I have a good story for you, I promise.  I just have to set it up.  

This weekend (Thursday through Saturday) Faith, myself and the Hyaets families went to a lake house that was offered us to stay and enjoy free of cost.  It was at Lake James, NC.  Well, we packed our bags Thursday morning and went out there.  Friday morning I managed to find the keys to the Wave-runner out at the pier.  Needless to say, once I got used to it, I was jumpin', banking hard turns, basically goin' all out on the thing.  Later on that afternoon, I saw clouds approaching.  You see, I am an avid fisherman and every fisherman knows that when clouds roll in fish begin to bite.  I put that Wave-runner up as quickly as possible and hopped in the canoe.  

I really think I stepped into another world when I got into the canoe.  

You see, fishing, to me, is much more than just catching fish.  It's time alone with nature, it's a challenge, a hunt.  I love fishing.  When a person goes out for a particular fish, that person begins to learn its habits.  What it likes; what it doesn't like... what temperatures does it tolerate, what temperatures do they thrive in, where are they, why do they behave certain ways, what time to they eat, why do they eat at certain times, why do they strike unfamiliar objects? etc. etc.  I'll come back to this.

Before I left the pier in my little canoe, Jason and Joanie, Greg and Helms and the kids were all going out on the motorboat - to go swimming further out in the lake.  Jason made a snide remark about why I hadn't caught anything (off the pier) yet.  He said, "You white people and your fishing poles; you need to use a spear."  I honestly doubt that there is very much Native American in Jason at all but he thinks that because he has a little book that he carries around with him everywhere about plants and which ones you can eat and use for medicinal purposes that he is somehow a nature expert.  He, he, I say it in jest because I like to give him a hard time and I know him that well. But honestly, I don't think that he has the slightest clue of how hard it is to catch a fish with a spear.  Ha!  You'd have to be some Bear Grylls to pull off some shit like that (I seen him try it once and even he ended up giving up and finding a more productive method).  

They soon left and I was all by myself as I headed deep into the cove.  I am well versed in Carolina river Bass fishing.  I know where they are at, and I know how to catch them.  Lake James is a little different, I've been told.  The Walleye and Smallmouth populations are thriving, while the Largemouth, not so much.  But I've never caught a Walleye or a Smallmouth, so as they say: go with what you know.  I went for the Largemouth Bass.  

Largemouth have black tail-fins.  That's how you can spot them in clear water.  As I got further in the cove and approached shallower and shallower water, I noticed a lot of fallen trees in the water.  Ah, shelter.  These fish (and almost all fish) love fallen trees.  As predator fish, they thrive on the cover for ambush.  It also saves them from being noticed by hawks and eagles looking for a tasty snack.  Coves with fallen trees aren't the only place to find Largemouth Bass and Flukes on a Texas-Rig aren't the only bait ever used.  But I've found it to be most effective, especially with these Carolina river Bass.  

So, here I am.  And I am really listening.  My boat is still.  I am gently gliding across the water.  My body is stiff and tense as I study the water, being careful not to make any sudden movements.  I see little schools of panfish ("bream" in North Carolinian) and Largemouth minnows.  I know I am in the right place.  Where there's smoke; there's fire.  A lot of my fishing expertise has been learned from my cousin and a stranger name John.  When I was at UIC in Illinois, I stayed with my uncle out in a suburb called Gages Lake.  And every morning I would be out there off of the pier fishing.  One day I met John and he had a little Jon boat (no pun intended).  He was boating by the pier and he asked if I wanted to go out on the boat, and I took him up on the offer.  That was the first time I had ever seen a 5 pound Bass.  It was truly amazing because that's really about as big as they get out up there in northern Illinois (they prefer warmer climates i.e. the Carolinas).

My friend John, with a 5.4 pounder

So, I can say I've learned from some of the best.  Later on, off of Gages Lake I got me one:

Me with a 3.2 pounder

But I really learned how to catch these guys around here with my friends Sam and Andrew in Greenville South Carolina:

Andrew with a big one! (Notice the river bass are much lighter than the lake bass... don't know what causes that.  This is a river bass.) 

