From My Nature Journal: Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

These were words of Danish philosopher and social critic Søren Kierkegaard (in fact, they were a book title of his), speaking of the singularity of purpose and will with which the mature follower of Christ pursued the life of faith. Off the top of one’s head it might be challenging to describe that ‘one thing’ in a single sentence, and would be interesting to raise that subject among a group of friends sometime soon. But it no doubt relates to the same ‘one thing’ about which Jesus exhorted Martha in Luke 10:41-42, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about so many things. But only one thing is needed…”

Singularity of will… Sometimes, by contrast, my seeming multiplicity of wills is an annoyance, and that not only to me.

Singularity of will… Sometimes, by

contrast, my seeming multiplicity of wills

is an annoyance, and that not only to me.

Over the last several springs there has been a bass nest in a couple feet of water about twenty feet south of our dock. A fish nest? Yes, they’re different from most other animal nests – in the wide open with little cover, and in the case of bass and many other fish, are simply a roughly circular clearing where the male has driven away the sand and silt with his tail and left a slight, gravelly depression. Nose anchored in a fixed position, he pivots to create a bed approximately twice his length. (‘Our’ nest is twenty-four to thirty inches in diameter.) He’ll then coax a ready female over it and woo her; mama releases her eggs, papa gives them a spray of sperm (called ‘milt’), and the fertilized eggs settle into the sparse cover of cracks and crevices below. She swims away, often to spawn again

A bass nest

elsewhere, and the male may entice another female to spawn with him, assuring good diversity of offspring. The male then guards the nest for several days, not exactly settling on but hovering over it or patrolling nearby; when the fry hatch (I always thought ‘fry’ was an ironic name for juvenile fish, given their potential future…), papa will guard it for another day or two and then be gone. Many of these nests are visible in shallow water, as the gravel tends to be lighter in color than the silt and sand that has been blown aside. And if the lake is calm, it is usually quite easy to spot a nice-sized fish perched over it.

During spawning season, fishermen work these beds with various techniques to catch them. (I won’t reveal here what I think is the most effective method, as that would be to disclose trade secrets.) Most fisherpeople I know have long since progressed to catch-and-release when it comes to bass, especially in pristine natural settings where better food fish like sunnies, walleye and trout are more available. It takes a pretty large bass to be a legal keeper in the northwoods anyway, in excess of fifteen inches here in Michigan. Up north, that’s a big fish; individuals that reach this size do not do so because they’re dumber than average.

But bass are just plain fun to catch. Even small ones give an amazing thrill, and they are just so beautiful to see up close. Only very rarely is one wounded in the catch-and-release process, if it is done right. A few seconds out of the water, liberation from the hook, maybe a photo, and finally a gentle release and they’re back in the water in a few flashes, more quickly gone in a flash of their own.

And this is if a spawning fish can even be caught. Getting back to the idea with which I started, they are pretty intent on their purpose. Typically a nesting fish will ignore the distraction of nearby food, including bait or lure; in fact, it is not unusual for a nested fish to pick up the edge of a lure ever so gently, too smoothly and lightly for the fisherman to even feel it, then move to the edge of the nest and just spit it out. I’ve seen them do this. Can’t you picture it? “Oh, there’s that annoying little thing again… (Lift.) Puhtooey!” In fact, if a fisherman has the ability to actually see his lure move slowly left or right, defying physics, a quick tug might capture him right then and there.

This past Memorial weekend my dear son-in-law could not resist seeing if he could raise the old boy in our swimming area and take a look. I watched for a short while from the three-season porch as he worked the bed, and, immediately after I looked away, he was clambering quickly up the steps with his catch held carefully in both hands. We hastily shared the joy of this little natural beauty, and Beej was off quickly for the release.

Here’s the thing, though… Later that morning, out of curiosity I asked him if he could tell if the fish had returned to its nest at all while he was down there continuing to fish. “Oh, within seconds it was back on it,” he replied. “Really? Within seconds?” “Yes, maybe ten.” We both shook our heads in amazed delight. It had just gone through what was likely a first-in-its-life experience, fought a fight that would mean life or death, was forcefully yanked from its familiar environment and was finally introduced to as foreign a setting as underwater would be to us. Once back in the water, wouldn’t you think it’d take off for the most distant cover it could find, in sheer fear? Nope, within a brief moment he was back at it as before.

