Tuesday, June 23, 2015

A Quality Angling Experience

This area is restricted to catch-and-release fishing with artificial flies and single, barbless hooks in order to protect native cutthroat trout that inhabit these waters and to guarantee all park visitors a quality angling experience. —sign in Yellowstone Park, circa 1974

The Buffalo Ford on the Yellowstone River is not listed by name on the free maps that visitors receive when they pay their $10 entry fee at Gardiner or West Yellowstone, but most anglers know where it is. It is a flat section of water that passes through the meadows between Fishing Bridge and Inspiration Point, just downstream from LeHardy Rapids. Though I have been there only three times, the memories I have of the place and its fish are like a core sample of my adult life. At the Buffalo Ford, I caught my first big, wild trout on a fly. It was also the place where I learned about barbless hooks and releasing fish unharmed. It has now become a place where I try to pass these lessons on to my children.

My first trip to Yellowstone Park was in conjunction with a voyage of discovery in the early 1970s. Torn between seminary and law school, I did what any red-blooded American male would have done at the time and “lit out for the territory” by spending the summer on the road. Since I couldn’t afford Europe, I decided to explore the American West. My guide and erstwhile traveling companion was an Oregon native named Ol’ Norm who promised excitement, adventure, and trout “as big as your leg.” To someone who’d barely been west of the Mississippi, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

So we started out for San Francisco, Ol’ Norm in the role of Dean Moriarty and me as the reticent Sal Paradise. Besides the fact that he was an experienced fly fisherman, there were several other things that made Ol’ Norm a passable if not ideal traveling companion. Among them was a red 1969 Jaguar XKE convertible and road trip skills like the uncanny ability to piss in an empty beer bottle while driving 85 mile an hour through the Wyoming desert. There are some things you just don’t learn in seminary.

The trip was an eventful one for me, an odyssey of sorts. Though I’ve long since lost the notes I was saving for the great American novel I hoped to write upon our return, I still recall one of the highlights that occurred on our journey homeward. Low on money but still high on enthusiasm, we stopped at Dan Bailey’s fabled fly shop across the street from the train station in Livingston, Montana.

I could hardly believe I was actually walking through the front door of a place I’d only read about in fishing magazines. Despite our road-weary appearance and lack of spare cash, the man behind the counter was most helpful. When we asked him to recommend a place to fish, he responded without hesitation. “If you’ve never fished the park before, you really ought to try the Buffalo Ford on the Yellowstone. You can get by with a few patterns and the license is free.”

The next morning, we got up early in order to make the drive south from Livingston through the Paradise Valley to the Park. It was a beautiful morning in late July and we were soon fishing the few #16 Royal Wulffs that we’d been able to afford. My inexperience and a used, ten-dollar, fiberglass fly pole made for inept presentation of the small dry flies but the trout were forgiving. And what marvelous trout they were; fat bronze Yellowstone cutthroats with a trademark red slash under their jaws. The smallest were 14 inches while the largest were well over 20. They were the biggest trout I’d ever seen.
This area is restricted to catch-and-release fishing with artificial flies and single, barbless hooks in order to protect native cutthroat trout that inhabit these waters and to guarantee all park visitors a quality angling experience. —sign in Yellowstone Park, circa 1974

When we finally quit fishing late in the afternoon, our arms were too sore to cast and we’d broken off the last or our flies. Seeing the sign posted next to the parking lot, we could only laugh and agree that ours had truly been “a quality angling experience.”

My next trip to the Ford was a decade later under decidedly different circumstances. A beautiful pair of blondes—my wife and our three-month old daughter, Liv—had replaced Ol’ Norm as my fellow travelers. The Jaguar convertible and empty beer bottles had given way to a Toyota mini-van and disposable diapers. Instead of heading back east, we were headed west to our new home—a parsonage in Olympia, Washington.

