Casting on the Waters

"Lights will guide you home


And ignite your bones


And I will try to fix you."

(Coldplay, Fix You)

There are certain songs I try to avoid these days.

This is one of them.

I thought I’d selected a different playlist on the iPhone, one that would get me fired up about the arm machine I’d been dreading. Just as I grabbed that instrument of torture, the slow, melancholy organ music started, accompanied by Chris Martin’s plaintive voice: “When you try your best, but you don’t succeed…”

Tears streamed

Down my face…

Not really. But they glistened.

People looked at me funny. “Is the woman that upset about having to do the arm machine?”  I decided to stretch out and go home instead.

I know I’m not alone in being deeply affected by music. All kinds of music. The first stanza of a song has the ability to vividly evoke the emotions of another time and place, transporting me back to a different me.

That song by Coldplay takes me back to the time when I still thought I could fix people.

Now I know I can’t even fix myself, much less anyone else.

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Alone at the lake the next day, I grew maudlin, scribbling,

Silence screams

from walls that used to

echo with the calls of voices

long since gone so far away from here.

I sip a beer out on the porch,

and hear them still,

calling from the dock.

Boombox blaring 90’s music

back up to where I rocked,

unseen, behind a dappled screen of trees.

And laughter danced among the leaves.

It lingers still.

As I said, maudlin.

I haven't had time to do the empty nest thing yet.

Coming back into the cabin, I noticed a book lying out on an end table. A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean. It is a beautiful book; sparse, but rich with meaning and metaphor.

I love to read books more than once, if they’re worth it. I started out just skimming through, but finally gave in and started over at the beginning, savoring each word. Maclean’s lovely prose washed over me like the clear Montana waters of which he writes.

The story of two brothers, sons of a Scotch Presbyterian minister and avid fly fisherman, tugged at my heart. Brothers so profoundly different, yet bound by a deep, unarticulated love.

Maclean is tortured by a desire to help his younger brother Paul escape his demons. He grapples with the question of how to intervene in the downward spiral that ultimately will lead to his brother’s destruction. He writes:

“Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to

help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn’t

think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

But the awkwardness that comes between men prevents the brothers from open communication. They avoid certain areas of conversation like loaded mine fields. Instead, their feelings for each other come out in subtle nuances and implications.

When Maclean’s idiotic brother-in-law comes to town, the women of the family force the Maclean brothers to take him fishing. The brother-in-law separates from the group in order to get drunk instead. The brothers have this exchange:

“Do you think you should help him?”

“Yes,” he said, “I thought we were going to.”

“How?” I asked.

“By taking him fishing with us.”

   "I’ve just told you,” I said, “he doesn’t like to fish.”

“Maybe so,” my brother replied. “But maybe what he likes is someone

 trying to help him.”

I still do not understand my brother. He himself always turned aside any

offer of help, but in some complicated way he was surely talking about himself when he was talking about Neal needing help. “Come on,” he said, “let’s find him before he gets lost in the storm.”

Later, when Maclean brings the brother-in-law back to the house, naked and sunburned, he and his wife have words.  Finally, things resolve in a truce.

“Tell me,” she asked, “if my brother comes back next summer, will you try to help me help him?”

It took a long time to say it, but I said it. I said, “I will try.”

Then she said, “He won’t come back.” Then she added, “Tell me, why is it that people who want help do better without it—at least no worse. Actually, that’s what it is, no worse. They take all the help they can get, and are just the same as they always have been.”

“Except that they are sunburned,” I said.

***************

I had the gift of time to reflect on these ideas at the lake. As I watched sparkling waves undulate toward the setting sun, I wondered, How do we really help those we love?

The hints I’d gotten were timely, as always. A call interrupting the peacefulness of the woodland setting confirmed that someone I love needs help. There are several people in my life that I want to help now. Desperately. Want to fix.

I suppose that’s why the Coldplay song had the effect that it did.

I’ve been in this place before.

There was a time when I felt as if everything and everyone were crumbling at once. A stretch of crisis after crisis left me depleted and frantic. I didn’t know which hole in the dam to plug first. People for whom I care deeply were going through painful circumstances…some of their own creation, some not. I allowed myself to get down into that place of pain where you act out impulsively. Instead of waiting and receiving peace, I jumped in there and frantically tried to fix everything and everybody. My manipulations just made things worse. And made me sick.

I won’t go there again, with God’s help.

But, still, Maclean’s questions echo.

How do we find them before they get lost in the storm?

Can we?

Should we even try?

My prayers that night were full of anxious fretting.

Yesterday morning, we got up early and came back to town in time for church. We were surprised to find that the guest speaker was a Scotsman. With a charmingly thick brogue, he spoke of his love for his native land and his great surprise that God had called him to leave it for missions. As he told stories about Scotland, with it’s beautiful lakes, rivers, and mountains, I pictured the Scotch Presbyterian minister in Montana teaching his two little boys to cast a fly. A River Runs Through It is full of illusions to the art of casting. Rife with symbolism about it. As I was drifting off into reveries about the book, something the pastor said re-centered my attention on him.

He asked, “What are you carrying that you should be casting?”

I knew he was talking to me.

As he read the beautiful words of Psalm 55, I saw what I needed to do. Cast your cares on the Lord, and He will sustain you. I realized that in trying to help bear another’s burdens, I was clinging to them and attempting to carry them in my own strength. I know as well as anyone that you just end up crippled that way. The pastor encouraged the congregation to be real with God. To acknowledge that even in our worship, there is an awareness of pain. He reminded us that we don’t have to be strong, because in our weakness God’s strength is made perfect.

I had a mental picture of casting my concerns and cares high up in an arc over the tumultuous waters.

And then I went down to the altar and lay them down.

***************

“It’s not much, is it?” “No,” I replied, “but you can love completely without complete understanding.” “That I have known and preached,” my father said.

Once my father came back with another question. “Do you think I could have helped him?” he asked.

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and run over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

from A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

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“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (I Peter 5: 6-7)

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Does anyone else share these concerns voiced by Maclean: “How to help somebody close to you who you think needs help, who doesn’t think so?”