“This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.” That’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his first inaugural address in March 1933. The United States and the world were mired in a devastating depression. All seemed bleak. In the face of painful pessimism, the jovial, upbeat new president famously declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes….”

These days it is again easy to be paralyzed by terror at what is going on in the world and in our country. We feel overwhelmed, powerless, shocked at the behavior of our government and our neighbors. Indeed, we must continue to “speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly” in the face of the injustices in our communities, our country and the world. But we must also find places of peace, ways to center ourselves, those things that will sustain us for the journey.  

With that in mind, I’d like to make a suggestion: Go fishing. Fishing will not solve our global crises, but the sport has some lessons to teach. And remember, Jesus hung out with fishermen. He never went golfing. 

First, fishing teaches us that we are not in control. The world of water is not the solid, simple terrain of dry land. You can chart but not map currents. Every stream is different and new, every moment your wader-clad feet step into the riffles. You are always in new waters. 

Fishing is unpredictable. You may catch something. You may not. The fish are in charge. They decide to bite—or not. The weather may or may not cooperate. When fishing, you are in nature’s bounty and nature’s hands. You are just along for the ride. Other powerful forces are driving.

Second, fishing can restore our faith. One casts and casts and casts, but unless one is as unlucky as Job, eventually a fish is caught. And even if not, a bad day of fishing beats any day dominated by addictive infotainment’s doomscrolling. But usually the hope, the trust, the belief that fish are there is eventually rewarded. As Anne Lamott observes, it’s all “Grace, eventually.” 

The author fishes in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Credit: George Morris

As you connect to the water, the air, the lengthening of the morning, the slow, quiet rhythms of casting, a calm arises in your consciousness. Your breath in the crisp fall air, or spring newness, feels clean and surprising. In summer, placid lakes fill your nostrils with, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., “the dearest freshness deep down things” and comfortable humidity. All smells green. The issues of the day, and of life, settle. Slowly, perspective broadens. As you hear the birds’ songs, or are attracted by a rare sighting of a delicate deer or goofy otter, your heart expands. You let go of the tensions endemic to a world of constant catastrophe and daily pressure. 

The strong flow of water pressing against wading calves and knees allows you to be grounded and connected with the planet and the cosmos. Concentrating on water and line, lure and hook, pushes the realities that produce pain and worry into the zone of the Serenity Prayer: Give me the graces of peace and serenity to live with and accept that which I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the discerning wisdom to know the difference.

Third, fishing slows you down. You relax. Then you can pray and appreciate the presence of God. Fishing gets us close to, and deep into, creation. When you get in touch with creation, you get in touch with reality. Contact with reality is contact with God. And when we are in contact with God, we and reality are transformed into something better and new, something more: more good, more true, more holy.

As you get out of the car and smell the musky forest bordering the babbling brook or rolling stream; as you see white-gray, cloudy mists rising above the water; as your chest releases stress and strain and your brain stops burning with endless doom loops; you find you can converse with God and await a response. 

You stop. You look around and notice the sheer beauty of our world. My friend Butch Gibson said, “I love to fish for trout, because I love where trout live.” The rhythmic action of casting fly line or spinning rod, over and over again, allows an almost hypnotic state to encapsulate your consciousness. And you wait. Wait. Wait for it. Concentrate on the fly floating. Staring at the tiny bit of feather and fur rivets thought. The feel of a lure—a rattle trap, Rapala or rooster tail—pulling through the water sends chills coursing through your arms and body as a pike slams the lure. Or maybe that feeling comes from the gentle tap and tug of a bass on a plastic worm.

When a fish takes the bait, your heartbeat increases with anticipation, not fear. It is an almost electric energy. It’s ridiculous what a joyful rush it is to catch a fish. Soon, you thank the bass or trout for playing, as you release him or her back into its mysterious world of water.

And in that stillness after the catch, you give thanks. You know that God is God, and we are not. Better yet, we don’t have to be God. Prayer helps us realize and relish that God exists, manifest in water and weather.

Little children love to fish. That in itself should teach us something. Fishing teaches us that at some level, if we are really intelligent and wise, we are all really childlike. Being in touch with our childlike selves is the way to wonder at ourselves, our world and our God. 

An early Christian symbol was ichthys, in Greek both the word for fish and an acronym meaning Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior. Fish and our faith are closely connected. The little boy in John 6:9 has five barley loaves (the food of the poor) along with two fish. And the multiplication happens. Luke 5 tells us of the miraculous catch. In John 21, again there is a miraculous catch. Peter announces, “I am going fishing.” This last time Jesus shows up after the resurrection, he appears to a bunch of guys on a fishing trip. The Lord appears and cooks breakfast. He tells Peter, “Feed my sheep.” Jesus says these words to fishermen, and makes them shepherds.

There is so much great writing about fishing: The Old Man and the Sea; Norman Maclean, who notes in A River Runs Through It, “In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing”; The River Why, by David James Duncan; and all the books by the titular Trout Bum, John Gierach.

Ishmael begins Moby-Dick: “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul…then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” Life on the water fends off despair.

Today we best serve people by proclaiming the Bible’s most oft-repeated phrase: “Be not afraid!” We know that God is with us, the God of justice and truth. The God of forgiveness and compassion. The God who is love. The God of transformation working within and through sinful history to bring us a new heaven and a new earth in which justice dwells (2 Pt 3:13).

The poet Wendell Berry says it best:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Take a moment or a morning. Be free. Realize and relish and remember: God is with us.

This article appears in July/August 2026.

Richard G. Malloy, S.J., is chaplain at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., and author of A Faith that Frees: Catholic Matters for the 21st Century; Being on Fire: The Top Ten Essentials of Catholic Faith; and Spiritual Direction: A Beginner’s Guide.