Adventures in Prayer #3: God Hears Us!

I don’t believe anything happens purely by chance. I believe God speaks to us all the time through the people and events in our lives. Sometimes His message is difficult to translate, but most of the time we’re simply not looking for it. Sometimes He practically hits us over the head, and we still don’t get it. Last week he bopped me so hard I got it.

Keeping in shape has been difficult for me since the local racquetball club and spa I’d been going to for over twenty years burned down last year. For years I have also been occasionally going for long walks over my lunch hour. The frequency of these had also gone into decline as the arthritis in my knees grew worse. Nevertheless I did not want to quit. Walking for relaxation and meditation had been one of the most sublime joys in my life. And modest exercise like walking is good for arthritis. Last week I looked at the forecast and decided that I would make sure I had a car on Tuesday (dropping off my wife at work instead of the other way around) and go for my “usual” three and a half mile walk on the Osaugie Trail, which meandered along St. Louis and Allouez Bays.

I’d made plans like this before, only to find some excuse not to go. It had been almost two months since my last good walk. But even as the bright sunshine outside my office window fulfilled its promise and beckoned me, I sagged back into my chair. I got up at five o’clock weekday mornings, and I always seemed to be tired. Once again I toyed with the idea of not going. There would be other days. My body just did not want to move. Yet I knew that I’d made plans for this. I knew few days were left that would be that nice. Somehow I knew that if I did not go, I would be greatly diminished. Each day had found me running the white flag a little farther up the pole.

In the end, there really was no choice. I changed into my old Reeboks, drove out to the parking lot, checked my watch and set out. My route out and back was about three and a half miles and I used to be able to do it in exactly an hour at my normal pace. The past couple of years, I had slowed down a few minutes.

As I started on my way, the old shoes squeaking, I knew there was another reason I had come. I needed to pray, and walking was one of the best ways I knew how. I would not only pray along the way, but the walk itself would be my prayer, my humble offering. Anything we do can take the form of a prayer, but most of the time I am too distracted, too engrossed in worldly things to act in prayerfulness. Today I needed this walk and this prayer too badly.

My route began with a beautiful view across a sunlit St. Louis Bay and the Barker’s Island Marina, to the long spit of Minnesota called Park Point, which sheltered the bay from the waves of Lake Superior. The trail dipped down behind several houses, then up, then down again and across a railroad yard and past a couple of grain elevators. There was not much activity down there anymore, a remote control engine idling, waiting for orders from its distant engineer. The whine of a saw came from the direction of an elevator. I often wondered what people still did there. Along the way I had been praying for my family, asking for help and strength and guidance and healing.

I am a worrier. I suppose that’s because my faith is weak. I’d prayed for the same things many times, and if I had true faith that my prayers would be answered, maybe I would lighten up. Maybe the mountains would move. I’d read somewhere that we should only ask God for something once. He’s not deaf. There is no need to ask again. Yet, it seemed my prayers too often went unheard. Sometimes I’d pray for the best while in abject fear of the worst. Fear and doubt didn’t stop me. I’d pray and then I’d pray and ask again.

A flock of geese cruised the quiet waters on the near side of Hog Island, which was scarcely an island, separated from the mainland only by a stretch of brown marsh grass. How good it was to see these beautiful birds. Their seasonal migration was a miracle of sorts, one of those things in nature that reinforced my shaky faith. My faith needed all the reinforcement it could get. I listened to my body, to my breath, to my knees and feet and hips, to see how it was doing. So far, no complaints. I remembered to be thankful for that, for my relative good health that made this walk possible.

The trail swung down through a huge parking lot where fisherman parked their trailers. There were still a few this day plying the big water for lake trout, salmon or walleye. The lot was built under the shadow of a huge, abandoned ore dock, which had been for some reason left intact from the trail to the end, perhaps a thousand feet out into the water, an enormous wooden monolith paying tribute to busier days on the waterfront.

I continued to pray. It might be said that repetitive prayer confesses a lack of faith that our earlier prayers would be answered. Perhaps. It might also be said that prayers uttered in fear and worry might go unheard simply due to the lack of faith in which they were said. Perhaps. I had no answers for these things. Did I believe a prayer uttered in absolute faith would be heard? Yes. Could I utter such a prayer? No. So I prayed too that God might grant me such faith. I desperately needed to put all my faith and trust in Him that all would be well. I was at my soul’s end, torturing myself about things over which I had no control. Why could I simply not believe?

The trail crossed an old railroad bridge spanning the Nemadji River and continued across another marsh some twenty feet below. A lone cyclist passed me. There were few people out, for such a beautiful day. I began to feel the walk in my joints, but that was expected. This walk was far better than languishing in my chair back at the office. At last I reached that crack in the asphalt which was my turning point. A mile and three quarters, and I was ready for more.

On the way back I began to say a rosary in my head. The rosary is one of the most repetitive prayers there is, so it was difficult to concentrate on the meaning of each word of each Hail Mary. I kept at it. Each step became heavier, and soreness in my knees was setting in, but I would make it without a major problem. I thought of the missionaries that had first come here almost four hundred years ago. How much more modest was my mission this day. How unshakable had been their faith. As the imaginary rosary beads slipped through my fingers, I prayed again for faith. Without faith, how could I be of service to anyone? Of what use were my unheard prayers?

When I got back to the car I looked at my watch again. The walk had taken me sixty-five minutes, which seemed OK, since I’d still walked three and a half miles in that time. I was tired but not tired enough not to be satisfied with what I’d done. I hoped God had in some small way appreciated my offering. As I backed the car out, I saw a bumper sticker on the back of the Toyota Highlander parked next to me. Pray it said in large letters, but I couldn’t read the smaller letters that followed. Pulling forward, I swung closer. They read: God Will Hear You.

