Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Tag
Salmon and the circle of life
By Jim Taylor – September 26, 2018
The conference hall was packed full. Five hundred people leaned forward to watch as an elder from a First Nations community along the B.C. coast moved down the aisle towards the microphones on stage. His red-and-black blanket cloak swished as he walked; the mother-of-pearl buttons adorning it flashed back at the spotlights following him.
This happened long before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for better relationships with Canada’s indigenous peoples. But the church, my church, was making its first tentative moves towards that goal.
The old man – he may not actually have been old, but he was older than I was, and he had a deeply weathered face – climbed the stairs onto the stage. He took the microphone from its stand. He held it to his mouth.
We waited, breathlessly, for his words of wisdom.
“We are the salmon,” he said.
Then he put the microphone back, and left the stage.
Well, that may not have been exactly how it happened. But that’s how I remember it. Because anything else, after that opening statement, was padding.
“We are the salmon” said it all.
The annual salmon run up B.C. rivers defined the circle of his people’s lives. The food that fed them. The culture that sustained them. The myths and legends that shaped them.
They and the salmon were one body, indivisible.
All are one
We who live in an industrial cocoon are slowly learning that truth. Life has no individual components. You can’t treat the salmon, the forest, or bears and wolves, in isolation. They are one integrated whole.
Botanists wondered why the spruce and firs along spawning rivers grew taller, stronger, than forests a mere hundred metres further back. They found it’s because of the salmon. Bears catch the salmon, drag their catch back into the woods, leave the remains under the trees.
The rotting fish fertilize the trees. The forest, in turn, controls water flow into the stream. Provide shade to control the stream temperature. Shelter the bears who catch the salmon.
It is a single interlocking circle of life, and death, and new life.
This year is supposed to be a dominant sockeye run for the Adams River, possibly the finest display of spawning salmon in the entire province. At its peak, 10 million deep red salmon look like a solid mass filling the river’s pools.
But only about two out of every 100 fertilized eggs will survive a winter in the river gravels, a year in fresh water, the long migration down to the ocean, two years roaming wild in the Pacific, and then 500 kilometres back up the rushing Fraser, Thompson, and Adams river to spawn and start the cycle again.
The river flow, the forests along the river banks, the sediment runoff, even the smells in the water that the salmon follow to their home ground – all can be affected by as little as a slight change in temperature.
Tinkering with one variable in the great equation of life affects the total outcome.
Including the lives of the People of the Salmon.
It took me more than 500 words to express that concept. It took the elder in his buttoned blanket only four.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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“You’re a scientist AND a you want to be a minister in a church????”
That is a question that a friend was asked prior to his ordination.
In the UC Observer there are testimonies from four scientists / ministers who have also been asked that question of how they square the circle of being a scientist and a Christian leader.
A grouping of young stars, called the Trapezium Cluster (centre), shines from the heart of the Orion Nebula in this photo by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Photo: NASA/ESA
Easter, 2018 is about to arrive.
What does that mean to us in the 21st century? A thought-provoking video from KAIROS Canada provides one possible response.
See you at sunrise on April 1, 2018.
In 2017 Anne Bokma attempted to “live spiritually” for twelve months. The UC Observer says that; “Having long explored the “spiritual but not religious” demographic as a writer, she decided to immerse herself in practices — like hiring a soul coach, secular choir-singing and forest bathing — for 12 months to find both enlightenment and entertainment.”
Photo Courtesy of Pexels
Bokma summarizes her journey in this column, published in The UC Observer: http://ucobserver.org/myls/
At the bottom of her column there is an opportunity to access each of the 12 monthly columns that she wrote on this topic.
It is an interesting journey to observe, especially if one believes that all of life is infused with Spirit.
” It’s all about opening, really. When I open myself to the world and its possibilities – even its hurts – I become whole. But when I choose to close, my life becomes fraught with struggle. Everything I do becomes about shielding myself rather than inviting good energy to fill me. Everything is energy, so I try to let the negative pass through me, rather than holding on to it.”
Richard Wagamese in his book, “Embers”, page 112
The words, “awe, humility and gratitude” are frequently used as “spiritual” terms. But what does it mean when they are used by a well-known environmentalist in a reflection on life?
Could it be a “spiritual, but not religious” moment?
If you’re wondering, check out the blog post by one of Canada’s prominent environmentalists, David Suzuki, at:
Richard Wagamese first came into my life through a book club. They read his book, Indian Horse, which was then recommended to me. The story touched my heart in the summer of 2016, and I subsequently read his books, Medicine Walk and One Story: One Song. The latter book is full of wisdom for life.
At Christmas 2016 I was blessed by receiving the gift of Richard’s profound wisdom, contained in the book, “Embers”. For example, “Embers” contains the following:
“LIFE is a series of passageways we choose largely on faith and a healthy dose of hope. We hope that the hallway of our choosing leads us to magic: the inexplicable, the sudden, the unconfined. Not so that we can capture it, hold it, make it our own – but just so that we can feel it, even for an instant. Feel it and know the truth that the universe itself is magic. Hope that by our believing, our blind trust, our inherent innocence, someday, sometime, somewhere, that magic will become us, even fleetingly, and we touch the face of God.”
Reading Richard Wagamese has helped me on this journey called life; he has helped me to know more about the tragedy of Canada’s residential school system and the harm that it did to First Nations people, and I am thankful for the wisdom that he has shared.
