Sunday, July 3, 2016

Our Grubby Little Lives

A lesser known fact about me: I am the world's worst fisherman.

That's not hyperbole.

My dad, who is really a pretty good fisherman, has taken me fishing many times over the years.  I've trolled for trout and angled for bass and jigged for salmon and even cast a few flies.  I love the idea of fishing, but one thing has always been missing for me.  One thing has always kept me from enjoying it the way my dad does, the way almost everyone who fishes enjoys it: the fish.  I don't catch any.

In all of times I have fished in my life, whether in a row boat or a float tube or with waders or on the shore or 300 feet above a weighted down rigger, I can count the number of fish that I have caught over the past 30 odd years on two hands.  I just don't catch fish.  I'm cursed.

It doesn't make sense.  'The funny thing about fishing is that it isn't hunting.  You don't have to stalk them or cover yourself with fish urine so they don't smell you.  While diehard fishermen may disagree with me, success in fishing is largely about preparation and equipment.  The right lure, the right spot, the right time, and voila, fish on the line.  Equipment impacts hunting, but a good hunter can be largely successful with inferior equipment.  On the other hand, while there is definitely skill involved in reeling and netting, all the skill in the world won't make fish bite the wrong lure at the wrong time.  

That's what doesn't make sense about my inability to catch fish.  I'll be on a boat with the latest person who is going to show me that the curse is nonsense.  We'll be fishing at the same time, in the same spot, using the same equipment, and the fish just don't bite my line.  I don't know why that is, but I know when it started.

When I was nine or ten, my family took a trip to Alaska.  No, we didn't fly.  We drove.  Towing a trailer.  35 miles per hour.  On a 2,000 mile dirt road. Sound fun?

It took a while to get there.  But that was ok, because the fishing is great along the way.  And it was.

30 years later, I still remember reeling in the grayling on rivers while being sucked dry by the biggest mosquitos you will ever see.  (My brother bought a cap in Alaska with a picture the pest and the caption "Alaska State Bird".)  Up till this point I was still a kind of normal kid when it came to fishing.  Sometimes I caught fish, sometimes I didn't.  

But that changed when we reached the Kenai River.  

On the Kenai, the river literally boiled with fish.  Salmon so thick, it looked like you could walk across the water on their backs.  My dad caught a fish that was nearly as big as I was, and I wanted to go out on the river too, but I was young and the boat was full, so while they fished, I sat.  Later though, because no one was going out and I wanted to catch a big fish like my dad, I grabbed a pole, geared up, and got in the boat by myself.

I wasn't going anywhere.  The boat was tied to the dock.  The older men and boys snickered a bit at the adorable ignorance of a 9 year old thinking the fish would swim up to the doc to be caught.  (This is a disease that you catch if you fish too long.  I call it I've-fished-so-long-I-forgot-that-fish-really-do-have-to-swim-up-and-bite-my-lure-itis.)

So I sat in the boat and cast my salmon pole out into the river in hopes of hooking a "big one".

And I did just that.  (In your faces!)

I had reeled in a couple of times and then cast out again, when all of a sudden the pole started making this horrible whining noise as the line shot out of the reel.  I was terrified.  I had actually hooked a big salmon and had no idea what to do.  So, like any red-blooded, american male in the throws of a primal and manly pursuit would do, I screamed.

But the line screamed almost as loud as it continued to shoot down the river.

My dad and the others came running.  When they got there though, they first paused and looked at me with the combination of pride and jealousy that you only see when someone has a really big fish on the line.  A really big fish.

But the line just kept going.

They came to their senses, jumped in the boat and while they were getting it untied and the motor started, my dad yells, "Reel!  Joel, reel it in!"

But I was frozen.  "You do it Dad!" Not because I couldn't do it.  I had fished before.  I was prepared.  I had the right equipment.  I clearly had the right time and place.  And even though the pole was way too big for me and the salmon reel was so heavy that it flipped upside down making making me reel  it on the left hand side, I knew what to do.  

I just didn't want to do it.  I was scared.  I wanted my dad to do it for me.  

"No, son.  You can do it.  Just reel it in."  

So I hefted the pole under my armpit and started reeling.  I reeled with everything I had.  I reeled until I couldn't reel anymore.  Literally.

Because after a minute or two, the handle detached from the reel.  

With the pole upsidedown and with me reeling with my left hand, I had spun the handle backward and unscrewed the arm off of the reel.  