Tears poured into my eyes. There were no coincidences. If I had faith in anything, it was that. God speaks to us every moment of every day. We simply have to pay attention. His words might come from a bumper sticker. They might come from the lips of a stranger, or from a sunrise or the flight of a bird or the fall of a leaf. But for those of us weak in faith, in His infinite kindness, sometimes He is not so subtle.

Treasures on Earth

Are you angry yet? Does it make your blood boil that Wall Street executives can walk off with personal fortunes made by running the world’s economy into the ground? Or AIG executives blowing almost a half million dollars on a retreat, complete with manicures and pedicures, after obtaining a taxpayer bailout of a mere 85 billion dollars?

Are you afraid? Watching your nest egg shrinking before your eyes? Thinking about retirement or how you can pay for your children’s college educations? Will there even be jobs for them after they graduate? Will there even be colleges? What on earth is there to do?

Anger and fear are contagious. Just listen to people talking in the stores and coffee shops. Just watch the markets. We can allow ourselves to be infected by anger and fear and become carriers ourselves…or perhaps there is another way.

A few rays have light have recently slipped through the stormy sky. I read a comment the other day by someone at the US News web site. He was a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. For the past two weeks he had been going out to the mail box and walking the Journal directly to his trash barrel. His advice was to stop wasting time watching TV and reading the news, stop whining, and go give your work everything you have. His solution was to take care of our own business and be a part of the solution instead of the problem.

Pope Benedict commented on the financial crisis saying that “money is nothing” and “the only solid reality is the word of God.” He went on to say “he who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money, builds the house of his life on sand.''These are truly good times to turn off the news and stop worrying about things we cannot control. These are good times to start reading the Bible again or other things we’ve come to know will uplift us. These are good times to find a quiet place to reflect upon what truly is important and what we still have that makes us rich in spirit. The rest is all props, not reality. It’s easy to forget that when it seems like the visible world is collapsing.

So it’s time to stop being afraid and to stop spreading the fear. It’s time to go about our business, enjoy the moment and let people know that you are not afraid. Go out of your way to greet others with a smile. Wish them well, even if silently. Live within your means but don’t hoard your time or your money. These are better times to give, if not in money, then a part of yourself. Join a service club. Ring bells for the Salvation Army. Get off your self-pity and do something positive. It is in giving, not in taking, that we receive. Maybe that is the lesson God is trying to teach us.

Adventures in Prayer #2: The Peace Prayer

Most of us have at one time or another heard of the “Peace Prayer.” It has commonly been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but he almost certainly did not write it. According to The Franciscan Archive:

The first appearance of the Peace Prayer occurred in France in 1912 in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell). It was published in Paris by a Catholic association known as La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The Holy Mass League), founded in 1901 by a French priest, Father Esther Bouquerel (1855-1923). The prayer bore the title of 'Belle prière à faire pendant la messe' (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During the Mass), and was published anonymously. The author could possibly have been Father Bouquerel himself, but the identity of the author remains a mystery.

Around 1920 the prayer was published on the back of a holy card bearing the image of St. Francis of Assisi with no attribution to the saint. Nevertheless, the prayer came to be credited to him.

I think it is fitting that the authorship of the Peace Prayer is uncertain. I prefer to think of it as a gift to us from God. Certainly, it was divinely inspired. To me, it is one of the most perfect expressions of Christianity ever written:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Although this prayer is a prayer for God’s grace, it is not a prayer for our own benefit but, almost uniquely, for everyone else's. If we are hated or injured, we must repay with love and forgiveness. Likewise, in the face of doubt and despair, even our own, we must learn to sow faith and hope. We must become beacons in the darkness. And, yes, we must even learn to sow the seeds of joy, for joy is also one of God’s wishes for us.

The profoundest words of this prayer yet follow, counseling us not to seek first for love and understanding, but instead to give those things to others for it is in giving that we receive. It is in the giving that those things will return to us. The payoff may not be in kind, it may not come in a form recognizable to us, but God will repay. If we learn to forgive, we can expect forgiveness from Him.

The last two lines are the essence of this prayer, and perhaps the essence of Christianity. They are profoundly mystical, for a literal death is not necessarily called for. Jesus did not call for all of us to be martyrs, but He did say “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matt. 10:39. He also said to his disciples: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matt. 16:24-25. The death Jesus calls for must first come in life just as His did before He offered up its ultimate expression for all of us.

If you don’t already know this prayer, learn it. Say it often, either silently or aloud. Live it, work it into the fabric of your soul. Become recollected in it, and the life you seek will be found.

On Writing, Fatherhood and the Olympic Ideal

O’Hare International Airport is about as far removed from the peaceful waters of Lake Three or our quiet forest home in northern Wisconsin as any place I can imagine. Yet last week that’s exactly where we found ourselves, sitting in the waiting area of Gate C16. Our daughter, Alicia, was talking with a friend, who suddenly looked at my wife and me and asked, “How did you get past security?”

“It wasn’t easy,” I joked. Melba and I were probably the only people there not about to board United Flight 851 to Beijing, China. Alicia and a few of her friends from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point were going to Beijing as volunteers under the auspices of Community Collaborations International to help with the Olympics. I had been dreading this day for months.

When your child asks for help to volunteer at the Olympics, how do you say no? No was never an option, and yet there were times when I hoped she would change her mind, even if it meant forfeiting thousands of dollars. I am not an intrepid traveler, and Alicia had only traveled by plane once, to Orlando with her high school choir, amply chaperoned by parents and her teacher. Even then, I monitored the flights there and back on the internet, breathing a sigh of relief each time the plane safely touched down. At Gate C16, I was cheered that she had run into a few friends, that we would not be putting her on a plane entirely alone to fly halfway across the world to the most foreign of lands. I was finally beginning to relax a little.

