Genetics, Potential And the Memory of God

My first encounter with spiritual food was when I was about six years old. We were living in Northern Maine; my father was in the U.S. Border Patrol on the Canadian Border. It was 1957. I was going to a Catholic school that was taught largely in French. They were preparing us to receive our first holy communion. I had the feeling that I was about to belong to something special. They drilled into us that we were going to receive God Himself in the form of a host and that God was a spirit and He was going to fit into that little piece of bread. How? It was a mystery. It didn't make sense, an invisible God inside a piece of bread. It could only be a mystery. But before we could partake in this mysterious event we had to confess our sins. The nuns made it pretty clear that we were a guilty lot and no one was exempt.

My family had moved to Maine from the Mexican border, along the Rio Grande River, near Brownsville Texas. I was still trying to get used to where I was. Up in the green hills of Northern Maine, everyone spoke French instead of Spanish. I went from being scared most of the time, to being in awe of the new surroundings. We were just up the hill from a large lake covered with ice with ice shacks all over it and cars out by the shacks.

Before we moved to Maine my dad had taken me out into the desert on what he called a rattlesnake hunt. We had driven out into the desert in the border patrol Jeep with the canvas top down. It was a wonder to suspect a large snake would be within our sights. I was under the distinct impression that we were hunting together. It was just the desert, the snakes, me and my dad. I was very proud of that. I felt very safe. My father had his olive green uniform with teardrop rayban sunglasses, an open border patrol Jeep, and a .38 strapped to his side. Life for me in those early years was full of wonder. Exploring these geographic margins with my parents was really fun then.

But in Maine, in the clutches of the nuns, I was trying to think of sins, and trying to crowd out the wonder. By now there were four of us boys in my family. Our home was a very lively place, and our lives together were quickly becoming complex. We were tangled up together, learning all the basics at the same time. I spent time thinking of my personal guilt in this arrangement. There was so much activity and it was hard to distinguish one event from another, but I knew that fighting with my brothers was wrong and disobeying my parents was wrong. That became my guilt mantra for the next ten years.

I thought about sin only in the context that I had to confess something. Since the ear of the priest was the ear of God, lying to the priest was lying to God. I had to come up with something that was true, but not specific. Fighting and disobeying were broad general sins. Besides, these sins sounded general enough to make me a sinner, but not really a bad one.

The day for my first confession final came. We formed two neat rows in the back of the church, all on our knees in the pews waiting our turn. All the sad statues in the church looked down on us. I was very scared, as I didn't really know all the sins I might have committed. But I had my two general sins down that I hoped would be enough to cover all the ground of my six sinful years of life. Like badly rehearsed lines, I kept going over them as my turn came and I approached the small booth at the back of the church. I parted the red curtain and knelt down in the semi dark closet, staring at a closed window. I heard the wooden partition slide in the window. Through the bamboo lattice the priest stared straight ahead. "Begin," he said.

"Bless-me-father-for-I-have-sinned," I responded. "I fought with my brothers and disobeyed my parents."

The priest gave me a benediction in Latin instead of asking me if there was anything else. I was overjoyed. "Say two 'Hail Marys and an 'Our Father' as penance." He shut the window.

The following Sunday I wore a small white gown with a small white cap, like a yarmulke. We marched up the center aisle of the church in two rows, the girls on the right and the boys on the left. I was anticipating my first taste of real spiritual food, the host. We were instructed to take the host on our tongue and let it dissolve. To bite the host would be disrespectful to God, and because He was physically in the host, probably chewing on Him was painful. It made sense. We angled right and left along the rail of the alter. My head was down, hands straight up and palm to palm touching my nose. The perfect posture.

"Corpus Christi." As I heard the words, I looked up and there was the priest with the host and the altar boy with the (flat gold thing to catch any crumbs), at my throat. I stuck out my tongue. The host stuck to it like a stamp. I immediately shut my mouth and the host then stuck to the roof of my mouth. I wondered if God would mind if I used my tongue to get the host unstuck? It is an issue I still have not resolved.

Finally I completed the complex performance. I had been forced to tell a stranger about my relationship with my family. It was the price to pay for spiritual food. In return they fed me bread that they said had God in it. My life was no longer my own. It now belonged to the Catholic Church.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The lively memory of the Columbia River is dying. In a span of 30 years every quart of free flowing water has been used to generate power. This transformation not only changed the river but more importantly changed our memory of it. It is difficult when looking at the river to imagine just what it was.

