Showing posts with label dealiest catch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dealiest catch. Show all posts

21 February 2010

touchstones

In times of change, I reach back for those most familiar, my touchstones to old foundation.  

Meus terra firma.

(*groan* my readers say. she's going to quote Joyce or Tolstoy or Yeats. some classic favorite she's mad about.)

Perhaps near the end. But here, near the beginning, I give honor to the name returned to me three times yesterday: Seth Godin. His blog rolls into my iGoogle every morning; he was referenced in a job application I completed; and his Facebook page sent me a notice. You can't ignore that.

Seth says:

"Your most vivid fears are almost certainly not the most important ones. We pay attention to the loud and the urgent. This can lead us to ignore the important and achievable paths open to us--because we're so busy defending against the overwhelmingly dangerous (but unlikely) outcomes instead." (Seth Godin's Blog, Feb. 21, 2010)

Life happens. Jobs change. People change or go away. Or come back. Medical procedures happen. Grief happens. I ride out the sorrow, fear, joy and hope, as tossed as the crab fishing boats on a stormy Bering Sea. I can only hope to be half as graceful as the mighty Hillstrands or the late Capt. Phil Harris.

Early this morning when the light was still pre-dawn out my window, the words of George Webber came to me, through unsettling dreams and foggy half-sleep:

from Chapter 47: Ecclesiasticus

". . .the essence of belief is doubt, the essence of reality is questioning. The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix. The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows and that everything must change. The growing man is Man-Alive, and his 'philosophy' must grow, must flow, with him." (You Can't Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe)

In this moment, the white and yellow daisies in a glass bowl on the table were given to me in love. I can hear my youngest child awake in the other room, and I'm fairly certain there is another cuppa tea in my very nearest future.

I remain grateful.

Sherri

27 July 2008

Ice and water

Those who know me know that my favorite TV show is Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch. I am a dedicated fan, enthralled by the men who make their living pulling king and opilio crab out from the depths of the Bering Sea.

The fishermen are truly men above men. Courageous, confident, daring...vulnerable. To challenge an insurmountable sea bares wide their humanity and their fragility. It achieves that masterful dichotomy of heroic accomplishment against the purest demonstration of human frailty. As true to form as Greek mythology, Eastern legend or Western folklore. I watch each episode in sheer awe.

There are few facets of our world left upon which we human animals have not worn a careless track, even in some cases to defeat or extinction. We often rage against the very universe that supports us.

The Bering sea is not exempt of human mistreatment. But its freezing spray to encase ships, the monumental rise of waves, and the roll of sub-zero waters that sap a man's life in seconds are reminders that we are not the masters of this universe, merely some of its smallest members, and tender ones at that. That which is sacred remains the vast expanse of green sea, the Aleutian gray sky, the scream of gulls and the pink barnacled shells of crab.

And the thickening of ice in sheets that extend like solid ground until the fishermen can even step over the side of their ship and walk on the surface of the sea, miles away from any shore.

Sherri