Gate C16 was a potpourri of races, nationalities and styles of dress. Announcements prattled on in both English and Chinese. Several men clad in the bright yellow, blue and red of Colombia, with matching sport bags, were talking business-like near the entry. Immediately behind us, Gary D’Amato of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was interviewing the family of our youngest Olympian, ten meter synchronized diver, Mary Beth Dunnichay. Of course, at the time, I only knew there was a large contingent of people wearing matching logoed sport shirts proclaiming “Mary Beth, Our Olympian,” who were being interviewed. I had a number of things on my mind. I later stumbled across Gary’s article almost by accident.

For the past several months, I had not been at all unmindful of the many reasons for discomfort sending our only daughter to Beijing. First, there was the matter of conscience, of China’s involvement in Sudan, its policies in Tibet, its human rights record. There was the threat of terrorism. There was the matter of the air pollution. I had concerns for her safety in general as an American traveling overseas. I had the usual concerns of a parent when one’s child (actually, at 21, a young woman) travels to a place where her parents could be of little assistance in case of emergency. And then there were all of my own manufactured anxieties. I did not consider putting her on a flight from Duluth to get her to O’Hare; we would take her, via Madison where we would stay quietly and cheaply with Alicia’s grandmother. Yet, I had never driven to O’Hare, and had little idea of what to expect. Our daughter did not even know from which terminal her plane would depart, much less which gate.

Our adventure had not unfolded without a few hiccups, but in the end, after waiting in many lines, a kindly woman saw fit to bend the rules slightly and give two nervous parents security passes to reunite with their daughter across the security line. We waited at C16 until the place was empty and the huge plane taxied away and out of sight with Alicia on board, and then we waited some more until we saw it roaring down the runway and out of sight again. In the mean time seeing dozens of planes flawlessly taking off and landing had soothed my throbbing nerves just a little more.

Two days later Alicia called to say they had made it safely to their apartments. There were about ten of them, and they had just gotten back from watching the spectacular opening ceremonies, which we did not watch until later that night. As that spectacular event unfolded unbelievably before my eyes, I began to remember back to the late 70’s when the Olympics had meant something special to me, when I had tried to apply my narrow vision of the Olympic Ideal to my writing.

Between jobs, with a little savings, it seemed like the time was right. I was still inspired by the ’76 Olympics of the year before. I leased a one-bedroom efficiency apartment overlooking the lower campus of the University of Wisconsin – Madison, which I liked to think of as my garret. For six months I had nothing to do but write, to see just how good of a writer I could be. I would apply the singular dedication of an Olympic athlete to the tip of my pen. This was my time.

In retrospect, it would be easy to conclude that I wasted my time. Six months of my life vaporized like a dream. Sure, I wrote, but only about three hours a day. Hardly an Olympian feat. Afternoons I read the classics, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment. Must-reads for any aspiring novelist, I admit, but in retrospect, something of an escape from the far more difficult task of writing. I sneaked into the Natatorium a couple of days a week to lift weights, or I jogged to keep my body in shape and my mind fresh and creative, or so I told myself. Evenings I took a course in researching local history or attended readings…or sometimes I really broke training and walked downtown for a few beers. One night found me in the tepid light of The Bull Ring talking with a young black man I’d just met, and he asked me what I did. The words tumbled over my tongue. “I’m a writer.” He was amazed, euphoric even, because he said he wrote too. He said over and over that he wanted me to read some of his “shit.”

Shit. What a crude derision of one’s creative efforts, I thought. Why would I want to read shit? Back then, I was enamored of anything written in my own hand. Changing something seemed like an admission of defeat. Erasing was simply murder. I was a two-draft writer at most. What I wrote was not shit.

It was, I just didn’t know it. It took me far longer than six months to realize that. Real writers should not be afraid to write badly…and endlessly. Not to the point of developing bad habits, of course, but certainly in pursuit of the appropriate amount of humility. Just as musicians must practice their scales and just as aspiring Olympic athletes must hone their bodies, the aspiring writer must prepare himself for the seemingly endless and pointless tedium of learning his craft. He must prepare himself to throw away most of what he writes, or at least set it aside. He must prepare himself for tireless revision. He must prepare himself to write even when thoughts flee like leaves in the wind and words seem heavy as stone. He must prepare himself for few rewards. He must remember that the process of becoming a writer is not finished in six months or six years, it is the work of a lifetime.

As the colorful pyrotechnics exploded across the TV screen, thoughts were also going off in my head. When was the last time I had written a word when I didn’t feel like writing? When was the last time I had worked on a short story? Or strung words aimlessly across a page just for the sake of stringing words? When was the last time I had taken the trouble to edit something that had been waiting months or years for editing? When was the last time I had done much of anything I did not want to do? That to me was the embodiment of the Olympic Ideal, the self-sacrifice that it takes to be the best you can be at something, be it the 200-meter freestyle or writing or parenting or taking out the trash.

In the broader sense, the Olympics to me are a coming together to celebrate and share this ideal, which transcends race, religion, nationality and politics. The “Olympic truce” means far more than a guarantee of safe passage, it means the freedom of the world to come together in some small symbolic way to be just ordinary people, simple and unlabeled. I love George Will, but when he calls the Olympics a “charade of international comity” and scoffs at the IOC for holding them in a country governed by a “tyrannical” regime, he is missing the point. The Olympics and the Olympic Ideal are not about place. Did Pierre de Coubertin not say that “Olympism is a state of mind”? The Olympics are intended to transcend physical, political and ideological boundaries. Do they always? Probably not.