There are those original Native Peoples who remember the river for what it was. They remember taking fish from the great pools below Kettle Falls and Celieo Falls. At Celieo Falls the U.S. government had a compact that the original Native Peoples (those who held a trust to keep the river alive) could fish there forever. In the caves and along the walls of the river were ancient petroglyphs recording the efforts of previous generations who caught fish at the same site. It was a lively, sacred place. When The Dalles Dam was built, we buried a lifestyle, sacred sites and our agreement beneath the calm waters of the reservoir. So the memory is fading quickly of what the place was to the people that fished it, their ancient connections to the site and our commitment to keep it for them. They were the last generation to take salmon from a free-flowing river. Most of the people who moved their long-poled baskets through the foam beneath the falls are dead now. A few remain, and when they die the true witness of what the river was will be gone.

Locked in the remaining runs of wild salmon are the genes that have been passed down from thousands of generations of fish who knew the whole river. In these genes lie the potentials to know the thousands of miles of river in an intimate way, the secrets of the whole river, the eddies, the pools, the rapids, the waterfalls, and finally, the intricate mating protocols. It is the memory of the great falls, their secret rhythms and how to breach them, the smell of the redds where they were born, the instinct to move downstream, to grow, and the instinct to move upstream to regenerate and die. It is the genetic potential to find absolute connection with the river and, ultimately, meaning.

The Columbia River watershed covers 259,000 square miles. In this watershed, the conduits that move the snow and rain from the mountains to the ocean form a great biological system. Each river and stream that connect form a whole. As many streams as there are, there are runs of salmon. Taken as a whole, the combination of these runs are equivalent to knowing the whole natural river system. It is a complex knowledge of free-flowing entities that ensures fidelity in the cycles of the river and the fish, and that the uttermost extremes of the river will receive the optimum benefit of the returning fish each year. It is hard to grasp the scale of intimacy that existed in this river system for millennia, and that this profound intimacy is locked up in the genetic codes of the wild salmon.

Now the remaining runs of wild salmon enter a river where they search for the release of the potentials in the managed river. They are seeking significance in a disconnected river because wholeness no longer exists. The fish search for the river that is locked up in their genetic memory, but it is not there. Most of the intimacy of the river has been turned into watery deserts. There is no variation and liveliness to the currents. The water moves at a slower and much more regulated pace. The slower currents, the awkward breaches of the dams and the vastness created by the reservoirs have rendered the river strange. It is a river full of disconnections. And in those disconnections, the genetic potentials that stretch for relational fulfillment with the river are cut off.

As the Columbia River began to dramatically slow from dam construction, and the salmon runs began to decline, the managers of the river began to build fish hatcheries to replenish the dwindling wild stocks. These fish were thought to be the answer. If we can take the river and turn it into dynamic components, the reasoning goes, we can raise fish too, that will adjust to our new river. So that is what has happened. It was the final key in man's attempt to reassemble the river. We continue to think that life can be managed with optimum results, and that the matrix of relationships found in creation can be simplified and controlled and put to better use. However, with a limited river, the fish themselves become limited. Though their genetic potentials remain, there is a sequential release of these potentials that are cued by being in a natural river. As the fish develop, their genetic responses kick in for feeding, migration, and a host of other intimate cues that make the fish able to adapt and thrive. When you begin to tinker with the vast array of subtle natural triggers that make the fish what they truly are, you cut off their potentials.

The dams changed the river to the point that without the hatcheries, the mechanical transport and the fish ladders, the salmon would die off sooner. The fact remains that the salmon are in the single percentages of their former numbers before dam construction began. And the number continues to decrease.

The genes determine the potential wholeness of the creature and its ability to be fully connected to the environment. Each set of genes in each species is connected to the environment of each river and stream. For some salmon, the migration path is hundreds of miles upriver. For others it is just a few miles from the ocean. In each case the genetic signature in the fish determines the size, strength, potentials, and physiological triggers in the mating cycle.

For example, for a time I lived next to a very short river in the Aleutian Islands. The pink salmon would come up this short river to spawn. The river was, at the most, a mile or so long, but the fish went through the entire physiological change in that mile that other salmon go through over months and hundreds of miles, depending on their river of origin. It is the genetic code of that stream passed on, each generation uniquely tied to that particular river. In one sense the fish are related to the river as much as they are to each other.

With the decline of stocks of wild salmon, great effort has been put into the raising of farmed salmon. The logic was that if the dams cut off existing wild stocks, then we could replace those fish with our own hybrid fish. After all, we had tamed the continent. Taming the river was just another matter of working through the components of the river and recreating them to work for us. If we had cut off passage, then we would create fish that didn't need it. We would create fish that could grow in habitats we created for them. Nature would be recreated, reflecting our desires and reflecting our mastery of it. Therefore, we could grow fish outside of the natural bounds. Fish would no longer need a whole river to grow. We could raise them in numbers that would more than compensate for the minor collateral damage of the dams. We could create a new order; nature could be taken apart and reassembled with better results. With this philosophy we could build more dams, create more power, and bring more land into cultivation, and more fish could be raised.