So, there I was; in the cove.  And it was quiet.  A couple of rain drops fell from the sky making a few ripples across the flat water.  Then my heart skipped a beat.  I saw three descent size Bass swimming near my lure.  I quickly reeled it in as they swam past and threw it out again trying to get the bait out in front of them.  No luck.  I was discouraged.  I thought I had missed a great opportunity.  I haphazardly threw the lure in the shallow in the other direction and slowly began to tighten up the slack.  OH CRAP!! I saw a Bass nail the lure at the bottom in the shallow and he was off with it.  Too bad I was so slow tightening up the slack on the line! The fish swallowed the bait and was already trying to spit the hook out by the time I go the line tight.  But I got him... only problem was I was going to have to do some open-mouth surgery with fishing gloves and a pair of needle-nose pliers.  The surgery took a few minutes and the fish was nearly dead from being out of the water so long.  But I remembered an old trick my cousin taught me, that I've never had to use until now;  I call it "Fish CPR."  The Largemouth Bass wasn't moving when I went to set him back in the water after I had gotten the hook out.  So I gently moved him back and forth while making sure to keep him upright pushing water in and out of his gills.  Eventually he came to and slowly swam off.  I felt really good that I was able to save him.  I then began to redo the mess he made of my rig when I looked up and gasped.  The biggest bass I'd ever seen in the water just swam by the front of the canoe... I was flustered.  I tried to get my stuff in the water but it was not soon enough.  I lost him...

A few minutes later, the silence of the cove was broken by two young deer tear-assing through the woods chasing each other.  It was something else.  

Something tells me that humans were meant to live near fresh water and that humans were meant to respect that nature, 

listen to it and be a part of it.  

I felt so at home there.  

Being in a still canoe fishing is better than wave-running or most other things for that matter.  

Just being there.

-Jacob

My wife is downstairs.  She is doing a Tai Chi exorcise.  The music creeping up the stairwell is like the rise of sweet incense.  It brings peace and wholeness to my soul.  This evening after our meal, I went out to the prayer garden at my neighbors' home.  They have a nice little bench; I sat down and I smoked my after dinner cigarette.  When I had finished my smoke, I knocked the cherry off and set the butt aside to dispose of when I left the garden.  I lay down on the bench and rested my head on the arm and looked toward the sky.  It was a green mosaic, spotted with sky blue and a distant orange from the parting sun was bouncing around.  I felt the same feeling I do now (listening to the Tai Chi music); a feeling of wholeness, euphoria, ecstasy...  it was not greater or less, just different.  

I find these moments are far too few and far between in my life.  


This brings me to the silent, reflective meditation I do in front of our prayer table.  I felt a similar but, yet strikingly different experience in prayer earlier.


Christian prayer and meditation are much different than transcendent states or euphorias. In a book entitled, "Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation" [with a nice Dietrich Bonhoeffer Icon on the cover, I might add] by James W. Douglass (a Catholic Worker) Douglass asserts:


"Christian mysticism is not about achieving, but about relating. We contemplate and we enter the mysteries not to master something or attain a goal, but simply for the sheer joy, in the moment, of relating intimately with God, the Divine Mystery."


Speaking to the Living Christ, emptying my thoughts and focusing on an icon of the Good Shepherd above a tall candle are much different experiences.  I leave our prayer table fulfilled, yes... but never fully satisfied.  Tonight I pulled out a the scriptures from under the table and read a little... I also focused on the Theotokos icon and remembered that she is very much alive and glorified with all the saints.


Flashback to the garden.  So I was looking up at the sky - and there are so many trees I should say looking at the specks of sky I could see - and a message came to me (partly inspired by "Christ The Eternal Tao" which I was reflecting on earlier):


Water is like The Way
It dwells in the low and dingy places
yet it sustains all life


Water is like the Way
It dwells in sewers, sidewalk cracks and puddles

yet it sustains all life

A person who trusts in God 

is like a tree planted by water

A person who trusts in God 

is like a tree planted near a rushing, clear, cool stream flowing over rocks and things

A tree does not grow from the top down

A tree does not grow from its leaves and branches down to the roots

A seed must fall to earth to produce

A seed - if it wants to become a tree - must plummet to the earth and lie in the dirt before it can grow

Peace to you