It’s easy to criticize the Olympics. The games are not perfect just as people are not perfect. People cheat. Judges sometimes judge unfairly. A small child lip-synchs a song. Politics stain behavior. The host country is governed by a totalitarian regime with a dismal human rights record. So do these games then serve no purpose? Only if one expects something organized on such an enormous and diverse scale to be perfect in an otherwise imperfect world. I would venture to say there are some 11,000 athletes in Beijing who believe the games serve a purpose. Do they all like each other? Do you like everyone you work with? Or everyone on your block? Out of 11,000 people there is bound to be some bad eggs. Even some who simply don’t deserve to be there.

But among 11,000 people, there will also be shining examples of courage and dedication, of sportsmanship transcending human differences. I will see people who are just plain better at being who they are than I am. That’s why I will watch and wonder and hope and be inspired. The Olympics are, perhaps, a microcosm of a world trying to get along. We’re doing it imperfectly, but most of us are trying. Like it or not, the world needs the Olympics, be they in Beijing or Chicago, because when we stop trying for and aspiring to something better, even in a small way, hope is lost.

As I continued to watch the ceremony and all its remarkable choreography (to George the subordination of individuality to the collective), it suddenly seemed so very right that part of my family was in Beijing for such a remarkable occasion. For so many months, how had I not seen that?

Reflections from Lake Three: On Fishing and Parenthood

It's the fishing!

Bait, poles, tackle boxes, licenses, life jackets…check. Drain plug? Just about every fisherman has put his boat in the water without replacing the drain plug. I’m no exception. There are lots of things to think about before we even attempt fishing, especially when taking the boat. This was to be its first time in the water this year. I’m perfectly happy bringing the tent camper and fishing from shore, but my son, John, likes to get out in the boat and fish other lakes.

As we pulled out of our camp site something was wrong, a thumping or dragging, I couldn’t quite tell. I downshifted hoping it wasn’t the transmission in our twelve-year old Suburban. No effect. We circled the small campground and parked in front of our site. A flat left rear tire. I was almost relieved…but also angry. It was the third flat for this tire, the third strike as far as I was concerned. John, impatient to fish, insisted on changing the tire, since he’d just done it a couple weeks earlier and said it would take ten minutes. He just about made it.

How had we not noticed a flat tire? We’d both walked around the truck several times getting ready. I’d mentally checked off everything I thought we’d needed from past experience and failed to notice something right before my eyes. How often does that happen? Our brains don’t readily jump from one form of thinking to another.

John said he didn’t care if we stayed at Lake Three to fish, although I knew he was a little disappointed. I just wasn’t crazy about driving more miles in the backcountry than necessary without a spare and cell service. I didn’t want to turn a small disappointment into a large one. The advantage, I told John, was that we could just beach the boat when we were done and fish after dinner.

Putting the boat into the water is far easier than getting it back on the trailer. I made sure the safety clip was in so the motor would start, pulled out the choke, turned the throttle and pulled the cord once…twice…three times and it chugged to life just like it always did on the third pull, even after a year of disuse. This year I was a little surprised. Normally, I loosen the plugs in the fall and spray the chambers with WD-40 to combat the moisture of changing winter temps in the garage. This year I hadn’t done that until I asked John to do it a few days before we’d left. The reliability of this fifteen-horse Evinrude motor is not typical of the efficiency with which I run my life. Normally, mechanical things and I don’t get along. I know this is solely a matter of attitude.

Is there a right way to fish? It depends. Is there a wrong way to fish? Most certainly, many wrong ways. I’ve practiced most of them. We chugged into the small bay opposite the campground. It was a gloriously sunny day with a mild breeze, ideal for being on the water but not necessarily for catching fish. The bass would be retreating to deeper, shadier places for the day. In all the years we’d fished this lake, I’d only caught one largemouth, that one on a floating popper about seven in the morning across from the landing. Lake Three was full of small panfish that would bite any time of the day on just about anything.

I put the motor in neutral and let us drift, then put us in reverse to stop our momentum at the most centrally located spot while John dropped the anchor. I like the boat to be as stationary as possible when we dropped anchor, so there’s less anchor line out and we can stay close to where we want to be. In our case, that meant being within good casting distance of the weed lines where I knew most of the fish were.

I’d brought leeches to tempt the walleye at the much larger English Lake, though they’d not caught me a thing the year before; but I’d never used them at Lake Three. John used a leaf worm while I tried a leech. We were using bobbers, which I hoped were set at a proper depth. I slipped a hook on a snap swivel, which I knew I should not have been using. This is where we have to stop and consider. The only genuine purpose of a snap swivel is to keep your line from being twisted by spinning lures and baits. It serves no purpose with a suspended hook except perhaps to discourage fish and save the lazy, vision-challenged fisherman from tying the hook directly to the line. I’d have a better chance of catching a bass without one.

I like to catch fish, but catching fish does not motivate me to the same degree as some men I’ve fished with. I like to consider fishing being time. I like to think that time I spend fishing doesn’t count against my allotted time on earth. Catching fish is just a bonus. I don’t like to fish hard. By that, I mean changing baits and lures, tying and re-tying knots, not to mention moving about the lake until I start catching fish. I’ve seen musky fisherman standing on the bow of their boats, working their electric trolling motors with a foot pedal while they cast the shoreline over and over. Not for me. I’m perfectly content to sit watching a bobber or drifting in the breeze.

Thing is, even the lazy fisherman should pay attention to what he’s doing. That’s not too much to expect. When that bobber begins to move, you had better be ready at any instant to set the hook. That means making sure you’ve taken up the slack in your line, so you’re not pulling up line while the fish is pulling your bait off the hook. We cast as close to the weed lines as we could without getting our tackle tangled in them. Both our bobbers twitched, probably small perch. This lake was full of them, and they could sometimes steal a worm without even disturbing your line. But I was encouraged that even my leech was drawing interest. We wouldn’t set our hooks until the bobbers went completely under.

