Category Archives: Uncategorized

What to do with a prize salmon?

What to do with a prize salmon?  The second congregation I served was in Wapato, Washington – a town of 3,000 with an 85% poverty rate. George Palmer was retired and drove an older white pick-up truck. An experienced tradesman, he liked to go around town and do household repairs for people who could not afford to have things fixed.  He took delight in his small white poodle, Taffy, and had built a special car seat for Taffy so that she could sit next to him and see where they were going.  George and Taffy would often stop by my office to visit.  

      He told me once about being a child at World Series time.  Radio broadcasts had not reached rural Washington yet, so everyone who wanted to follow the game would gather in downtown Yakima in front of the offices of the local newspaper, the Yakima Herald. There was a scoreboard with a baseball field painted on it, and as the office would get updates, an attendant would move figures around the field to show and post the scores.  He said it was exciting every time an update came, and the crowd would stand in the street to follow the games for hours.    

      George was also an accomplished fisherman, particularly for salmon.  One time we were talking about fishing and I asked him what the biggest fish was he ever caught.  He told he had been fishing with friends on the Columbia River, and he hooked what was clearly a huge salmon.  It took him some time to get it close enough that he could net it.  He said when it was within arms reach, he realized it was the most impressive fish he had ever seen.

      I said, “So what did you do with it?
      “Steve,” he said with a smile, “It was so beautiful I just had to let it go.”

      So much of our culture is about gaining control over things and making them our possession.  In that moment, I realized that perhaps the best thing we can do is to give thanks for a shining moment, and then let it go.

Siddhartha Visits a Nursing Home

The Four Passing Sights

      As a pastor, hospice worker, and someone who was involved in the long-term care of my father and mother-in-law, I have walked through the door of nursing homes many times.  At one point I realized the thoughts and feelings I (and many people) experience are something we share with that of Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha, as is recounted in the story of the “Four Passing Sights.”

      There are different versions of the story goes, but one captures for me the connection with nursing homes.

      Siddhartha was born into a royal family.  His father wanted to protect him from the harsh realities of life and become a great king, and so had him live within a walled palace.  Within the palace, he never saw anyone suffer.

      But at age 29, he felt a need to venture outside the walls in his chariot, taking with him his charioteer Channa.  On the road he encountered four people.  

      The first was an old person, bent over and struggling to walk. This confused and disturbed Siddhartha.  Channa explained that aging was a natural stage of life.

      The second was a person who was sick.  Channa had to explain that our physical life does not last, and we are all subject to disease.

      The third was a corpse, decomposing by the road.  Channa had to explain to him that our lives will come to an end, and our dust will return to the dust of the earth.

      These three sights deeply disturbed his sense of well-being.  He wondered what kind of life this really is if we can become sick, old and dead.

      He then saw a fourth person walking in the same path in the presence of the same three people.  But this person was not avoiding the three, but seemed to be seeking to understand and live with clarity about these realities.  The fourth person was an ascetic, and Siddhartha became intensely curious as to what the ascetic was finding. 

      Siddhartha decided to leave his life of comfort and privilege and become an earnest spiritual seeker.  Seven years later, sitting under the Bo tree, he experienced enlightenment and became the Buddha.

      Our culture spends a great deal of energy blocking out the realities of sickness, aging and death.  But when we walk into a nursing home, those realities are inescapable.  There are people there who are sick. There are people who are too infirm to live on their own.  And there are people who are dying.

      When I see, smell and encounter these sights, my first reaction is fear and resistance, as my ego is faced with these truths.  But I am reminded that these patients were once healthy.  And I am reminded that if I don’t die suddenly, these realities will be mine as well.  I try to hold space, as we say, for the feelings of fear and flight, but then focus on the spiritual importance of love, compassion and wisdom. 

“Why me?”

The first congregation I served was one in which seven families had all experienced the death of a young son.  Just a few years before I arrived, the pastor’s son had been hiking with his best friend in the backcountry and accidentally fell to his death from a cliff.  Not long after, the friend was in a motorcycle accident and was in a coma for more than a year before he died.  The boy’s mother once told me that during much of that time, she was haunted by the question, “Why me?”  She could follow that question down many paths:  how could something so devastating happen in a family that had been so close and so loving?  What sense does it make for a promising young life to be cut short because of a slight misjudgment on a curve in the highway?

The sense of life’s unfairness compounded the pain of her grief and intensified the sense of isolation.  Then one day she was alone and in prayer, and new words came to her: “Why not me?”  The slight change in the phrase transformed the way she understood her suffering. She began realizing how many people have lost loved ones for reasons that make little sense.  It didn’t solve the riddle of life’s tragedies, but it did release her from her isolation.  Now she felt a bond with countless people.  

I’ve thought about her epiphany many times over the last 35 years, and in countless situations.  If you find yourself asking “Why me?” consider adding an extra word: “Why not me?”