Jane Catherine Rozek

By the 54^th cast of your fishing rod, there should have been time to think about things. But you don’t ponder about the past or the future in your life. You’re too focused. It’s only after treasuring the memories of a fishing trip on the river, do you glean much insight from it all.

At the time you’re absorbed in the present moment….a smooth cast, keeping the line taut, feeling the tension of each tug as the three ounce weight bounces along the bottom of the cloudy waters of the mighty Fraser. At any second that line can tighten, snapped up in the mouth of a 14 lb spring salmon and you’ve got to be ready for the action! That’s why you’ve boon-docked on a perfect little sandbar. That’s what got you up to make coffee so early in the morning!

But you don’t catch any fish on the first day, though the salmon are running. You can see them jump out silver, shimmering with a splash, and down again into their water world. But the time is magical and you meet some fine local people. At the end of the day the river once again provides a perfect little beach, a table for the dining room, and then a dip in the warm water to wash the sweat away. So you enjoy the moment. And in the morning you plan to fish again.

You don’t catch fish with complaints and the regrets of the past; the ones that got away because of your lack of experience, or the ones you might have got if you had the right kind of rod or tackle. You’re here on the bar of the river now and you fish with what you got. The time to catch fish is right here in this present moment. So you let your past failures roll by just like the river of life takes everything that’s already happened and washes it down to the open sea. It’s all gone and that’s OK, because you’re actually only living right at the point of this one precious moment.

You don’t catch fish by imagining the future either, you catch them in the Now. Don’t worry about your fears of looking stupid and maybe never catching anything. So what if everyone around you is reeling them in. You say, “Good for them!” And you watch and learn, and keep casting. Let the future unfold as it will. The snow up there on the mountain is the future for the river water that keeps flowing by. You don’t overcome your doubts and fears by your intentions for the future. You overcome them by acting upon them in the Now.

The past is only our perception of what was real anyway. The future lies only in our imagination of what might be. It is only at this intersection of  time that we can connect with any power source at all. We catch fish in the NOW.  Our power is not in our past and not in our future, and neither is God. God doesn’t live on our human timeline. Our reality intersects with the presence of  God only in the eternity of each captured moment.

Look around you. All things are emanating energy. The current of life pulsates around us. Nature’s bounty is God-giving and it’s being offered to us if we will only stop to honour and hook into it.

This is our chance to experience exquisite joy because one minute later this moment will be in our past, never to be lived fully again. In this very instant we may chose to love, to overcome fear, to not give up, to persevere. This is the point we can activate our beliefs with power! This is the only point you can access God.

Underneath the water flowing down the river, underneath the fabric of our reality, there is pattern and purpose. In the salmon run, the sockeye swim hard against the current, fighting the odds to reach the headwater, to spawn for the survival of their species, the fulfillment of their life span.

In each moment of our flowing life, we too choose the current and travel on to our destiny.