” one’s grief. It is not the same as what Robert Bly describes as “eating ashes.”

What do we lose by this squander? What do we lose by never deeply feeling and dealing with our grief?  All we have to is just look around at our culture and look within our hearts.  The poet suggests we will regret the lost opportunity, “How dear you will be to me then you nights of anguish"  for not tending to the development of the very foundation of our souls, . "Though they are really our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen, . . . but are place and settlement, foundation and soil and home.”

We need a ‘season’ to deal with our hours of pain so we can put on our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen, our place, settlement and home. Without such a season we will remain naked, thin and flimsy, wondering what happened to the foundation of our souls.

The great wind is coming. Time to put on our winter-enduring foliage.

Casting Out of Tune: Late Fall, Over-Taken.

There is something about the Fall season that pulls on me. The cool air, strange smells,  the changing color of leaves swirling on the ground. There is an “otherness” in the air that seems to grasp at me.  

Poets understand this otherness and grasping at the soul,

“We are grasped by what we cannot grasp”. Rilke

Robert Frost felt something tugging at his soul in his walk in a yellow woods on a Fall day as he lamented a path not taken. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, sorry I could not travel both”.  

And  in another poem he describes the grasping as a pensive call to come in the woods,.

“Almost like a call to come in

To the dark and lament.”

Sometimes, the sounds of geese overhead seems to call to us. But often we are out of tune with this call, and late to respond,

“We are not in harmony, our blood does not forewarn us like migratory birds. Late, overtaken, we force ourselves abruptly onto the wind and fall to earth at some iced-over lake”. Rilke

Trying to fish on some iced-over lake late is a metaphorical indication that I might be forcing my way in life instead of being in harmony. I am abrupt rather than flowing with the seasons. I am trying to force fish to take the fly when there is no hatch. The fish are resting and recovering. Perhaps, I should let them be. Perhaps I should do the same.  I feel out of tune.

As Paul Simon wrote, “Like a poem poorly written, we are verses out of rhyme”.  Sometimes I fish like a “poem poorly written, and like a verse out of rhyme”. I am not timing my casts. I am just casting and casting aimlessly.  I’m not even sure I should be there. Perhaps, this is what I need to lament;  To know how out of tune I am.

Perhaps for me the Fall is a time to be metaphorically alone. For me, late fall no longer feels like a call to be grasping at fish but it is more a time for restless contemplation. A time to wander;

“Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing”. Rilke

With our rivers that have been over fished all summer long, perhaps it is time to give it a rest. Time for the shadows to lay over places like the Dream Stream and Eleven Mile Canyon and Deckers.

“Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free”.  

Let the winds bring snow and a message on the wind that helps me be in tune with the greater "otherness" of my life. 

Fitting Others Into Patterns: Judging

Fitting others into patterns can be another manner in which community life is destroyed. A while back my friend David Weddle and I were driving home from fishing.  I was sharing a poem with him about community life by William Stafford (see earlier post on community life). I was reciting the lines,

“If you don’t know the kind of person that I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are then a pattern that others made in the world may prevail”.

David said, “Say that last part again”. I repeated, “A pattern that others made in the world may prevail”.

David shared with me a valuable insight and  the significance of those lines as it relates to community life. He talked about “patterns that others have made” or what we call stereotypes. He talked about “Categories” or “patterns” that we “fit” people in to because we really do not know them. I could see how I have done this with people and how it is hurtful

“If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are”,  is the beginning of the problem.  If we really don’t know each other then we are prone to judge and be judged. It is quite easy to do this if we really do not know the person we are putting in to a pattern. We just assume the person matches the pattern, a pattern that others have made.  And it is far easier to superficially match patterns based on past data, rather than get to know someone deeply.

Perhaps, as Christians we could take this a step further. As Christians we should know each other, or at least begin to know each other in the deeper sense of who we are in God. We should know each other as individuals with unique gifts and life experiences, but sadly even in church we rarely know each other at a deep level.  As the poet says, more often, "The parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark", And no real community can be established. .