That is singularity of purpose. That is willing one thing.

Forgive my anthropomorphism, but, as always, natural realities constantly remind me of spiritual realities. I wish I could possess that kind of singularity of will. My mind at times wanders, my commitment at times wavers. If purity of heart is to will one thing, my heart must be pretty adulterated. Will it be Jeremiah’s description that wins out, who said, The heart is deceitful above all things, and is exceedingly corrupt…? Or Paul’s description – This one thing I do. Forgetting what lies behind… I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus…? One clever commentator asked the question, “Do we say, with Paul, ‘This one thing I do,’ or do we rather say, ‘These twenty things I dabble in?’”

God knows me and knows my heart, and I draw great consolation from that. As Thomas Merton prayed, “…I believe that the desire to please You does, in fact, please You.” God knows your heart, too. In the midst of life’s distractions, however annoying, or its traumas, however shocking, there is a place of purpose to which we may return and find again the possibility of life renewed and hope restored.

~~ RGM, June 1 2016

From My Nature Journal: Fish Guts and the Gospel

Some people don’t fish because they don’t like the thought of fish guts.

I mean, what do you do with a keeper if you don’t know how to clean it? Or for some, if the very thought of touching anything’s entrails repulses them? Winter is coming, summer is a memory. Indulge me to reminisce about a July day several summers ago when I cleaned fish for the first time in my adult life.

Fishing is something I have always wanted to do more of.  Unfortunately, it is not something I took advantage of while living many years in Minnesota. All that lake access did nothing to bring out the Babe Winkelman in me, it took moving to Nebraska!  I bought three fishing licenses in almost two decades in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and these just to accompany several fishing excursions by men in the church – wonderful fellowship times in spite of my being ‘skunked’ in the fishing department. Yet since moving to this comparatively lake-forsaken prairie state, not only have I gotten a license each year to fish back in the north country, but I find myself longing for angling opportunities to come.

It’s not that entrails bother me.  Nor was it that I don’t care to eat fish; frankly, I think I could live on seafood.  Actually, it was because I was a bit embarrassed that I would not know what to do with the fish once I caught it.  So that summer was my big moment.  All my son and I caught that first time were a mess of little rock bass, a couple small perch, and one other fish I couldn’t identify at that time.  But since it was a whole lot bigger than any of the rockies or perch, we kept it.  I’ll admit it, though – my son Jarrett caught it.  (Unfortunately, long after it was eaten, I also determined it may have been a slightly under-legal-size bass – oops!  But it still tasted great. Please don’t report me.)

What a production it was when I cleaned them.  For some strange reason the whole family gathered ‘round and watched, as did the family friends who were visiting at the time.  I had hardly a clue what I was doing. Daughter Maren sighed with the sound of cutting the heads off and protested, “They're still alive, Dad, that’s cruel…”  Hunter Man replied, “It’s ok, they don’t feel a thing.” (I have no idea if this is true; it’s just what hunter men say in such circumstances.) My wife said, “Oh, my big, strong, handsome, meat-gathering man!” Hunter Man said, “De nada, mon petit chou.” Actually, she said I had better be careful not to cut off a finger.  When I was finally finished, most of the fillets were no bigger than the end of a teaspoon, except of course for those from the likely illegal bass, which were more the size of a tablespoon. (Sorry, I’m not into fish cheeks yet, supposedly the prime piece on the animal. I could barely see the side fillets as it was…)

Sometimes it's also like this in the spirit realm, isn’t it? Jesus asks us to be fishers

of people. But we don’t fish because we

don’t like the thought of fish guts... 

Words cannot describe the satisfaction of eating that first batch of tiny morsels.  They were delicious.  More than that, I had conquered my reticence.  And when my fishing veteran neighbor Don heard I had filleted rock bass, he said kindly, “Yeah, they’re good practice fish.  Boy, if you can fillet rock bass, you can fillet anything.”  (Translate:  “What in the heck would you want to mess with those little pests for anyway?!”)

Good memories…

Sometimes it's also like this in the spirit realm, isn’t it?  Jesus asks us to be fishers of people. But we don’t fish because we don’t like the thought of fish guts.  It’s as though we want the clean fillets to jump from the lake right into the cooler.  We don’t want to worry about the mess that’s sure to come.  And make no mistake, spiritual fishing can be messy. If one never wets a line one never has to worry about fish cleaning.  Yet Jesus asks us to reach out to all people, as they are, messes and all (theirs and ours!). “Don’t be repelled,” He says.  “Draw them in.  I will change them later.”

