How would you answer that question: Are
you swimming with the dead fish?
Malcolm Muggeridge, English
journalist, author, media personality and satirist and later a WWII soldier and
spy, famously commented, “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the
stream.”
Did you ever consider that before?
If you’re not a fisherman, maybe not. But if you’re a trout fisherman and
really into fly fishing, you know that trout will face the stream current and
swim to stay in place. Why? So they can be in a good position to snag those
tasty little insets and worms floating by on the current. It ends up being an
easy way for them to catch their meal, so they don’t need to exhaust themselves
darting around in circles trying to catch the food. They face the current and
let it carry their meal right to them.
And one sage on-line writer pointed
out that if a fish wants to remain in its home territory, it’s going to have to
swim against the current once in a while just to stay put.
A year ago when the engineer, our
younger son and I traveled to Seattle, Washington for our older son’s wedding, we had
the opportunity to visit Ballard Locks, a complex system of locks located at
the west end of Salmon Bay between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. While it
was fascinating and fun to watch the boats of all sizes and shapes (including a
couple of guys in their teeny two-man kayak) move through the locks, it was
even more fascinating to watch the salmon fight to ascend and scale the fish
ladders—the special devices constructed to aid
the natural migration of migrating fish.
I know right now you’re probably
thinking: “Okay, so what’s the point of the biology discussion, Andrea?” Stay
with me and you’ll understand.
LIFE CYCLES AND STRONG CURRENT
For those of you unfamiliar with
salmon, they’re born in freshwater, hang out there for a while and then migrate
out to the sea to mature. Then—after two to seven years—they return to their
hometown streams and rivers to spawn a new generation. Baby salmon are called
fry, and we were able to witness them shooting out of the lock falls as they
headed toward the sea.
Watching the salmon navigate the
ladders (which aren’t actual ladders with rungs but ascending pools) was a real
treat. We sat there for a long time watching them head back to Lake Washington
after several years of ocean survival. We imagined what they had had to endure
out in the unforgiving sea. And now they were fighting for all it was worth to
return “home” to spawn, and then die.
Some of them seemed a little tenuous
as they approached the series of ascending pools. In order to get to each
pool—where they take a little time to rest—they must swim against a cascade of
rushing water (a current) and then be taken up through an opening or doorway
that leads to the next pool. And the water can’t be a light flow, either. Salmon
move by powerful bursts, so the water they swim against in these ladders has to
be strong enough for them to be attracted to it.
Read that last line again. The current has to be strong enough for them
to be attracted to it. Pretty amazing isn’t it? A salmon will not be attracted to the ladder unless
the current is strong. It can’t be too strong to exhaust them before they make
it to their destination, but it has to be strong enough to attract them.
Ballard Locks uses a pool-weir
fishway, with a hole at the bottom of each level so the salmon can jump to the
next level. When they finally made it to the right point in front of the hole,
or doorway, and ventured forward, it almost appeared as the fish was being
sucked through a tube or vacuum. They just sort of rapidly disappeared. But
they weren’t being sucked. They were jumping to the next pool tier, or level.
But you could tell which fish were
taking a little breather before trying to ascend to the next level (there are
21 of them at the Ballard Fish Ladder) and which ones were ready to move on.
The “resters” swam around in circles and avoided the hole. They swam up and
down and tested the current and turned around and swam back toward the other
hole they’d just emerged from and then repeated the process. Over and over and
over. And even though they were “resting” they still had current they needed to
swim against in order to stay in the pool.
While we observers were cheering
them on to push through to the next level, (and, I might add, excited for them
to do so just so we could witness the process), the fish appeared to be smart enough
to move on when they were ready to move on (regardless of how their audience
felt). And, of course, there were probably more timid and pragmatic salmon than
others, testing the current, waiting, approaching, testing some more and then
finally making the decision to go for it.
It didn’t seem like a particularly
easy process, even for the ready-to-move-up-and-on fish. Some of them would
swim toward the hole and get pushed back or sideways by the current. Then
they’d try to navigate it again. And again. And again. Until they were ready,
and hit the current just right to shoot up and over to the next level. We were
mesmerized and could have watched the process for hours. The engineer and I
wanted to return to watch it when we were there last month, but we had too many
other things to experience that we hadn’t seen before and ran out of time. Too
bad. It’s prime salmon running season right now.
QUESTION
But my question today is: Does any
of this sound like life to you? Do you feel as though you’re sometimes fighting
for all it’s worth to get home? To finish the race.
Before you answer,
let’s return to the trout, and being a dead fish that swims with the stream.
Muggeridge’s point, while funny, is
an arrow shot in the hearts and minds of those who blindly or willingly follow
the crowd or march to the tempo of the world’s drummer.
Muggeridge used fish as a metaphor
for how some of us live our lives. In the case of our pastor’s use of it during
a recent sermon, it draws a word picture of the way many Christians,
particularly Western Christians, live their lives. (I think it also conjures up
some strong sensory responses too. Dead fish are pretty stinky.)
The truth is that it’s a struggle
against this world to hang onto Jesus and the Gospel. It requires real effort.
It isn’t a matter of just accepting Christ and then everything going along
smoothly and life turning out just peachy for the remainder of your days. If
anything, it may even be more difficult. And Jesus knew it would be; He warned
His followers about that. He told us troubles would come. He said that the
world would be against us. And He told us to be of good cheer in spite of it
because He has already overcome the world. Expect and plan for trouble, don’t
be surprised when it comes, and be happy in spite of it because you know the
One who’s taking care of and providing for you.
In other words, live life like a
trout and always have your front end
pointed against the current. Although it may seem more difficult, it actually
makes life a little easier. And the same is true of believers. If you’re always
facing Jesus—watching Him, studying Him, fellowshipping with Him—you don’t pay
as much attention to the world rushing by you, trying to sweep you away with it.
You aren’t looking longingly and regretfully at the back of the crowd after
they rush by or trying to figure out what direction to head. You don’t try to
jockey yourself into position to be a part of the flow. You aren’t paralyzed
and dragged along with them by FOMO—the Fear of Missing Out.
Instead, you’re busy being fed by
the One who knows what you need and how to properly feed you.
As for the salmon. It takes a pretty
strong, determined salmon to make it back through those ladders, return through
a natural waterfall, swimming against the current to return home where its
instincts are drawing it.
And that leads to my next question: Where
are your instincts drawing you? Are you fighting to get there? Or are you still
out in the ocean of life, trying to survive and grow and mature? They are all
natural seasons of life. What we need to do is make sure we’re not fighting
against any of them. That we’re not making life harder for ourselves than it
needs to be. And we always need to make sure we’re facing the right direction.
And we need to make sure that our
instincts are always tuned to some day returning home.
Another thing we need to do is be
very careful and deliberate about what we’re doing while we’re out maturing and
living in the ocean. That big hyphen between the birth and death dates is where
it happens, where the race is fought. Getting kicked out of the comfortable,
familiar habitat into a dangerous, unforgiving life is rough.
But you need to move out when the
instincts draw you out. You need to live and grow where you’re planted. You
need to fight the good fight and run the race.
Which brings me back to Mr.
Muggeridge’s comment and my question, the one that started all of this salmon
running and trout feeding discussion in the first place.
Are you swimming with the dead fish?
Next week we’ll take this discussion
a little further to see how we can escape the dead fish mode.
Until then,
Blessings,
Andrea
May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul
prospers (3 John 2).
Photos courtesy of Google
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