One thing hadn’t changed, however, and that was the fishing. Using a pattern similar to the one I’d fished with Ol’ Norm ten years earlier, the big cutthroats proved every bit as cooperative as they had a decade earlier. With my wife and daughter asleep on a blanket under the shade of a Ponderosa pine on the riverbank, I remember sipping a beer, watching trout hungrily rising to a mid-afternoon hatch and thinking that I must be the luckiest man on earth. Once again, the Buffalo Ford had provided a quality angling experience.

The last time I visited the Buffalo Ford, it was also with my family, though by this time a second daughter, Britt, had joined us. We were on our way back to Wisconsin for a family reunion. Due to a combination of circumstances including unfortunate timing, our trip through the park took place a week prior to the opening of the fishing season on the Yellowstone. Undeterred, I asked the girls if they wanted to stop off at a special place. After overcoming their initial disappointment at not being able to actually do some fishing, they agreed—much as I had 16 years earlier—that an opportunity to see trout “as big as your leg” sounded too good to pass up.  Under the shade of the same pine tree that my ten-year old had slept as an infant, the four of us enjoyed lunch and watched the wild cutthroats of the Yellowstone enjoying theirs. Though we never wet a line, we experienced yet another quality experience on the river.

When I think of places like the Buffalo Ford, it is with a combination of gratitude and hope. On the surface, my life has certainly changed since my first visit almost half a lifetime ago. Yet in important ways, it really hasn’t changed that much at all. I’m still attracted by wild trout “as big as your leg” (who isn’t?) and the places where they live continue to fire my imagination. So, too, the people with whom I’ve experienced those places. Ol’ Norm and I occasionally meet up for a beer and to relive our memories. Liv and Britt, my two daughters, have indicated that a fly rod under the Christmas tree is not an inappropriate gift for a girl. (“After all, dad, this is the nineties!”) I still feel like the luckiest person on earth. And every so often, I find myself whispering a prayer of thanks for the Buffalo Ford and the memories I have of it.


May wild trout and the places where they live that carry the promise of “a quality angling experience” be part of the world our children inherit from us.

[This piece was published in the Angler’s Club of Portland in January of 1991. Ol’ Norm died several years later. He was 50.]



Monday, June 15, 2015

Father's Day

I’m sitting at the vise, attempting to tie up a #16 elk hair caddis. It’s a good thing I don’t do this for a living. I’m usually slow but tonight, I’ve got other things on my mind.

In less than two weeks, my parents will arrive from Wisconsin. Part of their brief stay will include a day on the Deschutes for my father and me. In anticipation of his arrival, I’ve been hitting up my fishing buddies for an extra pair of sea-worthy waders, tying elk hairs and stonefly nymphs, and generally looking forward to the trip.  Fishing is often a special time for fathers and sons. That’s been especially true for us.

Like most people who fish, I was introduced by my father. It was one of those things that fathers just did, like the purchase of a first baseball glove and the mandatory lecture about the birds and the bees. Since ours was a large family, he had to do it a half dozen different times but he handled it well and it seems to have taken. We all enjoy fishing and my sister recently had a pair of waders custom-made for herself because she couldn’t wait for the local shop to figure out that fathers teach daughters to fish as well as sons.

My father was a teacher by trade and his lessons in the art of angling covered a wide variety of areas. He taught us about worms and how to find, keep, and—most importantly—use them effectively. When we got a little older, he used his income tax refund one year to purchase an aluminum canoe. With the canoe on top of the station wagon, we put in lots of miles looking for local “hot spots.” It was my father who introduced me to the native brook trout of North Wisconsin and clipped the notice from the paper about a fly-tying class at the local high school.

But fishing was more than catching fish for him and it has become that way for me as well. (That’s just as well since I have a younger brother who always manages to catch more and bigger fish than any of the rest of us. When my dad really wants fish, he goes with him!) Above all, fishing served as an island of tranquility during the stormy sixties when my brothers, my sister and I were growing up. The battles over civil rights and the Viet Nam War were also fought around our dining room table along with all the other adolescent conflicts over drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Sometimes my father must have felt like he was living in an emotional war zone. But somehow, a separate peace was declared whenever we went fishing or at least a temporary truce. Those evenings spent in the canoe looking for bass or stalking wild brookies on the Prairie River were magically reconciling. It was fishing that helped all of us survive those days. Because of that, I associate fishing with the unspoken peace and acceptance of one another that my father and I seem to have worked out about the time I got married and moved west.

