A Ride September 26th 2019
I grew up in an inland province of South Africa. It had a meagre average rainfall and regular droughts. Maybe this water scarcity is the reason why salmon came onto my radar pretty late in life. Strangely enough, I remember being introduced to it by none other than Oprah Winfrey. In a health focused show she raved about how healthy it is to eat salmon and for some reason that truth stuck with me.
Long after when I got to buy my own groceries for my family, I realized that salmon is very expensive. I don’t think we ever bought it in South Africa. Coming to Canada, known to have the best salmon in the world, things changed. Suddenly it wasn’t as expensive and within our budget. At least once a week we have salmon for dinner. I love the taste and texture. I even love cooking it.
Today marks a special day in my relationship with salmon. A congregant invited me to ride with the Greater Vancouver motorcycle club, a club that has been around since the 1920’s to go see salmon spawn. Early this morning I met up with ten or so riders. They seem all well into their sixties. The oldest rider was 77 and a club member for the past 59 years. (Don’t ever take biking advice from a young rider with the latest bike and biking gear. Seek out a guy like this whose jacket has faded into a purple hue and rides a 1983 BMW that he owned for the past 25 years. He knows what he is talking about. Trust me on this.)
Anyway, back to the salmon. Salmon return all to their exact birthplace exactly seven years after birth. To do this they find their way back from the ocean and swim upstream into rivers. Here the females lay eggs and the males spray sperm on it. That is called spawning. Then they die. Some don’t make it back. They don’t get to reproduce but they die trying.
So there are these fisheries build at the sight where salmon have been hatching for many years.
After seven years, season after season, year after year, seven year old seniors with white markings from age, swim back to where to their birthplace. They are then captured. The females are milked for eggs and the males for sperm. After they die, they are removed and sold as fertilizer. The hatchlings? Some of them are sold as dinner and others get to make the seven year journey. Standing with a bunch of oldtimer bikers leaning over a railing to watch the old timer salmon arrive stream up and use their last energy to leave a legacy, is an experience I will never forget. There is something in the way a seventy year old look at salmon spawning that tells you this ritual is one that makes more and more sense to you the older you get.
Coming to Christ is like being born. It is called rebirth in the Bible. It is memorable. It either happened when you were a child growing up in a Christian home, held together in all its brokenness by forgiveness and service molded by the example of Christ winning you over. Or it happens later in life when it frees you from addiction, or saves your marraige or makes you a real parent. Some say it happens many times.When it happens it sends you into life with a new vision and vitality and with a lot of grace.
And then somewhere along the way you grow to maturity. When you do, you return in some way to that wonderful birthplace. Not to get but to give. You feel the call to swim streamup and to somehow make possible what came a reality and a gift of grace to you, for others. For those that come after you. Either directly or indirectly. You cannot not do it. If you don’t you die inside. There are many walking dead like this roaming the earth.
Spawning takes much. Some make it and leaves a wonderful legacy but even those who gets close and die trying makes the world a beautiful place. And those who choose not to undertake this journey or is somehow denied the privilege? Well, they end up as the dinner of some heartless consumer.
My son, my daughter, maybe you don’t quite understand what I am trying to tell you now. That’s ok. You are still young. But I pray that by the time you are seventy and you get to see the salmon spawning, you will know exactly what I am talking about now.