Fishing with Son House

Sunday morning. Feet in the dirt. Light breeze on the skin. Sun on the face. Raking garden beds, rolling the wheelbarrow across the yard. It was meditative. And then Son House does this:



And I ask you, on Sunday morning, what can church do that that experience, in God's house, nature, working, with a transcendent song and voice hasn't opened up on the spot?

My most revealing (we are talking John the Revelator, after all) Sunday spiritual experiences have come this way. On a long sunrise run. At a state park. Working in the yard. Writing and reading and drinking coffee on the back deck. They are the moments I am most open. The moments that are most personal and most universal.

For me, a spiritual journey is a personal one. My path, whatever it may look like, has included a lot of different forks, turns, twists, traditions, overarchingly led by soul. It's been hard to find in just one book or just one church. Bodhidharma would say it isn't in any book or church. True zen (whatever that is) would probably say these experiences are available in any book or church, as long as the mind and spirit are open to it. Everything is available everywhere, infinitely.

Maybe a spiritual journey is like going fishing. You go where you are most likely to find fish. You base this on where you've caught them before, where others are catching them. You go on intuition and past experience.

I catch fish outside, early in the morning. I catch them running. I catch them in the spring. I catch them listening to Son House and the Delta blues. John the Revelator was a fisherman, apparently.