Fishing is a celebration of friendship for my father and me. It was something we shared together even when it seemed like there was nothing else we had in common. I will always be grateful for that.

John Buchan, the former Governor General of Canada, has written, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable; a perpetual series of occasions for hope.” For my father and me, it has become a perpetual series of occasions for celebration as well. Happy Father’s Day.


[Note: I wrote this piece in May of 1989 and it was published in the newsletters of the Angler’s Club of Portland (June 1989) and the Flyfisher’s Club of Oregon. Sunday is Father’s Day and it seems appropriate to share it again after 26 years. My father suffered a stroke several years ago and silently contemplates life in a care center on a bluff above the Wisconsin River near the house where we grew up.]



Sunday, March 15, 2015

Testimony in support of Cap and Trade Legislation

Last Thursday, March 12, I gave testimony before the Washington State Legislature House Appropriations Committee in support of Governor Inslee's proposed Cap and Trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There was a packed hearing room and we each were limited to 90 seconds. Here's my testimony.

Chairman Hunter and members of the Committee: thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony on House Bill 1314.

My name is John Rosenberg. I am a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and I serve on the board of Earth Ministry, a statewide coalition of people of faith engaged in the stewardship of creation and advocacy on behalf of our communities and the environment.

Last Sunday, my wife and I worshipped at St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church. During the Prayers of the People, we prayed this prayer: “Give us all reverence for the earth as your own creation, that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others and to your honor and glory.” As I read over the provisions in the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act (HB1314), they look very much like a possible answer to that prayer.

You’ve already heard or will hear from others about how the Act dramatically cuts carbon pollution, thereby reducing its impact on climate change and global warming. At the same time, it generates much-needed revenue, builds the economy, strengthens communities, assists people who are hardest hit by carbon pollution, and protects public health. Those are all worthy features in themselves and make the act deserving of passage.

There are some who want us to believe that we can’t afford this legislation. But the fact is that the citizens in our state already pay a very high subsidy for carbon pollution in the form of climate change and its negative impacts. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has called attention to this reality.  In a recent speech, he said, “You show me a polluter and I’ll show you a subsidy. I’ll show you someone using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market by forcing the public to pay his production costs. That’s all pollution is.”


By holding corporate polluters to high standards in the same manner that many individual citizens of our state are already holding themselves to, HB 1314 removes the unfair subsidy all of us are currently forced to pay. In the process, we make it possible to honor our state’s statutory commitment to cutting carbon pollution. I urge you to support the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act. Think of it as an answer to a prayer!





Monday, December 29, 2014

El Cid (10/1/1997 - 12/29/2014)

Wise collaborator and loyal friend, El Cid died peacefully around 11:30 AM this morning, surrounded by his family. “Cid” as his family and friends knew him was born in or around Vancouver sometime between 1995 and 1997. Not much is known of his early life although he was in very good shape (one might even say “chubby”) when he came to us as a stray in 2000, several months after our Golden Retriever died. (We’ve always believed that he showed up because he’d heard we had “an opening” for an animal.) He’s been with us these past 17 years with the exception of several months during late 2007 and early 2008 when he lived in Portland with our friend Judy until we found suitable housing for the three of us in Tumwater.

Cid was well loved and will be mourned by many whom he befriended over the years, including his long-time companion, Pepper. Unlike many cats, he was very social—making the rounds in the neighborhood and at parties; sitting on laps and allowing himself to be petted by young and old alike; quickly settling in with any person who didn’t think they liked cats until they met him.

