wrestling with ignorance

These past couple days have been a whirlwind of cocktail parties, meet and greets,and panel discussions. Though I'm wound up enough that I haven't been catching too many z's, my body is well-nourished by a steady diet of catered hors d'oeuvres and fine sparkling water, and I am enjoying the company of my fellow scholars immensely. Yesterday I picked up a tux from Men's Wearhouse and today my visa and passport arrived in the mail, completing my check list of last minute priorities. It looks as if I can expect my transition from the States to Oxford to be about as smooth as one could hope for.

My strongest impression so far is how being immersed in the company of so many bright minds, in Washington D.C. during the height of the presidential race, makes me painfully aware of the power of my own biases and preconceptions, as well as the enormous scope of everything I don't know.

This morning we met in the hotel lobby to trek across Dupont Circle to the Aspen Institute, a prestigious think tank that hosts world leaders and insightful thinkers of all backgrounds, as well as functions as a repository of Rhodes scholars. The panel that spoke to us this morning included an insider from the Hillary Clinton campaign who was not only deeply insightful with respect to the inner workings of the Democratic party, but strongly invested in Hillary as a public servant and women's advocate (anonymous due to the off-the-record nature of our conversation). Listening to her speak in a compelling way about sexism in the media and the party, about issues that matter to women beyond "choice," about Obama's failure to unite the party in the wake of the primaries, and about his perceived egocentricity and hostility towards the Clintons I was moved emotionally as my understanding of Obama was deeply challenged. (Since the point of this post isn't to endorse my particular political perspective I'll refrain from going into any detail, though you can certainly email me if you'd like more info about the panel and our conversation afterwards). As I left the air-conditioned halls of the office building and walked into the slightly smoggy, mildly muggy noon D.C. heat my head was buzzing with unformed ideas that struggled to be articulated, yet never moved beyond a vague feeling of unease. Was my response to Hillary influenced by sexism? Is my eagerness to embrace Obama as a black candidate merely a lazy means of assuring myself that I really am a progressive guy "beyond" the issue of race? Just how much of my perception of the candidates and the issues is shaped by media caricatures? What is the role of the media not only in stoking inter-partisan rancor, but in perpetuating class- and gender-based differences between people? Could I really change my mind about my candidate, or am I simply too committed to my own rightness? Perhaps too scared to confront a world of complexity that refuses to conform to my comfortable political and economic narratives...

Somewhere in the middle of all that I hear Tim saying "have you ever had an original idea, kid?" As I sort through the hodgepodge of factors that influence my thinking, my attempt to answer this question honestly becomes more and more revealing. What does it mean to be a truly original thinker, and how do I move myself towards this? I recognize that when you speak with someone they can only ever give you their point of view, which is sure to be contradicted at many points by anothers. The process of bringing together it all together to form a well-grounded view of how the world works is is truly daunting. Right now all the questions and the flurry of new information and experiences has me stumbling through a sort of perpetual haze.

Another lesson from Alaska: "just shut up and listen." Hopefully I'll emerge on the other side of Atlantic sooner or later as a somewhat wiser man.

In addition to healthy intellectual growing pain, there are many other things to celebrate about this new time of life. I'm having fun, and am feeling the dawn of a new sense of freedom as I realize that, even more than Stanford, my time at Oxford has the potential to be whatever it is in me to make it. It's gonna be good.

Tomorrow we're heading to the Congressional Breakfast, chatting with Chief Justice Souter, visiting The Mall, attending a reception at the British Embassy, and heading to a play at the Shakespeare Theatre in the evening. Even as I enjoy all this, I am reminded of when Jesus warns his followers to "Enter through the narrow door, because wide is the door and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it." The lust to pursue wealth, power, and significance even now exerts a faint pull, yet only by shunning those false idols can a man truly live. Pray for me, that in all seasons, both of blessing and of trial, that I would hold with an open hand before God the gifts he has given me along with the desires of my spirit.

The beautiful contradiction is that only when we stop clinging to our self-centered quest for personal fulfillment do we become capable of recieving even greater blessing without having it corrupt us. This is where I want the Lord to move my heart.

Two days and counting till I'm in the UK!

On the eve of something new

I'm writing this post from the Stanford House in D.C., where I arrived this evening after landing at Ronald Reagan International and awkwardly dragging my 120 lbs of baggage through the subway to the Woodley Park metro station. After two weeks of couch surfing in Seattle, Palo Alto, and San Francisco I must say I'm looking forward to moving all this stuff to a more permanent location!

The hassle has been well worth it, though. The past two weeks spent with dear friends have given me both the opportunity to reconnect with people I love and to say my final (for now) goodbyes to the West Coast. Among my favorite memories of these times are kayaking in Eliot Bay with Sean, blasting "Pienso en Ti" at Mike's place, views of the Seattle skyline at night with Jackie and Alana, a baked Ziti party during my first night in Palo Alto, fountain hopping with the Chi Alpha kids, and a Wu Shu lesson in Berkely with Dan.

Beautiful as these times have been, I'm readier now than I've ever been to step into my new role as a Rhodes scholar. At 3pm tomorrow I'll join a talented and diverse crew of students from the U.S., Bermuda, Kenya, Jamaica, and St. Vincent at Jury's hotel for several days of orientation and socializing before heading out across the pond. At the moment my enthusiasm is tempered by a bit of weariness from all the travel and nights of light sleep on couches and floors (thanks for the futon bed, Alan!), but at the same time I am ready to embrace this new season and to run with it for all it's worth.

Not much a of a reflection, I suppose, but for those of you staying tuned I at least wanted to throw out an update. If there's one takeaway that I've drawn from this past month, it is that goodbyes are worth doing well. I'm glad I've taken the time to say mine. (even if I will see many of you on the other side of the Atlantic!)

home

What a joy it was to see my family last week, as the Yankee Boy motored its way into Squalicum Harbor. Our families were standing in a crowd on the edge of the dock, smiling, waving, and occasionally cheering as we pulled into our spot. I stood on the bumper that runs along the side of the hull, the water of the harbor gently parting beneath my feet, and leaped onto the dock to hook up our tie lines. "Hi guys," I said, as I looped the spring line around the cleat. I saw my mom, beaming in that way that only a mom can when she sees her boys for the first time in months. I saw my little brother, lanky as ever, but by now definitely taller than me. Bethany was wrapped up in Ben's tan Carhart jacket, and I was struck by how much a woman she looked with her layered hair and understated yet elegant sense of style. Dad stood behind them all, faintly smiling, eager to open the doors of our home to me once again.

I stayed in the fisherman's reality for a couple moments longer as Jim slowly idled the boat against the dock, the fenders swelling as they absorbed the weight. Then we had the boat tied up, and I walked over to embrace my family.

I've been home for over a week now, trying to process all that happened in Alaska, invest in time with my family, and prepare for the rapid approach of my first fall term at Oxford. My mom told me the other day that I seemed happy, yet shaken in a way that she had not seen in a long time. My family sees in to me in a way that I am sometimes unable to see into myself, and conversations like these help me to make sense of what I am thinking and feeling. Alaska strengthened me, but it also stripped me of a lot of certainty. I loved the men of my crew, and miss them even as I write this, but they broke me down even as they imparted to me the wisdom of 80 collective years on the sea.

We went on a two-night hiking/camping trip this past weekend. As we climbed the highway 20 past the Gorge, Diablo, and Ross dams on our way to Washington pass I remembered that not even the Alaskan wilderness can compare to the majesty of the North Cascades. Some of the most beautiful places on earth have always been in my backyard, but it has taken many years and hundreds of miles for me to begin to understand this.

And for the first time in years we were together as a family again in the outdoors. This sort of outing had long become impossible for my mother, and only recently with her new transplant has she been strong enough and healthy enough to make the trip. We made camp, finished off a couple cans of beef stew (the whole family now competes with me for top eater!), and got up early to prepare breakfast before heading off on our hike. The Heather Pass trail works its way through some truly breathtaking scenery, but rather than waste space trying to describe it to you I'll direct you to the Picassa album I just started working on (sorry if all the photos still aren't up yet--at least Alaska pics are there).

Mountain air. The whisper of the wind in the valley. Limitless sky. The sapphire blue of glacier-fed pools. Freedom. Family. God is here.

As I reflect on that time on the mountain, I believe that it was a time of healing for us, individually and collectively. What a gift.

On the way home took a detour and stopped at the Diablo dam lake for a picnic lunch and some swimming (Ben's idea, not mine--so glad he thought of it!). The lake is a surreal blue-green color, and the water is cold and fresh. In the hot, dry mountain air my father, brother, and sister and I jump in while mom watches from the shore. Surrounded by the mountain peaks, with the sun blazing from the deep blue sky we once again experience the joy of unconcerned freedom, of childlike innocence. Bethany and I discover a line of logs anchored to the lake bottom with long chains, and roll uncontrollably when you try to stand on them. Log rolling competitions immediately ensue, our laughs and shouts reverberating off the canyon walls. The score: Aaron, 1; Bethany, 1; 2 ties.

The restless energy that lets me know it's time to leave has begun to set in, yet I am still at peace with where I am. Yesterday I spoke with a loved one about the gift of health: trials come, and when they do so does the grace to handle them, yet we are only ever given the present moment to enjoy. I'll be in Oxford soon enough, and when I do it's going to be good. But right now I'm here for a few more days--exactly where I need to be.

Aaron

mama, mama, I'm coming home

This morning we put the net in the hatch, chained the skiff to the back deck, and stowed our gear. After a hard season of scratch fishing and weather comparable to what you typically encounter further north on the Aleutian chain, we'll cross Dixon Entrance tomorrow on our way south to Bellingham.

It's time. Since my last post I've had the satisfaction of feeling that after two years of this routine I finally have a sense of what it means to be a deckhand on a commercial seiner. The shared camaraderie with captain and crew is something I will miss, along with the thrill of catching fish, the satisfaction of hard physical work, and the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness. But I won't miss the hard drinking, the brawls, the miserable weather, the close quarters, and above all, the sense of remoteness from a larger world of diverse people, places, and ideas.

In retrospect my memory of what I've left behind grows fonder, and my heart tends to yearn for what it is I don't have. I think this is a human tendency that's fairly common, and I will almost surely slip back into romantic visions of everything this time was (and wasn't) as I'm holed up in a pub at Oxford writing my master thesis. But after two times around my hope is that I've seen with a little more clarity the life of a fisherman and that my decision not to choose it for myself is an informed one. Though even greater adventures await, each time away brings me closer to knowing where it is I will ultimately land, like an oscillating pendulum that slowly loses energy as it tends towards a central point.

I now have a couple weeks divided between time with friends, family, and pre-Oxford prep before I fly to DC on the 27 of September, and from there to the UK on the 1 of October. Pray for safe travels back through the Inside Passage: if the weather stays as bad as it's been we may be in for some rough riding.

Aaron

from Annabelle's Chowder House

This will truly be a short one, since one beer and 2 hours of internet later these people will probably expect me to buy something else soon.

Fishing has picked up considerably over the last couple weeks, though each day continues to be fraught with misadventure. In fact, Jim informed me during our last opener that I have the distinction of being "the dumbest cocksucker I've ever met." Humbling, yet I can't help smiling even as I write those words. Over the past two days we caught 70,000 pounds of fish, which works out to be a pretty healthy share for each crew member. Combine that with our other good days to date, and the hope that we'll get a couple more, and the season is slowly winding down in a halfway-decent fashion.

We woke up this morning and spent several hours repairing the net, re-sealing the hatch, working on the winch, and changing oil filters. Ass-chewings received during fishing days notwithstanding, I feel more integrated into this crew than ever, and am proud of the time that I've spent here. The other day Jim looked me in the eye and said, "Aaron, I'm gonna tell ya, you're a good crew member." In a way, that's worth more to me than any accolade I ever received at Stanford.

Only a couple weeks now. I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces again.

Love,
Aaron

in port in Ketchikan

Normally I wouldn't post entries so close together, but last Wednesday was a day worth writing about.

Last Monday Fish and Game finally opened Jim's favorite fishing spot of the coast of Gravina Island, a spot of good news in what has otherwise been a fairly dismal run for the past couple weeks. "That's where I make my money, boys, where else can we go?"

So we headed south from Wrangell early Tuesday morning, arriving at Gravina that afternoon around 2pm. For the first time this season we saw jumpers all along the coastline, another reason to hold out hope for the following day, and turned in early after a meal of roast ham and potatoes au gratin. The engine roared to life shortly before 3.30am the next morning and we crawled out of our bunks to face what we hoped would be a decent fishing day. Instead up line up with the majority of other boats on the southern boundary of the fishing area Jim headed to the northern boundary, where he's had some great hauls in the past, and we staked out our spot.

No jumpers. "F*ck! Get out of fishing, kid, it stinks," Jim said. Swallowing the disappointment brought on by the mysteriously vanished salmon we got our gear ready fully anticipating yet another 20 hour day of scratch fishing.

Our first set we only had one jumper go in, so we were surprised to haul in around 3,000 pounds. Our second set we didn't have any jumps, but hauled in around 3,500. Things were beginning to look a little better, though we all hoped that the fish would throw us a bone and start jumping. We continued that way until noon, when all of sudden fish began popping up all over the place. We made a set off the beach, and for the first time since our good day in area 7 had the satisfaction of seeing the water boil as we hauled in a 10,000 pound set of fish. Success!

Then the throttle controls went out, meaning that Jim was unable to control our speed. As Jim screamed himself hoarse I stood in the stairwell between the wheelhouse and engine room, relaying commands to Harold and Tim, who were frantically scrambling to fix the system below. No use: we couldn't get the controls back. "We're f*cked! We are completely f*cked," Jim shouted over and over again. But the fish were jumping, and with Tim working the throttle manually from the engine room we made another set at low speed. After we had the net out my job was to stand in the engine room and switch the controls on and off again and again, waiting for the digital status panel to say something other than "error 62." After I had done this about 50 times Jim ran down into the engine room, and yanked on the cable shaft that connects the control box to the engine. They started working again! A couple minutes later, as I was standing on deck watching jumpers pour into the pen, Jim came out of the top house and started poking fun at himself for being such a hot case. The tension that had built up during the last 1/2 hour suddenly expressed itself in a deep, uncontrollable laughter that rocked my whole body, very nearly becoming a sob. It's bad enough to almost lose a day fishing: it's 10 times worse when you're doing well for the second time in bum season.

As we hauled that set in Jim started complaining about the winch (which brings in the purse line) making a clinking noise. Just as we finished bringing in the purse line the chain in the winch snapped. I was dumbstruck: how could it be that our luck was this bad? Every day I pray that God provides this boat with what we need to thrive financially and relationally, but the constant stream of misadventure was beginning to seem like a cynical, mocking rejoinder. Yet as if to remind us that we still had things to be thankful for, the winch only broke after the purse line was in, allowing us to keep the set. In the end, we succeeded in rolling another 10,000 bag.

By now we were excited: this was easily the best fishing we'd seen all season. Despite having a broken winch, Jim decided that we'd make the set and fix the winch while towing. If we didn't succeed in fixing it we'd have to back-haul the net, cut our losses and head to town. Harold and Tim went to work, and 35 minutes later, after inserting an additional half link into the chain, we had the winch working again. "I wish you boys could have seen it," Jim said after we starting hauling gear, "while you boys were working we must have had a hundred jumpers go in!" That set was the biggest I've ever seen--probably over 20,000 pounds of fish. As we tried to roll the bag over the rail the whole boat keeled over and the rigging groaned in protest. Then the bunt line, which lifts the bag onto the deck, started snapping. Just in time Tim unhitched the single from the ring bar, ran across the deck, and snapped it onto the bag. "This day is unreal," I said to myself, as fish poured over the rail, filling the hatch and stacking up on the deck.

We made one more haul and filled the boat. Beautiful. After offloading half our tank on a tender we went back out, caught a couple thousand more pounds, and called it a day at closing time. In spite of an exhausting day filled with near misses we caught 60,000 pounds of fish, by far our best day of the season. Having paid for fuel several weeks ago in area 7, this day went straight into our pockets.

It turned out that we were the high boat in the fleet on Wednesday, and word has gotten out: we'll probably have to fight harder for our sets this weekend, but the fish are arriving, and we know that we can catch them. Furthermore, after last Wednesday I know that there's almost nothing this crew can't handle. The season will probably run for another two to three weeks, so it looks like I'll be home in late August or early September.

I love fishing,
Aaron

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