Traditions

Throughout most of my life, I have spent one week each year with my family at the coast. My grandfather started this tradition–before it was a tradition–when he arrived in this country from Switzerland and became enthralled with the beauty of the Pacific Northwest coastline. During these times, we catch fish and rake clams, and dive into the frigid ocean waters to pry large abalone from the bottom of rocks. We do this each year to disconnect from the business of our lives to reconnect with each other. It is a tradition I hold dear and value greatly.

And, just as I associate the smell of pine trees with Christmas or the hiding of eggs in the cold, wet grass with Easter, these weeks at the coast hold their rituals and traditions we relive each year. I am especially fond of the dinners with clams, crabs, fish, and abalone drawn from the sea daily. Just as I enjoyed these meals with my parents and grandparents, I now hold them in my heart as I enjoy similar meals with my children and grandchildren. Traditions are the constants by which we measure the changes in our lives. They are the anchors to what was, even as we embrace what is becoming.

Another tradition on these trips involves a particular set of rocks that protrude into the rough waters of the Pacific. These rocks form a kind of inlet filled with kelp and fish; each year, we take at least one day to fish from this place. We hike down the cliff and pause to fill tobacco bags with sand and gravel. This trick, handed to us by some local fishermen years before, enables us to fish in these kelp-filled waters. The bags, tied to the end of our fishing lines, pull our bait through the kelp. In addition, they break away in the all-to-common event of a snag. Getting our lines below the kelp is essential because that is where the fish live. The fishes we catch here are amber and purple perch with bright blue spots, sea trout whose filets are translucent and blue, ugly Capazoni, and the rare Ling Cod. They are the only fishes we catch here.

My father and I could sit silently for hours on these rocks and watch the giant rollers crash relentlessly against the shiny black barricade of rocks that extend into the sea. Each wave carries an explosion of soft white foam; each burst of foam is unique in its shape and beauty. Occasionally one of us would catch the eye of the other and point with a nod toward something to see. The nod might say: "look, there is another pod of pilot whales" or "there goes an Osprey with a codfish dinner in her talons." This place, with such abundance and variation of life and light and movement, makes every trip fruitful, even if we return without a catch on any given day.

One day, my dad caught my eye and nodded toward the rocks behind me. I turned to see a man with the wrong kind of pole and gear standing not far from where we were. I sat aghast as he tied a lure to the end of his line. I turned back to my dad with raised eyebrows and a smug smile as if I was saying, "what a goof--this newbie is going to lose his line!" Casting a lure in a kelp bed is a quick way to lose an expensive fishing lure, and it won't get your line down to where the fish are. I wanted to be kind, walk over with my decades of experience and a couple of tobacco bags, and correct his foolishness. Instead, I sat back and waited for the inevitable.

But then something surprising happened. The man cast beyond the kelp and quickly–skillfully–jerked the lure, so it skipped over the kelp. His line did not snag. But something even more surprising followed. After just a few casts, he got a bite and hooked a fish. It was a small black codfish of a variety I had never seen before. In all these years of fishing below the kelp, it never occurred to me that there was an entirely different kind of fish living just above our bait. After a half hour or so, that man took a string of fish home for dinner. That day we went home empty-handed.

I told our group this parable before we started the new community in San Bruno. It is still an apt parable for church planters today. Fishing differently doesn't mean we reject the traditions of those who came before us. It simply means God's view of the ocean is more extensive than ours. And He might love fish that will never find their way below the kelp. We can trust him to lead us to fish in new ways. God called us to find new ways to catch fish, called us to find those people who would not find their way into existing forms of church and worship. I believe this was His call for our whole community.

"Fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore … casting their nets. The sea will teem with fishes of all kinds…." Ezekiel 47