Although he was named for the eleventh century Castilian warrior, Cid was famously inept as a hunter. He was, however, an excellent theologian and regularly assisted with sermons, essays, and lectures. Always one to eschew the limelight, he made an exception each year with a regular cameo appearance in the family Christmas letter. While I don’t think of myself as a “cat person,” and can’t imagine ever having another, Cid was a wonderful member of our family and a faithful friend through good times and bad. He will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him. However, recent comments by Pope Francis lead us to hope that one day we will be re-united with him and all of our loved ones—furry and otherwise—in the Resurrection.

Cid was buried at his family home in a private ceremony earlier today. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.

“Rest eternal grant him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”


[Editor’s note: El Cid contributed to this obituary.]


Friday, November 21, 2014

Encouraging "a mature and wise body of believers"

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of e-newsletters. They are usually a quick read and its easy to “unsubscribe” if I no longer find them helpful. (I’ve long since given up any hope of keeping my email address “private” convinced as I am that the luxury of privacy no longer exists in the age of the internet). One of the most consistently interesting and provocative is news and pews from the publisher, HarperOne.

HarperOne is a beacon of light in the vast wasteland of religious book publishing in America (a subject for another blog post!). Mickey Maudlin, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor at HarperOne, uses his monthly column to showcase new titles. But he also offers some interesting commentary on the current religious scene. What’s intriguing about Maudlin and HarperOne is that their publishing philosophy seems to be anchored in a belief that conservative and fundamentalist Christians—the market that most religious book publishers regularly target—are not the only ones who read or buy books. HarperOne appears to believe that there is large group of thoughtful, curious, spiritually committed, intelligent folks out there who are hungry and eager for more meat than the pablum that most religious book publishers are selling these days. To put it in Biblical terms, “May their tribe increase!” Maudlin and HarperOne have taken this philosophy to the bank by regularly featuring authors like Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, Barbara Brown Taylor, John Shelby Spong and many others who sell hundreds of books to this other-wise underserved market. 

When I was teaching a weekly adult class, I often made use of these authors in an effort to reassure people in my congregation that it was OK for them to ask questions, have doubts, and to color outside the strict theological lines of whatever denomination they grew up in. It was not only OK, it was absolutely vital to a living faith. I have always believed that doubt is not the enemy of faith. Fear is. And its fear, I’m convinced, that keeps so many Christians from digging deeper into the Bible and their beliefs. Its also fear that keeps their pastors from sharing the fruits of their seminary education with their parishioners. 

Nowhere is this more the case than when it comes to the Bible. Although historical-critical insights into the books of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament have been around for almost 200 years, they come as news to most people sitting in the pews. One major reason is that pastors have given up their role as the primary theologian and Biblical scholar in their parish to become the CEOs of their congregation. There are genuine reasons for this change but one result has been that lay people are not challenged to grow in their faith by their pastors.

Maudlin addresses this phenomenon in a recent column. 

Despite the fact that more scholarship on the Bible accumulates and despite the fact that more information is accessible to more people today, there remains a chasm, a difficult-to-bridge gap between Christians who believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God and the best and deepest knowledge about that book. Why the gap?

Part of the reason is fear, of course. Evangelicals and other conservative Christians see themselves as emerging from the ashes of the modernist-fundamentalist wars of the twentieth century where “liberal” theology cast out the orthodox from mainstream institutions, such as seminaries and universities. So it is no wonder people are suspicious about what passes for “knowledge” about the Bible in these circles. The funny thing is, though, today many of those allegedly “liberal” scholars are the sons and daughters of conservative Christians who learned to love their Bibles at home and went off to universities to discover its history and deeper content. There are few truly hostile, anti-Christian liberals left.

And of the remaining hostility in this world, some of it comes from what I am getting at—namely, that some people treat as “enemies of the church” those who talk about the fruits of scholarly research of the Bible. Who wants to be the target of persecution? Who wants to be seen as a persecutor? Better to keep these two worlds apart.

But there are brave souls who are not content to leave matters alone—thank God.
You can read the entire article here.