Maybe we’re like Mr. Wilson in the old Dennis the Menace comic.  Dennis laments, “I don’t like to play hide-and-seek with Mr. Wilson – I hide, but Mr. Wilson don’t seek.”  Do we seek?  Do we fish?

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two empty boats on the shore; the fishermen were washing their nets.  He got into the one belonging to Simon Peter, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.  Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.  When he had finished, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.  So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  He and all with him were amazed at the catch of fish.  Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  (Luke 5:1-10)

~~RGM, from one of the earliest

entries in my nature journal

QOTM...*: Martin Luther on Fishing

(*Quote of the Month)

With a shout out to George Gershwin and Ella Fitzgerald, it’s “…Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…" Since I’ll be heading to the Northwoods in the next couple weeks for some easy livin’, and very likely to hold a rod and reel in my grip for some portion of that time, my daydreams have turned to fishing. Note that I say ‘fishing,’ not ‘catching,‘ but that’s all right with me. In fact, it’s all good, because I’m a firm believer in the ancient Babylonian proverb: The gods do not deduct from a man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing. And since I do far more fishing than catching, I may live forever…

OK, so I’m a paragraph in and have already quoted two sources other than whom I had intended. Forgive me, though I have warned you before that naturalists can go on and on about the simplest of things. Luther on fishing is what I said I’d get to, so let’s get to it then.

Martin Luther -- the Great Reformer of the 16^th Century, the founder of the Lutheran Church, the debater of long-held theology, the rebellious monk standing up to the monumental powers that be, the writer of what may be the most brilliant and well-rounded catechism in the history of Christian discipleship, that guy –once met up with his friend, Phillipp Melancthon, perhaps the greatest systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation. Melancthon, ever the heady intellect, wished to lay out the day’s agenda with Luther and announced:

“Today, Martin, you and I

shall discuss the governance

of the universe.”

--Phillipp Melancthon

Luther replied:

“No, Phillipp. Today, you and I

shall go fishing and leave the

governance of the universe to God.”

--Martin Luther

~~ Get Outside, 

RGM, July 25, 2014

QOTM...*: Isaak Walton

(*Quote of the Month)

For so our Lord was pleas-ed when

He fishers made fishers of men.  

The first men that our Savior dear 

Did choose to wait upon Him here 

Blessed fishers were, and fish the last 

Food was that He on earth repast.

I therefore strive to follow those 

Whom He to follow Him hath chose.  

-- Isaak Walton, 1653, The Compleat Angler

No, Isaak Walton was not a great-grandpa of John Boy, but a 17^th Century English writer-naturalist who lived from 1593-1683. This quote is from his iconic The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653, among the oldest books I have read, and unless I am forgetting, the oldest I have read on a natural history subject.

First of all, let’s get our language right. Compleat is not to be confused with complete, though there are similarities. Compleat is an obsolete word meaning ‘skilled, highly proficient or quintessential,’ as compared to complete, which means ‘possessing all the necessary parts.’ Frankly, most fishermen never have the latter at any given moment, though they still may be considered compleat! And angler has nothing to do with geometry or bargaining. As fisherpeople know, it is what we are called while we try to ‘get an angle’ on that slippery, wily critter beneath the waves, to figure him out, to think like he thinks. In no other sport, recreation or game activity that I know of is someone

called an angler. It is, after all, why the sport is called fishing, not catching.

The Compleat Angler is a delightful little read that is fifty percent fishing, fifty percent philosophy of living, and one hundred percent a rollicking frolic through songs, poems, quotes, anecdotes and the happy joie de vivre of a man who spent the last several decades of his long life streamside with a bait can and a friend or two, often clergymen. I think I would have really liked this guy. Hear Walton’s advice about the little creature in the can that is going to help him accomplish his goal: of the frog he says, “Use him as though you love him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer.” And so in the quote above, Walton seems to sum up his love for angling this way, that if fishing was good enough for Jesus, it must be good for us as well.

I totally concur.

The book is available from the Gutenberg website as a free download. Hit this bold text if you would like it.

~~RGM, June 23, 2013

 P.S. Next up next time -- my Blowin’ in the Wind feature, a poem I think you’ll really like…