I held up the handle to my dad with the betrayed, accusatory, helpless expression that all fathers get at some point, and then we both watched the line reach its terminus.  Plink!  It was over.  The fish, literally the one that got away, ran the entire line out of the reel.  

And that's where it started.  From that point on, I have been unusually unlucky at catching fish.  There is something going on beyond the usual rules that govern the fishing universe.

Which brings me to the book I've been reading for the past two weeks: The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.  I'm reading it with a group of other men, so we take one chapter a week, and that keeps it fairly digestible.  And I need that, I can't just blow through good non-fiction books.  I find myself needing to stop and reflect and apply.  If I just keep reading for the sake of reading, the information goes in one ear and out the other.

Anyway, even if I wanted to, this book isn't one I could "blow through".  Reading C.S. Lewis reminds me (among other things) of how far the English language has slipped.  I rarely have to look up words when I'm reading, but with The Problem of Pain, I'm wearing out the dictionary app on my Kindle.

So in chapter two (one of the two best chapters of the book so far), he makes the case for the necessity of a constant environment in order for free will and self awareness to exist.  I won't go into the details of the argument (because I can't), but it has prompted me to think on much of what God has been teaching me these past few months. 

God, as creator, exists outside of the rules of space and time or maybe he exists simultaneously inside and out.  (The creator, by virtue of his role, cannot be part of the created.  He can interact with it, but there is a separation.)  So, while God is not bound by the plodding nature of our physical existence, I am.  The whole world is.

There are times when God bends these rules and we call those times miracles, but outside of those exceptions, I exist in a static and unchanging system where the rules of physics, life and death, and the constraints of my own awareness are constants.  They don't change.  Gravity and sound and light and mortality... work the same on everyone.

They both allow for the goodness and comfort that life has to offer (sunshine, good wine, intimacy, music) and serve as a proving ground for the work God is doing in my soul.  God may be able to see all the possible endings and decisions and outcomes.  He may also be able to see which ones will ultimately come to pass (I don't know what he can see), but he can also interact with the moment in time to which I am bound right now.  The limited perspective of a finite creature in and infinite existence.  A perspective akin to a grub two feet under the surface of my lawn that is trying to just get through the dirt and runs into a pebble.

"Oh, come on God! Why did you have to put that pebble in my way.  I'm just here enjoying this dark, moist, soft path I'm on, and then, bam! A huge, hard, cold pebble, right in my way.  I can't see where I'm going.  I can't keep heading on the path I was on.  (I had it all planned out.)  Can you please just move that pebble so I can continue moving in the direction you clearly were good with me going just last week?

"The pebble is still there.  Why are you so cruel as to put that pebble in my way?  Why won't you move it for me?  Just a little miracle.  Then I could see where I'm going.  Then I'd be able to move forward with my plan in dark, moist comfort."

But God knows a few things that I don't.  (Ok, he knows more than a few things that I don't.)

  • The pebble is not huge.  It is only huge from my perspective and in contrast to my current circumstances.  
  • The world is bigger than my experience two feet under a Gig Harbor lawn would indicate.  
  • The path I chose led me to hitting the rock.  The rock was not placed in my path.
  • There is very little difference between the path that continues if the pebble were not there and the path that is formed by going around the rock.
  • The purpose of my life is not the fulfillment of my small minded plan conceived in my tiny limited mind.
  • God made me with this in mind.  I was made for this.  For crying out loud, I'm a grub!
So, I'm a grub.  So what?

The "what" is that while I may want God to intervene, by in large, he won't... because he already did.  He created me with my life in mind.  He knows there will be hurt and sorrow along with the joy and pleasure.  He guides me in foreknowledge of the things to come.  He blesses and prepares and shapes. me  He protects and comforts me.  But most of all... He equips me.  He equipped me.

I am equipped to handle this life.  

But I don't want to handle it.  I want him to handle it for me.

"Dad, take the pole!"

Yet, if he were to handle it for me, he would have caught the fish.  He would have been fishing while I sat.  Instead, because he is not limited to my grubby little perspective, and he can see the path or paths laid out ahead of me, he prepares me and gifts me and equips me for the life that is to come.  

So, I'm a grub.  I may be small and relatively insignificant in the scope of the universe, but I was made to dig around this pebble.

"...let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith..." (Hebrews 12: 2-3)

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