"You like to tell true stories, don't you? he (my father) asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true."

Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it?

"Only then will yo understand what happened and why.

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."

Now nearly all those I loved and did not undersand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the big blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 104

Once my father came back with another question.  "Do you think I could have helped him?" he asked.  Even if I might have thought longer, I would have made the same answer.  "Do you think I could have helped him?"  I answered.  We stood waiting in deference to each other.  How can a question be answered that asks a lifetime of questions?

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 103

A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 102

"What have you been reading?" I asked.  "A book," he said (father).  It was on the ground on the other side of him.  So I would not have to bother to look over his knees to see it, he said, "A good book."

Then he told me, "In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that's right.  I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water."

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 95

Conversation between Norman and his father about Paul's quandry

"You are too young to help anybody and I am too old,"  he said.  "By help I don't mean a coutesy like serving chokecherry jelly or giving money.
"Help," he said, "is giving part of yourself ot somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.
"So it is," he said, using and old homiletic transition, "that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves.  Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. and even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.  It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"
I told him, "you make it too tough.  Help doesn't have to be anything that big."
He asked me, "Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his rolls?"
"She might," I told him.  "In fact, yes, I think she does."
"Do you think you help him?" he asked me.
"I try to," I said. "My trouble is I don't know him. In fact, one of my trouble is that I don't even know whether he needs help.  I don't know, that's my trouble."
"That should have been my text," my father said.  "We are willing to help Lord, but what if anything is needed?
"I still know how to fish," he concluded.  "Tomorrow we will go fishing with him."

As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them.  It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.  But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water.  And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.

The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river.  he says he is "reading the water," and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing.  Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke.  And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.

For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 63-64

The cast is so soft and slow that it can be followed like an ash settling from a fireplace chimney.  One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 43

I had not choice now but to cast into the willows if I wanted to know why fish were jumping in the water all around me except in this hole, and I still wanted to know, becasue it is not fly fishing if you are not looking for answers to questions.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 42

You can't catch fish if you don't dare go where they are.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 42

Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart--I don't know what it is or where, because sometimes it is in my arms and sometimes in my throat and sometimes nowhere in particular except somewhere deep. Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 37

It is a shame I do not understand him (Paul)

Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help.  We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts.  It will not let us go.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 28-29

Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn't think so.  At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 28

It is a strange and wonderful and somewhat embarrassing feeling to hold someone in your arms who is trying to detach you from the earth and you aren't good enough to follow her.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 26

I could never be talked into believing that all a fish knows is hunger and fear.   I have tried to feel nothing but hunger and fear and don't see how a fish could ever grow to six inches if that were all he ever felt.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 19

That's how you know when you have thought too much--when you become a dialogue between You'll probably lose, and You're sure to lose.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 18

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe.  To him, all good things--trout as well as eternal salvation--come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 4

Moroni’s formula for spiritual rebirth is to “deny ourselves of all ungodliness” and “love God with all your might, mind, and strength” so that “by his grace we may be perfect in Christ.” Since ungodly thought and behavior only drags us deeper into the “natural man,” keeping moral laws and commandments helps to stabilize our lives and environment so we can begin to love at the soul level. This type of love for God is impossible when our attention is focused on sin (the Prodigal Son) or on our status, worthiness, and success in external obedience (the Elder Son). It is only possible as one learns the practices of the inner path, such as meditation and contemplative prayer, where one communes spirit to spirit with God. It is this communion that gives us access to the purifying influence of the grace of God that perfects us or restores our soul nature.

Philip G. McLemore, Hindering the Saints: Taking Away the Key of Knowledge

I actually think fiction is the best way to understand humans’ personal attempts at connection with God. And that’s because fiction can only be about one person, or two people, or maybe one family; and in its specificity, we can see this search for connection at work. That’s why we love stories, why the Bible is full of stories, why Jesus spoke in stories.We can only understand truth in its human context or form, I think. That’s not to say that philosophy or theology isn’t worthwhile, just that for most of us, what touches us, what’s meaningful about God—it sounds corny—but it’s in our hearts. It can’t be intellectualized.

 

Brady Udall, Interview in Dialogue Journal.

A centered spiritual life looks beyond the present and asks, ‘how will it end?’ How will it end for me, for my family, for my community and indeed for the world? From a contest over clothing, to brutal social violence, our current social course seems to be all-symptomatic of a human failing to privilege grace over nature.

Will it end with the reproduction of all of our cultural norms, folkways and mores intact? If so, the Book of Mormon makes clear that the compounding interest on ‘business as usual’ is ultimately too high a price to pay. We are finally called to a life of spiritual integrity, where all parts of ourselves work in a harmony with each other. Where the admonishment to be people of grace bears itself out in our personal as well as our political yearnings. Where our churched spaces are characterized not only by the spiritual animation that is a central tenant of the religious life but also by a daily and public life that mirrors that animation. Where we, on a daily basis, powerfully catalyze social and cultural transformation – because our vision and hope in a joyous end is more potent and motivating than our yielding to the inevitability of the final grisly, brutal apocalyptic downfall of the human race?

-Gina Colvin, "On Pants and Shootings: How Will it End?"