Sometimes I found my attention drifting, like the boat swinging around in the breeze. I’d set my hook only to find too much slack. The leeches were tougher than worms and harder to steal, but sometimes I lost them too. Not as often as John lost his worms. We both pulled in some small perch and let them go. They were too small to eat, and dinner was not our mission. Our mission was simple: just fishing. Sometimes we caught a scrappy little pumpkinseed, which ounce for ounce is probably the fightingest fish that swims. Around 11:30 my bobber went down again, and I set the hook. This time I had something bigger. A swirl near the surface told me what I wanted to know. Largemouth like to break the surface when they fight. After you hook a fish, you have to keep the line taut, lest the hook remove itself from the fish’s mouth. I’ve failed in that category on occasion too but not this time.

Ideally, John should have been ready with the net, which was resting under my seat. I’d had no plans to use it, and just getting the fish to the boat was victory enough for me. It was not a large fish, and I had no problem boating it. Bright green, black eyes, strong and beautiful, it struggled little while I hastened to remove the hook and return it uninjured to the water.

“Wow,” I said to John, “in the middle of the day…on a leech.” I was feeling pretty good about myself, catching a bass on a leech, snap swivel and a bare hook while the sun was high. I was just lucky. I wished it had been John. I desperately wanted him to catch a bass instead of the worm-robbing panfish we’d caught there for years. “Want a leech?” I asked. He declined.

We moved the boat a couple of times after that and to give my neglected Evinrude a rare run. We battled the panfish for another 2 ½ hours and didn’t catch another bass. We decided to beach the boat in case we wanted to give fishing another try after dinner.

Between building a fire and fishing after dinner, John chose fishing. That was alright with me. The dwindling twilight offered another chance to catch a bass. We chugged the boat slowly over to the first place we’d anchored that morning. It wasn’t long before another small bass nailed my leech. I was having great fun, but not as much fun as if it were John catching the bass. That’s what I wanted more than anything. Minutes later another bass slammed my leech, and this one was larger and stronger. He broke the surface and tail-danced briefly on the water. Seeing a bass break the surface is probably the biggest thrill I’ve had fishing. He fought me hard but was no match for my line, and I netlessly boated him as well. John said he was about the size of the one he’d caught at English Lake last year by himself. I was at least glad for that, that he’d caught a bass once, even without my help. Once again, he declined to use a leech. He caught a small crappie, and then started casting a popper to jerk across the surface like a water bug.

I lost a couple of leeches to the piranha-perch and saved the last two just in case John changed his mind. He caught another crappie on the popper, while I was losing worms until I finally cast my hook into the weeds and broke my line. I didn’t have my reading glasses, which I needed to retie my tackle, but I had brought a spare pole with a snap swivel ready to take my hook and bait. One of the few things I do right, as a fisherman. As the sun dipped beneath the trees, I hoped John would have some success with his popper, and I even tried one myself, still saving the leeches. I asked him one more time if he wanted one. No. I wondered why. My macho son was 6’4”, 210 pounds, and was going to be 20 that week; I was sure he wasn’t squeamish about leeches. I knew he’d love to catch a bass, and the panfish were beating the bass to his worms.

After we retrieved my broken tackle from the weeds, I misplaced the hook while re-rigging the spare pole. I’m not sure I misplace things any more now that I’m 57 than when I was a kid, but now it aggravates me more. Of all things, a hook. How stupid! It could be found in a variety of wrong ways. One of the things I find most difficult fishing is controlling my temper. When I fish, Murphy, that bastard, rules. Decades of past aggravations bubble to the surface, tangled lines, stray hooks, poked fingers, lost fish. The labeling process begins: I am a hopelessly bad fisherman. A hopeless individual. I can’t do anything right, and so on. On this occasion I tried to choke this back. Setting an example for my son, who also has a temper, was one of the non-fishing objectives of this trip. I found myself losing it a little. The burgeoning darkness was not helping me locate the hook. Senile old fart. Finally, I found it sitting atop my tackle box. Just another example of the need to pay attention while fishing. Paying attention to your line and tackle is just as important when it is out of the water as in.

Once I was finally convinced John was not going to use a leech, I used the last two and lost them. John’s line inexplicably tangled in about three different ways, and so I handed him my spare pole, which now had a popper on it. He fished while I discovered in the vestigial light that his line was a hopeless cause. Once again, that spare pole was serving a purpose, even though John was not catching anything. With the mosquitoes closing in and it soon being too dark to see, we made our way back and glided noiselessly onto the grassy shore.

We’d fished for five solid hours that day in perfect weather. It had been a good day in the boat, better and more trouble-free than most. Still, I regretted that I’d caught three bass and John had caught none. I would have given anything to reverse that. He would not tell me, even the next day when I asked, why he would not use a leech, even after he saw me catching bass. Had he been saving them for me the same way I’d been saving them for him? Had he just wanted to fish in his own way, beyond the influence of his father? I said there is, in some sense, no right way to fish. It depends on what your objectives are, what you want from it.

Our kids don’t always fish their way through life in the way we think they should. I’ve gotten advice from far better fishermen than I am, and sometimes I just wished to be left alone. I wanted John to catch fish and, mostly, to have fun, and I think he did. I think he enjoyed my catching those bass almost as much as I would have enjoyed him catching them. Taking the boat had been his idea, and maybe what we’d done was quite enough for him. I don’t know. He’s not very open about some things. I do know that when it comes to our kids, there comes a point, far sooner than we expect, when we have to let them fish in their own way. We hope they catch fish, but we also have to remember that maybe actually catching fish isn’t the most important thing in life. It’s the fishing!

For a different perspective on our little fishing trip, see my post at The Night Country.

