takemefishing.org |
I was supposed to go fishing this afternoon.
Didn’t happen,
though. Bummer.
I love to fish, though I do not often go. Used to. A lot.
When I was in seminary, I served a little church in western
Kentucky: near Owensboro,
nearer Habit, in a little place called Philpot.
I referred to my ministry as the “Greater Philpot Crusade
for Christ.” A buddy of mine was so taken by the notion that he suggested I
write a song called “Fill Your Pot in Philpot.” I think he had in mind something
on the order of “Get Your Mouth Under the Spot Where the Gospel Pours Out,” but
I thought that “filling your pot” might lend itself to certain… well… other
associations.
I preached Sunday morning, and again Sunday evening. And in the
afternoon, I fished.
Most of the members of the church were famers, and most of
the farms had ponds, and most of the ponds had bass and bream and catfish not a
few. I spent hours on the banks and
occasionally in the shallows (my dress shoes never forgave me). Never caught any
really really big fish—though once…
And this is one of the great memories of my life…
I got a pretty good one on my first cast, after a hospital
visit, still in my shirt and tie. I had joined a group that, before I arrived, had
fished fruitlessly for a couple of hours already. I rolled up my sleeves, picked up a rod… and this
one old boy name of Larry O_____ (I still remember it! How could forget?) said,
“Go ahead preacher, we could use a good laugh.”
You know what happened next: my lure barely hit the water
before a fair-sized bass hit it hard (ker-THUNK)—as surely as if Jesus had told
me where to put my line in for a catch.
NEVER have I been so thrilled to land a fish… NEVER has a
moment been so perfect…I will NEVER forget Larry’s name! Or the look on his
face. Wish there had been cell phones with cameras in those long-ago days.
The best fish I ever
got was a 30 lb. permit—trophy size—but we put it back. My buddy David and I,
with the invaluable help of our guide, landed that bad boy in about three feet
of water in Isla Mirada…three years ago, now, I guess it was.
The same David and I were going again today—just pond
fishing, but with a skiff and trolling motor. Didn’t happen, though. Bummer.
Literally. David has a bad hip and today
was a bad day so…no way for a sore-bottomed-man to sit in a flat-bottomed boat.
As it were.
Didn’t keep me from thinking about it, though: how patience
is key. How the life you are trying to catch is unseen, unpredictable.
How sometimes
you see a flash of light below the surface, and sometimes a rippling that indicates
some deeper movement.
How sometimes you sit all day and come away with nothing, and
how sometimes it seems you can’t get your line back in the water fast enough,
as if the fish want to jump into the boat unbidden.
How you can hang your hook,
or snap a line on weeds and dead branches. How not everything you catch is
worth keeping.
How what you do catch, even if it is trophy-size (and maybe
especially if it is) you might want to give back—to the water, to someone else,
for another day. How you hold the rod, watch the line, tense and relaxed both at
the same time. How you wait, wait, wait, ready, but you can’t do anything till
the fish does, so you wait. How you thrill to the strike, but the strike
doesn’t mean you’ve hooked the fish. How if the fight is over too soon you are
disappointed, but if you fight too long, the fish can work the hook out of its
mouth and be lost.
How the work of fishing is an art, and the art of fishing
hard work—and beautiful together. (And yes, I recently re-watched A Rivers Runs Through It: “all existence fades to a
being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.” Lord, it makes me cry even to think of it.)
There is, in nature, no perfect
analogy to the spiritual life, but fishing is close. Birdwatching, too, as
Rowan Williams describes it in Being
Disciples: putting yourself in position, sitting very still and waiting (sometimes
without success) to be amazed.
In these weird, anxious days, I am thinking of Church life in
much the same terms. As we try to catch and land the future—that while there is no perfect analogy to the times we
are living through, or to the days ahead, you could do worse than think about
fishing.
How will go from here? What will our new life look like? I
keep thinking that fishing was the
original occupation of at least four of the disciples (though they were pretty
awful at it. Did you realize, they never ever catch even a single fish unless
Jesus is with them, telling them when and where to throw the net. Well, there
you go). Jesus compared their new life as servants of the Gospel to fishing,
too, though of a different sort. Just so.
If, till now, we have been fishing for people in a
particular way, we may in this ear hear Jesus’ call to lay down those nets in order to take up new ones;
or to put our nets in on the other side
of the boat. And yes, maybe we have tried that spot before and caught nothing,
nevertheless at Jesus’ word we may cast again and now so many in the nets we
don’t know what to do with them. Or how to bring them in.
Which is to say, we too need Jesus’ help to catch anything
like new insight or wisdom from this time, or in order to order to land
so-called “second-“ and “third-tier
congregations.” We will need to work together, too, in a way that maybe we
haven’t before.
I am convinced there is all sorts of stuff going on under
the surface of this moment, lots of hungry life all around us, and we can see
flashes of light… but we have to be both patient and urgent, ready and waiting,
alert and relaxed.
And yes, some of our casts will get hung-up in the weeds and
break some lines on dead stuff. And no, not everything that we hook will be
worth keeping. But we keep at it. What was it Bagger Vance said about golf? It is
a game that can only be played, never won.
Fishing, too: whether we are trying to land the Big One, or praying
that the Big One lands us and won’t let us get away.