Some of those brave souls are parish pastors who regularly make an effort to share the fruits of current Biblical and theological scholarship with their people in a pastorally sensitive way that refuses to patronize them. That’s what good teachers do. They stretch us and challenge our beliefs. They move us out of our comfort zones rather than simply re-enforcing our prejudices.

This is important work, more important than some of the other distractions that regularly compete for our attention as pastors. I want to quickly add that the pastor isn't the only one who can take a leadership role in adult education. Many congregations are blessed with all kinds of folks who can make this a vital part of any parish. But at the end of the day, no one is better equipped to serve as the resident theologian and Biblical scholar in most congregagtions than the pastor. That's what she was trained to do! Maudlin sums it up this way:

The church needs a mature and wise body of believers in order to live up to its calling in the world. But unless we put aside our fears and our us-versus-them thinking, we cannot become that body. Reading [and encouraging others to read] the works of those who are working hard to equip the church so that our beliefs match our collective knowledge of the Scriptures will help. 

So will pastors recovering their roles as teachers. You can read Mickey Maudlin’s blog at newsandpews.com. jpr

Monday, October 13, 2014

Slow

On a recent trip to Italy, my companions and I walked over the Col du Gran San Bernardo and passed through the Piemonte region in the north. This is the home of great wines—Barbera, Barolo, and others, as well as great food. It’s also the birthplace of the “slow food” movement, an idea that has been making more and more sense to me over the past few years as I’ve tried to think about ways in which place matters when it comes to caring for creation. Briefly put, I’ve come to the same conclusion that others have before me; in the words of Stephen Jay Gould, “we will not fight to save what we do not love.” I have a deep suspicion that this may also be true from a theological perspective.



In digging through some old files, I discovered that this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this. Here’s a newsletter article from April of 2010 where I first began thinking out loud along these lines.

I was feeling beleaguered the other day by a series of deadlines and due dates.  It occurred to me that perhaps someone should start a “slow church” movement.  It could be patterned along the lines of the “slow food” movement that began in Italy in 1986.  The McDonalds Corporation was planning to build a new fast-food restaurant in the heart of one of Rome’s oldest neighborhoods near the famous Spanish Steps. Carlo Petrini, a local restaurateur and resident, led a successful protest against what he considered the corporate blight of one of the city’s loveliest plazas. 



From those beginnings, “slow food” has become an international movement with thousands of members in over 132 countries.  In addition to slow food – slow travel, slow shopping, and slow design are part of an emerging slow planet movement.  One description of the slow movement is that it is, “opposed to the culture of fast food, [slow food] seeks to encourage the enjoyment of regional produce, traditional foods, which are often grown organically and to enjoy these foods in the company of others. It aims to defend agricultural biodiversity.”[1] Think of the Olympia Farmer’s Market or Fish Tale Brewing!


What might a “slow church” look like?  The mascot of the slow movement is a snail which provides a clue.  Slow is about literally slowing things down.  My quick list of characteristics of  “slow church” includes the following:
·      Taking time for discernment and prayer as we go about our individual and corporate lives of discipleship
·      Paying attention to our relationships including our relationship with each other (which is very important!) but also our community, watershed, and bio-region
·      Learning and celebrating our local history and traditions as individuals, families, and as a congregation and community
·      Drawing on the rich spiritual heritage and resources of the Christian tradition (think “heirloom seeds” here) along with other spiritual traditions to enrich our spiritual lives and sharing these with our children and grandchildren
·      Taking time to breathe, be silent and bask in God’s graceful action in the world and in our lives

You are welcome to add your own ideas about “slow church.”  Please share them! 
One of the best practitioners of “slow worship” is Dan Erlander.  Before every worship service, Dan always takes off his watch.  “We’re on God’s time now,” he once told me.  Perhaps we a “snail” banner could grace our worship space to remind us. If I seem a little slow, just start without me. jpr





[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Capitol Lake reflects our inability to make hard choices

Like some of you, I've been thinking about Capitol Lake and it's future. Here are some thoughts I shared in yesterday's Olympian: