Faith, Hope, and Love… and Fishermen

The essay is a reflection on questions of personal faith and folk’s often disappointing quest for divine healing, woven into my memory of a story my mother told me from her childhood, and the writing of Paul to the Corinthian Church. It was originally published in Good Tidings.

I am no fisherman.

Anyone who knows me wouldn’t waste a breath arguing the veracity of the statement. The few calluses I have had on my hands were probably caused by papercuts.

It’s not that I haven’t any connection to the sea. My mother’s family fished out of Red Bay, Labrador, and generations prior from Bristol’s Hope, along the western shore of Conception Bay. My father’s family, prior to being businesspersons and preachers, were also fishers, sailing from Triton and Twillingate in Notre Dame Bay.

All this fishery heritage of mine, however, is from long ago.

There are no nets or floats in my shed, I have no hidden skills to fix a “make-and-break” engine, and frankly, I can barely fillet a slice of bologna. Other than catching trout in a sheltered “steady,” the few remembrances I have of fishing have occurred on family vacations, watching salmon pulled from a trap, jigging codfish in a swell, and avoiding a squid spraying its ink across the gunnel. Most of my favourite ocean memories occur on the shoreline side of the sea, be it skipping rocks into the foam, picking up starfish and urchins, chewing on salt fish pinched from a flake, reading a good book while watching the waves, or listening to “the Broadcast” at the kitchen table.

Maybe my lack of comfort with the ocean began as a child when I was ordered to crawl into the cuddy amid a sudden change in the weather; or, possibly much later in life, when my parishioner-skipper-friend couldn’t stop laughing at me, as I leaned over the side of his longliner, seasick on our late autumn sail.

As I said, I am no fisherman.

And yet, I have lived most of my life in communities where the fishery has been central to the culture and served in churches where fisher families have filled a pew. Though the romance of the sea is lovely, at times the reality of the ocean can be heartbreaking. I have both celebrated with folk following a successful fishing season and have knocked on the door of a home with the saddest of news. It is this part of the fishery that I wish I did not know more than most. Be it a family or an entire village, creating life from the ocean requires faith, hope, and love.

A few years ago, my mother told me a story from her childhood. She recalled watching her own mother stare a long time out a window that overlooked the harbour, Saddle Island, and the ocean beyond. My grandfather had not yet returned from checking his nets, the wind now howling, the sea tossing, the sky darkening. On almost any other day, there was no need for worry. Faith and hope are unnecessary when the people you love are at the table asking for another helping. But on this day my grandmother was worried, and when she realized my mother had noticed her fret, she responded with words searching for faith and hope. “Don’t worry. Your father has been in worse seas than this. Go set the table.” Believing my grandmother, she did as she was told, convincing herself that there was nothing to fear. It wasn’t until an hour later when she heard her mother shout, “Thank God! Your father is around the point!” that she realized how worried my grandmother had been.

Two millennia ago, Paul wrote a letter to Corinth, a city built on a narrow isthmus separating the Adriatic and Aegean seas. The apostle encouraged the infantile congregation who were worried about many things including relationships, religious rites, and the destiny of the dead. Peering “through a glass darkly” from time into eternity, Paul found insight to aid his readers. Scribing words more poetry than epistle, now more wedding psalm than charismatic primer, the apostle taught them that regardless of life’s circumstances, whether sacred or profane, every Christian thought should be guided by faith, hope, and love, and of these three responses, “the greatest of these is love.” His encouragement reached beyond their present pains into the heavenlies where faith and hope would no longer be needed, divine love flooding the life to come.

But on this side of eternity—between Corinth and the sea—faith, hope, and love remain the strength of the weary.

Some folk teach that if you conjure enough faith, you can have what you wish, and wish away what you don’t. Hope isn’t really hope at all, in such spiritual algorithms, but a false claim of certainty. There is no encouragement here, only a damning in the name of grace. The promise of light disappears when faith and hope are turned into millstones, wrapped around the neck of the tired as they sink beneath the surface.

Wisdom cries out from the darkness of untruth. The words, faith, hope, and love, intertwine like a mooring rope reaching far deeper than simple trite answers that mock human pain and make suspicious divine love.

You don’t have to be a fisherman to know the strength of the divine and the fragility of humanity. When you’re staring out a window waiting for a loved one to reach home safely, certainty is a façade. Faith in God leans on hope, and hope sometimes hides its worry while it sets the table in love.