Salmon Watch

Gilfillan, an energetic Brittany Spaniel pup, still learning how to follow his bird dog instincts, takes me for an early walk most mornings. Our destination of choice lately has been the Wenatchee River, for we are on salmon watch. Salmon Sunday which included a salmon bake on the lawn beside the Jerusalem Cross Garden this past Sunday, along with Leavenworth's Wenatchee River Salmon Festival, have come and gone. Still we wait with a lenten-type expectation for the annual re-enactment of a life-giving sacrifice in our waters.

Soon the beautifully sad, and sadly beautiful procession will begin. The summer run of salmon, arriving in the fall, will rise and turn in our shallow waters, each sleek fish having swum hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean, to spawn in the gravel bottoms of our crystal clear rivers. Then they will die, their flesh torn, their bodies scarred. And hundreds of emaciated carcasses will litter our river banks, mere shadows of the magnificent creatures they once were, to be picked over by crows and ravens, raccoons and other critters.

It's difficult to accept death in such large numbers. The grandson of one member, his little soul unable and unwilling to process death in such mutilated fashion, is troubled by the sadness it engenders in his still sensitive heart. I picture Mary, Jesus' mother feeling much the same as she saw her son hanging on the cross with nails through his hands and feet, his possessions being picked over by the soldiers on Golgothan duty.

Yet beyond the death of the salmon will come the miracle of new life, as hundreds of thousands of little salmon hatch to cavort and grow in Pacific Northwest waters. Similarly, beyond the cross came the resurrection, life beyond the grave. And the good news is that the Lenten and Easter event of long ago still brings resurrection life today. It comes to people who learn to die their own deaths, so that rising with Christ as new creations, their Godly living can help redeem the world. The salmon remind us so graphically of this truth each year.

The Jerusalem Cross, laid out so beautifully in garden form at the church and planted and tended by the Harvest Team to bring forth life - red tomatoes, orange carrots, green squash - as "bread of the earth," reminds us of these deeper things. That through the cross we learn to die to self, and, nourished by the "bread of heaven," we are empowered to live resurrection lives by joyously engaging the four acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice.

It feels good to be "devoting" weekly with a small group where, watching over each other in love, we extend support in the gardening of both our souls and the soil of God's creation. This is Jerusalem Cross gardening, filled with promise.