Reflections from Lake Three: Noise Meditation

Even at places like Lake Three there are plenty of opportunities to practice non-resistance. Take noise for instance. I love few things more than to listen to the sounds of an undisturbed forest, the wind through the trees, the buzzing of insects, the birds chirping, a squirrel chirring. Even so, last weekend I was irritated I’d forgotten my noise-cancelling headphones in case I wanted to listen to a little music. I got over it, because I can never listen to manmade music long there while nature’s symphony is playing.

At the next camp site a radio was playing…not loudly, I admit. If you’re going to listen to a radio in a place like Lake Three, you can’t play it softly enough for anyone else not to hear. I not only didn’t want to hear it, I simply could not understand why people could turn on their radios at a place like that for hours on end. Were they completely deaf to nature’s music? Why did they even bother to come?

Not everyone sees life the same way we do, nor hears it in the same way apparently. It wasn’t so much the actual noise as the difference in our outlooks that played most loudly through my mind. If I couldn’t accept people with radios, then why had I come to Lake Three?

The next morning a couple backed a trailer into a site just up the road. A short time later the shriek of a chainsaw exploded through the trees. I gritted my teeth. The idiot! Could these people not appreciate the quiet, the solitude, the churchliness of this place? This chainsaw was working an absolute desecration. Why couldn’t they bring their own firewood? This was a new challenge. Every time I seem to have taken a step, I find another, higher one.

A short time later my wife and I went for a walk into the deep woods a good mile and a half down The North Country Trail. On the way back, we heard the chainsaw again. “I sure hope he knocks that off,” my wife said.

“I’m practicing non-resistance,” I said. “I’m not going to let it bother me.” Then I added, “at least until this afternoon.”

Was I really accepting the noise? No, simply because I was not willing to accept it unconditionally. Whatever comes. Let it be. But at least I was making some progress. For the moment, at least, I was dealing with it. It wasn’t as if a chainsaw was unheard of in the forest. Fires burned constantly, and this man was not the first man to bring a chainsaw.

By the time we got back to Lake Three, all was quiet and peaceful again. No radios, no chainsaw. Just the birds and the breeze. His sawing was done. I later met this man, who turned out to be someone I liked very much. He was 73 and retired but in very good shape for his age. A first responder. He and his wife were leaving the day after we were, because Wednesday nights he was helping to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. To him, the sound of a saw probably carried a melody all its own. I’m sure he had no idea the same sound had seemed a desecration to me. It still rang in my ears but by then I was coming to terms with it.

Talking to him was part of my meditation on acceptance. I had judged him by it. This man and his saw had not bothered me so much as I had allowed the noise to intrude upon my interior silence. I had let my mind run with it. No matter what goes on around us, we can cultivate interior silence. I know this. I’ve known this for years, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. The next time a chainsaw erupts at Lake Three, I might not like it, but I will find it easier to lower the barriers of resistance. Certainly, I will hesitate to judge the person on the basis of noise he makes or on the basis of any other single action.

Today I’m off again to Lake Three with my son. There will be noise. We’re taking the boat to do more fishing. When I fish, Murphy’s Law reigns. If anything creates more resistance within me than noise, it is fishing. I’m sure this weekend will bring challenges of its own.

Reflections on 'A New Earth' from Lake Three

“In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good or bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest.”

A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle

There never seems to be enough time. Even when I crawled out of my sleeping bag at six in the morning with the coffee pot ready and needing only heat. The birds had already been up for two hours. I read my breviary for ten minutes and put it down for the rest of the day. There is no internet at Lake Three, no DirecTV, no cell reception, no electricity, no running water, just a picnic table and a well-kept biffy provided by the Forest Service. I deliberately left my laptop at home. I scribbled in a leather-bound journal I’d not touched since the last time we were there. Two mornings we got up early enough to throw out fishing lines in hopes of a largemouth. No such luck.

I didn’t go to Lake Three just to read, but after fishing and hiking and Scrabble and being time, there still remained more time for reading than back home. I had big designs. I brought A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich. I didn’t plan to read them all, or in the case of the first two, re-read. I did plan to read generous segments of all of them. Instead I picked up Tolle’s book first, went through it cover-to-cover, and left Norman and Louise for another day.

Surely, Eckhart Tolle doesn’t need me to plug his book when he has Oprah; and there are probably more reviews of it than there are words in it. I’m not going to pretend to add anything new. In fact, the book itself adds very little to the main body of Tolle’s work which appears in The Power of Now, which I’ve also read and re-read and given copies of to my kids. However, in A New Earth he does explain his views of the ego and what he calls our “pain-body” in different ways, and suggests that through awakening (our first life purpose) will we find our secondary life purpose in the world of form. He further suggests that true hope for our planet lies in the collective awakening of human consciousness.

None of what Tolle offers us is terribly original. He draws deeply upon writings from the Bible, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism, which he weaves into a very Zen-like approach to life. Be aware of your thoughts, he says. Your thoughts are not you. Be on the alert for signs of the ego and your pain-body (collective memory) in your thoughts and feelings. They are not you, and so on. You can read things like this elsewhere. So why do I read Tolle and why did I take A New Earth to the middle of the Chequamegon National Forest?

I think Tolle’s genius lies in his ability to take a very Eastern way of thinking and express it in ways we Westerners not only can understand but can relate to. The teachings of Jesus and Saint Paul often lend themselves very nicely to Tolle’s point of view. For instance, Jesus said you must lose your life to find it. To Tolle, that means losing our egoic way of thinking. Awakening to our life’s purpose.

