Sitting on a dock of the bay... (still in Wrangell)

Though we haven't had a good day fishing since I wrote my last post, it's still unclear whether or not we'll be heading home soon: apparently this is the worst that my skipper has seen things in his entire career. There are spots of good news here and there, however, and everyone's holding out hope that a late run of pinks could save the season. The other day Jim told me we'd probably be sticking around till September, but with all the grumbling about how bad things are nothing is for certain.

I'm not worried about the money: though it would have been nice to have made the 20,000 dollars per guy that the crew made last year, I can meet my needs between here and Oxford with a couple hundred. What really gets me down about the prospect of heading home in a week or so is the thought of prematurely concluding my time with Jim, Harold, Tim, and Drew. I love these guys a lot, and each of them, in their own way, teaches me much more than I could set down here on this blog. We're very different men, and the tension natural tension between us, combined with our shared camaraderie, creates extraordinary opportunities for growth each day. I also have no idea what I'd do with a month and a half of free time. I'm not worried, though, the way always becomes clear as I walk along it. I am confident that I will return from Alaska not one day too early or too late. I just hope this means early September rather than mid August. At least we're working around three days per week, which is a lot better than one: guys get restless sitting on anchor or bumming around the dock for too many days on end!

The book of Ecclesiastes concludes with the admonition that to fear God and keep his commandments comprises the full duty of man. After spending 12 chapters reading about the futility of all pursuits "under the sun" I was anxious to study, yet again, how one accomplishes this. Despite the fact that I've been a Christian years now, I'm amazed at how pressing this question always seems to be, at how unsettling it is to ask myself whether I am truly following God or simply inventing even cleverer ways of concealing my pursuit of my own ends. I find that it is never entirely one or the other, and that discerning my wrong motives and strongholds of insecurity is a never-ending process of leaning on God's grace and returning to the example of Jesus to reveal to me what it means to pursue Him with a pure heart.

As I've been reading through Matthew, I've been struck by two insights so far. The first is that during Jesus' baptism, the text says that "he," not necessarily the other bystanders, "saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him." It is also not clear that Jesus' audience hears the the voice from heaven saying "this is my son, whom I love, with him I am will pleased." I checked out the accounts of this story in the other gospels, and in none of them is it stated (though not ruled out, either) that anyone other than Jesus sees the vision or hears the voice. I wonder what it would mean if the vision and the voice where indeed unique to Jesus. I've often thought of him as "God in a box," simultaneously aware of his divinity and the experience of being human. I'm not sure that the gospels support this interpretation, however. Here and elsewhere Jesus seems to exhibit a relationship with God the Father that is far more dependent on God's willingness to meet him in prayer and to comfort him with His Spirit. A provocative question: did Jesus, the man, need the affirmation of his identity as God's son before he was led into the wilderness to be tempted? How does this principle translate into the life of the believer? Even more provocative: does Jesus never explicitly claim to be God because, in a sense, he wasn't? The gospels make it clear that his conception was divine, and that the Word which with God in the beginning became flesh and "made its dwelling among us." We know that he lived a sinless life, and that he died and rose again, but I wonder if the unity between Jesus in the flesh and the Word of God was as complete as the church often supposes it was. And if it was, how well did Jesus the man grasp this? When he says that "I and the Father are one," and that "those who have seen me have seen the Father," is he literally saying "I am God," or is he referring to something more subtle, perhaps even more profound? We know that he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and that ultimately all of creation will be made new through him, so please don't misunderstand me as trying to arrive at something along the lines of "accessing the God in all of us." It's only that now, more than ever before, I am struggling with how to understand Jesus. This point is profoundly important in the life of the believer, and there is something troubling me about the way I have typically thought of Him that doesn't quite fit, something I deeply want to understand.

The second insight is much simpler and (hopefully) less controversial. It that the unifying theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that of trusting God to be who he says he is: perfect, loving, and fully in control. Drawn out explicitly in the "don't worry sections of the text," which deal with relying on God to meet the believer's physical needs, this theme is implied throughout the entire sermon. How will the poor in spirit, the meek, and the dispossessed inherit the earth in a world that worships power, where the wicked so often rule the righteous? What reward will the man reap who does his good deeds in secret in a world that glorifies the praise of others? Why give to those who are already inclined to take from you in a world of opportunists, both crass and subtle? It is only possible to put the Sermon on the Mount into practice if we set aside our futile self-reliance and in all things allow the basis of our action be a deep faith in the perfect, unchanging nature of a God who is working to heal a broken world and draw all people to Himself. "Great," I say to myself. "Now that I have this knowledge in my head, how do I make my heart obey?" And I am lead back to my consideration of Jesus, his relationship with the Father God, and what this means for the life of the believer.

Just yesterday we were taking turns setting with four other boats, which gave me enough time to finish Sherman Alexie's "Indian Killer," a disturbing and convicting novel about racism and the history of racial violence that has shaped the Native American experience. I was particularly struck by the final encounter between the protagonist, an adopted Indian without a tribe, and a white mystery writer who poses as a Shilshomish Indian. In this scene John says to Wilson, "Please, let us have our own pain," before turning and leaping off a 40 story building. "The White Man's Burden" really hit home as well. In this book Bill Easterly ties the West's arrogant, messianic self-perception that it is tasked to save "the Rest" to contemporary aid efforts, and explains why a system dominated by planners who lack feedback and accountability can never bring about economic of political freedom. The path to development, he suggests, is through a bottom-up system that empowers "seekers," innovators who develop local solutions that work and are accountable for achieving results. This process is inevitably piecemeal and decentralized. Hard medicine for a kid who won a Rhodes scholarship with original intention of studying Development Economics!

1/2 an hour till Java Junkie closes. Hope you're all well, and that the weather is far better on average down there than it is up here!

Take care,
Aaron