We judge others. I judge others. It happens often. If a group of people who do not know each other share what they do for a living, often people are categorized into a pattern or stereotype. The words: Lawyer, doctor, teacher,  preacher, professor, carpenter, business man, fly fishing guide, all can form images in the minds of listeners. We then might then think we know a pattern. We then categorize.

We even judge other fly fishers. We say things like, “He does not know what he is doing. He can’t cast. He only uses San Juan worms or egg patterns. He can’t use a dry fly. He fishes the same hole every time, (or ‘God forbid’), he uses bait and eats his fish”.

We even judge others for being judgmental. We think we  see a pattern and we just assume that a  person is judgmental.

What is strange is that we tend to think of our judgments and “categories” as being uniquely our own insight into the character of others. We think putting people into these patterns is a reflection of our own individualistic and independent wisdom. This leads to a certain sense of pride and smugness even though the reality is that often someone else made the pattern. Remember the words of the poet suggest we merely follow, “as elephants parade holding each elephants tail; . . . a pattern that others made may prevail” and “following the wrong god home we may miss our star.”

We see in the Gospels how Jesus was judged and “pattern-ized.”  If he was seen eating with the “wrong” people they put him into a category. He, more than anyone, knew the pain of not being known and misunderstood.  Strange how none of those patterns or categories fit him because he did not match any known pattern on Earth.

.

And because we are at least in some small way,  “in God”, the patterns we think we see in others really don’t match either. As soon as we try to fit someone into a pattern or stereotype seemingly out of no where some thing from beyond the pattern rises as from a far off land  or as a trout rises, and we are pleasantly surprised and proved to be wrong.   

Fly Fishing Experts: How to Catch More and Bigger Fish?

Not really.

We live in a society where we practically worship gurus. It’s not really their fault. We prop them up. We prop them up in many areas of life. I hear of them in fly fishing, sports, fitness and finance and education. I hear about them on how to live the spiritual life. I hear about them in regard to how to catch more and bigger fish.

 I wonder why we do this propping up and putting folks on stage.  It is almost as though we have a neurotic need for gurus. We sit in workshops and classes and in church pews taking notes and listening to their every word. I guess I have grown skeptical of it all.

In contrast to guru idolization, I love the message of a rather cynical poem by Charles Bukowski titled “The Secret”.  In the poem he assures us that no one is really all that special and magical.

“Nobody has the strange and hidden power, Nobody is exceptional or wonderful or magic, they only seem to be. It’s all a trick, an in, a con, don’t buy it, don’t believe it” 

Maybe this idolization of gurus is symptomatic of the “Sibling Society” we now live in as described by Robert Bly (Sibling Society, 1996 Bly). If we are a bunch of little immature kids all competing for recognition and immediate gratification then the idea of having gurus fits in nicely. We blindly welcome this idolization of gurus because we think they will give us the edge over the other squabbling siblings.

In fly fishing, we think that the guru will show us magically how to catch more or bigger fish all the time. Just like magic.

In the spiritual life there is always some guru offering some new way to always be happy or blessed or fulfilled or on how to live a victorious life.  

Bly also describes this sibling society as one that “participates in more and more nonevents”.  A guru announces that he is speaking on how to catch more trout or bigger trout and the masses show up. But most often, it is another ‘non event.’ Nothing new or magical is presented.

In the field of education I wish I had a dollar for every workshop, taught by some expert, that I had to sit through on some new way to teach. Maybe I could have retired a few years earlier.

Perhaps in the end this is what the fly fishing and the spiritual life have in common. There is no magic. No one really has it all figured out whether it be about life or fly fishing. The truth is that we really don’t know a whole lot.  And on any given day we can find ourselves stripped of everything and overwhelmingly stumped. Completely humbled.  Fishless. Spiritually, financially and emotionally bankrupted.

There are no gurus. There are no guides.  Not really. At least not in the way we most often think.

Bukowski concludes his poem with this final thought.

“There are no strong men, . . . at least you can die knowing this and you will have the only possible victory”.