The signs about the world are ominous. Slowing economies, rising unemployment, skyrocketing commodities prices, shrinking investments, climate change, vanishing species, terrorism, fear of nuclear proliferation. My 89-year old mother remarked to me the other day that people at her retirement complex were talking about “Armageddon.” A lot of people are wondering what life will be like for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It’s tough stuff to ignore. What is so refreshing about escaping to Lake Three is its psychological remoteness from the world. Yes, there is radio reception, but I have little patience for listening to music there, much less the noise of the news. The sounds of the forest are enough. I can begin to forget. The trees don’t care about global warming; they’re doing their part. The birds don’t care about the price of oil. The fish don’t care about terrorism. I can begin to focus on the ego and identify the pain-body, and yes they are there. I can begin to focus on how they affect my thinking and emotions. I can at least begin, again, to learn how to live in the present. There is fishing meditation and walking meditation and even bug and noise meditation. There are challenges even at Lake Three, but one is not overwhelmed by them. I can begin to lose myself.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is the practice of nonresistance. According to Tolle, “nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” The practice begins internally with accepting each situation as it is. When I read the headlines every morning, it is usually with a judgmental eye. God, are they really killing aid workers in Somalia? How can oil cost so much? How can we possibly balance the budget with the economy in the tank? I’m glad to get away from such stuff, so I can try to practice nonresistance on easier things. A chainsaw, mosquitoes, yapping dogs, a balky fishing line, a million little, almost-manageable things. Acceptance. Things are as they are. Tolle quotes Shakespeare too: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

It is not a matter of cultivating only pleasant, optimistic thoughts; Tolle is not into “the power of positive thinking.” In fact, he’s into thinking only insofar as it becomes necessary to live in a world of form. Tolle is into being without passing judgment. Of course, nonresistance does not mean doing nothing about the evil we perceive in the world. Inner acceptance does not mean indifference. It simply (or not so simply) means not squandering precious energy indulging in judgment.

I took A New Earth to Lake Three because I am a firm believer that survival of our planet is not primarily a matter of politics, economics or science. It is a matter of spiritual awakening that must begin with each one of us. Just today Pope Benedict XVI was quoted at CNN.com during his trip to Australia: "In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair." The pontiff advocated "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deadens our souls and poisons our relationships.” Tolle puts it another way. As we learn to identify our ego and our egoic thinking, we also begin to see the dissolution of our self-indulgent sense of separation from all things.

As a Christian, I am not necessarily offended by anything Eckhart Tolle has to say. When it comes to doctrine, I am decidedly open minded. However, if you wish to read a more strictly Christian assessment of Tolle’s book, well-written and erudite, I would commend you to a review at Greg Boyd’s blog, Random Reflections.

The battle for a New Earth has begun. It is not being fought in Afghanistan or Iraq or Washington or The Hague. It is being fought within each one of us, with each breath, with each moment of our awareness.

The Money-Changers

Man will not be content to drive away the money-changers from the temple of his soul until he realizes that it is a Holy of Holies.

OK, I probably would not have called this site “The Silent Life” if I did not intend to address the subject of silence once in a while. I hate noise, both external and internal. We live in the middle of the woods where it is often quite peaceful and still. I have come to think a lot about what is noise and what is not. First, let us de-emphasize the notion of noise we can hear with our ears. I’m not here to promote monastic observances of silence…although the human voice can be one of the noisiest, most cacaphonous sounds in all creation, especially our own. Most of us do not live in monasteries, and most of us have little control over the roar of our everyday lives. It can be deafening.

To me, a bird singing outside my window or the air soughing through the trees is not noise. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” is not noise. On the other hand, the headlines pulsing quietly off my computer screen, Oil Prices Skyrocket, Iran Test-Fires Missiles, Market Down Again, sound like trains colliding. That is internal noise. Even without such stimulation, our minds graciously present us with our own mental movies; and most of the time they are just useless, godless, energy-sucking, anxiety-producing junk. Worse still, this kind of noise is often harder to escape than the daily assault upon our ears.

That is, if we even try to escape. Most of us have become so anesthetized to the everyday din that we scarcely notice it. We’re like sponges, passive, soaking it all in from without and from within, oblivious to the corrosion it’s causing in our souls. We are deaf, yet still listening for the voice of God.

Only when we begin to observe interior silence, can we begin to pray as God intended. Only in this silence can we begin to know our true nature. Only in silence can we begin to know God. The works of Thomas Merton are replete with references to silence. In his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Merton quotes the writer, Julien Green: “Religion is not understood. Those who wish themselves pious, in order to admire themselves in this state, are made stupid by religion. What is needed is to lose ourselves completely in God; what is needed is perfect silence, supernatural silence. Pious talk has something revolting about it.”

To Eckhart Tolle observing external silence promotes stillness within. “The Unmanifested is present in the world as silence. This is why it has been said that nothing in the world is so like God as silence.”[1]

Father Raoul Plus observed that “man will not be content to drive away the money-changers from the temple of his soul until he realizes that it is a Holy of Holies – not a house of traffic, but in very truth the house of God.”[2] Once we realize this, we can begin the practice of interior silence; and only after we begin that can we begin the practice of the presence of God.

---

[1] The Power of Now.

[2] How to Pray Always

Saint Anne's Rosary

"As we walked back out to the parking lot, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense that something miraculous had just happened."

A number of years ago, when our kids were still young enough to have free time during the summer, we took a trip out east to New York and Vermont. I am still not a comfortable traveler, and until that time I had never been east of Ohio. I didn’t know what to expect except more traffic and more confusing tangles of highway. What were we going to do about money cutting across Ontario? As time for departure approached, I grew more apprehensive. This was supposed to be a vacation, and I was dreading it. Nevertheless, when the time came, we packed the Suburban to the gunnels and took off through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the scary heights of the Mackinac Bridge, through the Lower Peninsula, across Ontario and on to New York.

