We are now with our Philippines team, sharing a condo in Bangkok, we land in Manila on September 6. So I sit here typing, with 3 days to kill.
We spent five nights in Kohsamet for our debrief time. Our last night on the island a group of us decided to go deep sea fishing. I have never been an avid fisherman, the few times I have fished I have not caught anything, and I mostly get made fun of and lose the lures. I would not say that I hate fishing, but it is just something that I have failed at enough to not fully enjoy. When I heard that this fishing trip was going to be a guy’s time, I thought this would be a good investment of my time, even if it was just some bonding with the guys.
We met at the beach at 5:30 pm and then we walked to the office of the agency that was taking us on this excursion. We paid our 500 (!) baht and we piled into a green pickup truck/taxi. This taxi had a racing number on the side of the bed and the driver thought he was being scouted for a baja race, you never know when your ship is going to come in, and I guess he has a reputation to uphold.
This taxi drove a little crazy with all of the people in the back, some standing on the bumper holding hands with those in the bed, I thought it was fun, but some people I guess have lower comfort levels with danger and pain. By the time we arrived at the pier some had some anger to vent and wanted to demonstrate their emotions to the driver, but the driver was oblivious and we were herded into a restaurant to sit and wait for the boat to be ready.
The guys were pretty excited, and I had never done any ‘real’ fishing. I was staying a little quiet because I was preparing my mind to learn some totally new stuff…I pictured sitting in this big chair with one of those harnesses where I am strapped in…Imagine I finally caught something? I would be able to talk about fishing with my buddies back home like Dave who loves fishing and showed me a video of a shark they caught. I always feel like a little sissy when they talk about fishing, and I remember the fight that the sunfish used put up when I was little and my dad took us out in the early morning to fish off the raft at Camp Spofford. We would catch these sunnies and my brother and I would use sticks to pop their eye balls out while they flopped around on the slippery wood, but I am better off saying I am not into fishing than admit I have never had success and a sunfish is the limit to what I have actually caught. (Nope, just remembered catching a cat fish in the pond behind our old house and blowing him up with a firecracker…that was a rip snortin good time.)
We got told it was time to go, and I followed the crowd out to our boat. We climbed to the top deck and reclined in our chairs. The nervous excitement was palpable and one of the guys opened up a conversation with me with a question that took me off guard.
“Are you hostile towards women?” I was asked. I thought he was joking and I said no, I don’t think so, I just wouldn’t choose to hang out with the girls if I didn’t have to (when I was single I loved hanging out with girls, got some weird energy out of it, but now that I am married I just don’t have any inner motivation to look for ‘girl time’). Well I looked into his eyes and couldn’t read any humor in them and then got a lecture on appropriate relationships with women, you know, women will always be around and we need to learn to work with them, yada, yada, yada. I wanted to thank him for pointing out the obvious, but, for me this wasn’t the conversation I was looking forward to having while I prepared to battle a shark, and finally I just got quiet because I realized that where I am headed, the ministry and dreams being birthed in me will probably appeal to five out of 100 guys, and then four of them will be scared away. I guess this conversation and some others like it have shown that to me, and I need to learn to better communicate the direction, but at the same time not to get discouraged by others. I also was made to question myself, am I hostile towards women, is that how I am perceived? I don’t want to be perceived this way because then a lot of women won’t permit their husbands to hear what I have to say.
I would say my hostility is towards the oppression and bondage so many men are under striving to conform to a feminist society and religion. So many men who are looking to women to answer the question for them that only God can answer. For more on this read some of John Edredge’s stuff or Richard Rohr. In my mind, when a man is strong in who he is in relation to God than women can also be free from so much crap, that the best thing I can do for women is to be another voice shouting for men to wake up, rise and shine, be a man. I just still stand on the thought that women can not teach a man to be a man, and that is why the men need to be allowed to be with men. Again, masculinity is bestowed from one man to another, and what the world needs is more men fully alive, as men…not just more men fully educated in ministries and theologies, producing a false sense of security and stability. Men full of education and degrees and skills and ambition, but without courage and experience and wisdom and passion and faith. Geez, I get defensive about this stuff.
So that is what was going through my head as the generator was started up to supply electricity to the lights which would attract the fish in the night. We got told it was time to go the lower deck and fish, and we filed into the belly of the boat. We were directed to pick up some 20 ounce ice tea bottles, and I saw a lure on it and thought “isn’t that cute, each person can pick a drink and the lure is taped on!” Hmm…The line is on it too, and quickly we understood that this empty bottle would be our fishing pole. Well, I heard we were going to catch squid and I guess we would use it for bait for the real fishing, and where are the real poles?
What about bait? I remember the one time I went deep sea fishing with my older brother, Chris, and my dad. We had these big ugly things to put on the hooks and they were gross and if I remember correctly they bit, and I didn’t catch anything and I was jealous of my older brother who caught a flounder. So I was a little hesitant about what we would use for bait to catch a squid…what do they eat? Does it bite? It was a good thing I wore my crappy clothes because I figured that squid bait would probably be pretty messy.
Oh, we don’t use bait. We just let the lure down and then we pull it up and the squid will swarm to us under the lights. I watched another guy showing his girl friend the proper technique and I thought it looked easy.
After twenty minutes I was bored and by the look on people’s faces, so were they. We started trash talking each other about ‘squiddin’ and Rusty never even cast his line and he didn’t live up to his “Shut up and fish” shirt he likes to wear. So, I sat there, hoping to be the one who would catch the biggest squid, telling myself “shut up and fish”.
I sat and thought about how much this reminded me of the church. Each of us was discussing techniques for catching squid and we were trying really hard. We had the fake light to attract them and empty drink bottles and lures and no one was catching anything, because none of us really had a clue what we were doing, and how stupid are the squid that are attracted to these lures? And with all the failures and weird techniques and ‘this is how it is done’ I wonder how long the church will continue to say to itself and the people attracted to the false light “shut up and fish”? How long would I continue to fish, in the same way, without catching anything before I gave up?
Eventually we called it a night. The trip was billed to be 6 hours long, but by 8:30 most of us were fed up with this ‘adventure’. After we pulled into the dock, Chris Telfer, Eric Hanson, Eric Retterbush, and I hung out for a while, and to me, it was worth the ‘squiddin’ to be able to hang out with these guys who I probably would not have spent the time with otherwise, I really enjoyed that time.
To me, the time spent with these guys is exactly what ‘male bonding’ is supposed to look like, but probably wouldn’t go ‘squiddin’ again.
