Passions and pursuits
25/10/13 05:24
I’ve been reading Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. I guess it would be more accurate to say re-reading, as I had read most of them before. The stories are short and semi-autobiographical. Having read a lot of Hemingway and a lot about Hemingway they reveal a significant amount about the character of the man. I don’t intend to explore the complex personality of Hemingway in today’s blog, but he was a complex and troubled man and his story says some things about the times in which he lived as well as his own personal struggles and adventures.In the Nick Adams stories, Hemingway captures the experience of fishing for trout with grasshoppers and a fly rod as well as anything I have ever read. There is something metaphysical about fishing in general and the experience of hooking and landing a trout with a fly rod is a sublime and somewhat addictive adventure.There is a connection with the natural world, an experience of beauty, a sense of a deeper intelligence in the universe, a connection between mind and body and spirit and so much more in the process.
Hemingway isn’t the only one to speak of fishing with near-religious reverence. David James Duncan weaves together love and fly fishing in a delightful story in his book, “The River Why.” Norman Maclean does a good job of describing the religion of fly fishing in the opening of “A River Runs Through It.”
Hang out with those who love fishing enough and you will hear them use some of the same phrases and expressions that we use in church when talking about the art, science, and spirituality of fishing.
He doesn’t do quite as good a job with skiing, but in the Nick Adams stories, Hemingway achieves a few descriptions of skiing that present the sport as a passion, if not a conviction.
These books interest me in part because I have pursued fly fishing and skiing as passions over the years. There were times in my life when I invested considerable time and financial resources in both of those sports. It is accurate to say, however, that my passion for both sports is less intense than it once was. The truth is that I don’t fish much any more. It takes a certain focus and commitment and these days I haven’t been fishing much at all. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine not having a season pass to a downhill ski resort. I didn’t even go skiing once last winter. There are good things in life that we pursue for a time and then we move on to other things. Neither fishing nor skiing are unavailable to me. I could do either if I turned my attention to those activities. But there are things in life that come and go with the seasons of our lives.
Near the end of his life, Hemingway lived in Sun Valley, Idaho, a place with ready access to both some of the best fly fishing and some of the best skiing in the world. But he, too, didn’t pursue those activities with the passion that he had invested earlier in his life.
In my life, there have, however been passions that are constant. There are things for which I can’t imagine losing the intensity of my feelings. For Hemingway the love of the women in his life seemed to come and go. My experience has been very different. After 40 years of marriage, my passion and the intensity of my feelings for my wife have only deepened and grown more strong. I have little understanding of those for whom love dies. I witness the coming and going of the marriages of friends and colleagues, but I can never understand them. I can’t imagine not wanting to be married.
It is that way with our children as well. From the very beginning I have always wanted to be a father. I can’t imagine not wanting to be a father. It is not just a passion that I pursue, it is a core identity. It is who I am, not just what I do.
For me Christianity is in that category of life-long commitment and not just a passion for one season of my life. My understanding of the nature of faith has matured over the years, but my desire to know more and to plumb the depths of faith and relationship with God grows greater with the passage of time. I don’t seem to have much time or energy for what I take to be silly arguments about whether or not God exists or the way most science vs. religion debates are framed. But I love to study the scriptures with friends. I love to think about the depths of faith with others. I am moved by worship and find great meaning in times of meditation and contemplation.
I can imagine moving on to different ministries, but I can’t imagine stopping being a minister. I will be engaged in this process for all of my life.
As appealing as Hemingway’s descriptions of fishing and skiing are, his life seems to me to be tragically hollow. He found small passions worth pursuing: writing, fishing, skiing, four wives and several lovers. But he never found deep commitments. Knowing that the Nick Adams stories were published after his death makes them even more bittersweet. They tell part of the story of the man, but they are incomplete.
The real tragedy is that the life of Hemingway was incomplete. Hemingway was buried with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church when he died, after the church determined that he was not in his right mind at the time of his suicide. Outside of what seems to me to be obvious - no one could be in his or her right mind if he or she dies by suicide - his life ended incomplete.
Depression, alcoholism, and a host of physical ailments don’t tell the story of Ernest Hemingway. They aren’t a fitting epitaph. In a way the Nick Adams stories reveal more of the character of the man.
But if all one does is chase after passions, one runs the risk of never finding the love to which you can be true. One of the deep paradoxes of life is that freedom is found in commitment.
Still, Hemingway came close. In the Nick Adams Stories he almost got the perfect description of floating a hopper down the creek and under the bank to where the big fish strike. For an instant he was connected with the universe and all that is in it. I hope that his connection is as deep in eternity as it was in that instant.