Not without mild adventure, of course. I waited in line for a half hour at a small bank in Michigan to get some Canadian money, not realizing there was a currency exchange just across the border. I felt really stupid having worried about that. We spent about ten dollars at a McDonald’s the entire way across Ontario before we got lost trying to find the bridge to Niagara Falls, New York. We drove around in circles several times wondering how we could miss a bridge. At a stop sign we were struck in the rear end by a Geo Tracker carrying two young New Yorkers as lost as we were. We barely felt the blow, and the kid was visibly relieved when I saw no damage to the Suburban. No one needed the complication of an accident in Canada. The next time around we found the entrance to the bridge, which was shrouded in construction scaffolding and canvas. Our return to American soil seemed like a blessed event.

As it turned out, our trip was blessed in more ways than one. Even though we merely skirted the Adirondacks, we found the beauty of outstate New York and Vermont to be breathtaking. A sense of history is everywhere in signs, markers and events. The people are proud of their heritage and friendlier to travelers than almost anywhere I’ve been. We enjoyed the rustic peacefulness of Cooperstown, which is worth the visit even if you don’t go to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We stopped at Fort William Henry, and although this wasn’t a religious pilgrimage of any kind, we also visited the shrines of The North American Martyrs and the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the “Lilly of the Mohawks.”

We left home prepared to camp as much as we could but didn’t find convenient opportunities until we crossed into the quiet hills of Vermont, although time seemed to be running short and we’d left much unseen in New York. We pitched our tent for two nights a short distance north of Bennington and then for two nights at a state park on one of the northern islands of Lake Champlain. Before we’d left, I had thoughts we might go as far as Maine and then wind our way back through the Adirondacks. That was no longer going to be possible, insofar as we only had two days left before we had to make the long drive back to northern Wisconsin. To be sure, our leisurely pace had left me more relaxed than expected, if a little unfulfilled. We had also, somehow, escaped the expected crowds. I’d been wondering for days “where was everybody?” I was used to more tourist traffic many places within an hour of home. Were we not within a few hours driving of many more millions of people? Either easterners didn’t travel as much, or they took for granted the beauty in their own backyard.

Our first full day on the islands of northern Lake Champlain we went for a drive to see what we could see. Our wanderings of course took us to another shrine, Saint Anne’s Shrine on Isle La Motte, Vermont. There we found ourselves in a shady, pastoral setting on Lake Champlain that befitted the peacefulness of our trip. The grounds were groomed and immaculate. It was the weekend of July 26^th, the Feast of Saint Anne, so the place was full of people and things going on. Masses were being held in a beautiful outdoor pavilion. The shrine was one of the few places on the trip that had attracted a crowd. I found it comforting in a way.

Eventually we found ourselves in the gift shop where I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I picked up an inexpensive pair of sunglasses similar to a pair I’d worn for years. I lingered over the rosaries, in particular a beautiful rosary of olivewood beads. All my rosaries had long ago broken or disappeared. The olivewood rosary was far from the most expensive rosary there, but one could have not have bought the rosary without a matching olivewood box that sat next to it. The shop did not accept credit cards, and the rosary and box would have put a dent in my dwindling supply of cash. I must have stood there for ten minutes. To me it was the most beautiful rosary I had ever seen. With great regret, I paid for the sunglasses and left.

Lunch was being served in the main building, and so we made our way there through the shade of the trees and a cool lake breeze. We stood in line buffet style and filled our trays, while I stood there wondering how we had found our way to such a place. I thought of the rosary left behind. It was not yet too late to change my mind. But no, we had another day there on the lake and three hard days driving after that. I was not sophisticated in the ways of ATM’s and other ways to get cash. Still, the thought of the rosary would not desert me. Something told me I would deeply regret leaving Saint Anne’s Shrine without the olivewood rosary. The struggle continued through lunch and into the perfect July air outside. I could not leave that rosary behind, I simply couldn’t.

We returned to the gift shop where I took the rosary and matching box into my hands. The girl behind the register matter-of-factly reached for some change atop the register and offered it to me. “I overcharged you a little for those sunglasses,” she said, as if she’d been expecting me. She held no more than seventy cents in her hand. How strange, I thought at first, to have the change waiting there on top for me, a whole seventy cents; how strange to act as if my return for seventy cents had been such an absolute certainty. As I paid for the rosary and box and we again wandered out onto the peaceful grounds of Saint Anne’s Shrine, the strangeness had only begun to settle in.

I have never been a person to doubt the existence of miracles or the miraculous, but neither have I been a person who expects to see any evidence of the same in his lifetime. I am an ordinary sinner, and saints just don’t bother with people like me. But as we walked back out to the parking lot, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense that something miraculous had indeed just happened. As if Saint Anne herself had wanted me to have the rosary I now carried, as if she had called me to it. Tears welled into my eyes, which I wiped away as quickly as possible, lest my family see and think that I was losing it. I had to stop and catch my breath. How do you act normally at such a time? I don’t think I’ve ever known such true humility as in that moment. Is it only in the presence of God that we realize how truly insignificant we really are?

From that moment on, I have taken Saint Anne’s rosary whenever I travel. The segment of our trip home across Canada was even less eventful and more pleasant than the first. Saint Anne is the patron saint of Canada.

Have I ever thought that the clerk had simply set the money aside to balance her register? Have I ever thought her expectation of my return was simply a display of a fastidious personality? Have I ever thought that it was all just a curious happening devoid of any saintly intervention? Of course. The skeptic in me is still quite alive and well. Do I believe it? I suppose one would truly have to understand the effect the rosary had on me from the first to understand that, no, for once I do not believe in the natural explanations. Something overwhelming happened to me at Saint Anne’s Shrine on Isle La Motte. There I believe Saint Anne presented me with a rosary, and I believe she hears all our prayers.