When fish are raised in hatcheries, the environment is controlled. Each spring when the alevin emerge from their egg sack, they will not see a natural environment. The hatchery system on the Columbia River has tried to mirror the river species from each tributary, so you will find hatcheries near the old spawning grounds of the wild salmon. It is a difficult process trying to scientifically manage hatchery stock into something that resembles the dwindling wild stocks. The hatcheries are at a disadvantage. The hatchery is bound by cost considerations. It simply cannot create the environment that the wild fish had. It is too expensive. Currently the Bonneville Power Administration spends in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars each year in salmon restoration. That includes hatchery management, trucking the smolt down the Columbia River to the estuary, and river restoration. It is a fantastic sum of money, and it gives you an indication of how much money the dams generate directly and indirectly. What the salmon really need is the river back. But that is not going to happen. The next best thing is the raising of hatchery salmon.

Everyday in the hatchery the fish are fed automatically. All that these fish have to live for are the daily feedings. They know the minute food is coming, and if these times are altered, they notice. Expectations build. They are aware when the food, which is ground up fish, vitaminized, and treated with the appropriate antibiotic additives, hit the water.

Natural salmon, when they are young, have to hunt for their food. The experience of hunting for food is as valuable as the food itself. Instincts for survival are sharpened as their knowledge of the river grows. In natural settings, in the beginning, it is difficult for the fish to adjust to their new surroundings, and food is difficult to obtain. But this slow growth tightens the circulii in the bones, providing a strong foundation for future growth. It also sharpens the instincts of the fish to hunt, swim and discern the world they occupy.

The main problem with the hatchery fish is the hatchery itself. It can't replicate the natural environment of the river. Each day the fish are fed on a schedule. They swim in circles in large tanks with no stimuli other than each other. The flow is nothing like a natural river. There is no plant or insect life. The fish are totally disconnected from the river. Being raised in such large groups they are prone to new diseases that when released, they take into the wilds of the river and the ocean.

The hope was that these hatchery fish would provide a political solution to a difficult problem, proving that there was sustainable life in the river. But the salmon become progressively weaker as the wild gene pool diminishes. The only saving grace is in their numbers. Yet management and the scientists both know that these hatchery numbers are no indication of the health of the river.

The hatchery fish solve only highly visible elements of sustainable life in the river system. If one can see fish going up the fish ladders then that is considered a measurable success. But like the rest of the river that has been dismantled, hatchery fish serve only a few aspects of the wholeness that has disappeared. The disconnection between the upper river and the ocean still exist.

The artificially bred salmon are not required to go upstream and breed. That aspect is done by the hatcheries. Being born in a hatchery means the fish are not marked by their natural habitat; they are not really connected to a particular spot on a particular river anymore. Now they enter the river as strangers, their instincts confused about where they are, where they are from, and where they are going. In a sense they have no meaning. They were disconnected from the river at birth. They are still in the river but in many ways they are not of it. They have been disconnected from their breeding purpose. And even their dying has lost its impact on the river. They are no longer a gift of food on many levels, they are a political component, raised only for their numbers.

In the beginning a salmon's genetic makeup represents only a potential for maturity. The genetic potentials have to be released both in time, within the grand cycles of the river, and moment-to-moment in the river, surviving and learning. They are also released in space, in an ever-expanding place to grow and find food. The river releases the fish to the ocean where it can grow and mature. And in time the ocean will release the fish to the river once again. Finally, at the appropriate moment the salmon will release the life within it and then shortly release itself to the river once again. These great releases in time and space represent final purpose, relational wholeness with the world around it, and ultimately meaning, in the life of a salmon.

The new river system is an exercise in controlled tension. The dams stress the natural systems to the point where they need mechanical assistance to survive. Being a thermodynamic system, entropy has been introduced to the river. Entropy is the measure of wasted energy. It is the accumulation of silt behind the dams. It is the measure of the mechanical inefficiencies and deterioration of the man-made machines and structures. To create power, the water is held in tension. The tension is released mechanically in a miserly fashion compared with the generous release of water before the dams were in place.

In the mechanical system that the river has become, these releases of potential are limited in scope and in scale. Because the river is divided by dams and the flow is regulated, young salmon cannot be released naturally into the upper river. There is hardly any flow in the vast reservoirs. It would take too much time and energy to swim through the almost hundreds of miles of reservoirs with new alien predators introduced for sport fishing and slack current. That time and energy spent will be necessary at the estuary, where natural predators are thick, and the change from fresh to salt water is dramatic.

Hatcheries introduce the fish to the beginning of their lives. They are fed automatically and live in a safe environment. But these contrived settings do little to challenge their instincts or produce the required growth in their bone structure. It is the beginning, not of cohesion, but of disconnections.

It would seem that the instincts of the salmon, as they go through their stages of growth and development moving downstream and then back upstream in the managed river, are frustrated and confused by the world they are in. Their inherited innate memory wars against the regulated water, the contrived fish ladders, and the vast empty reservoirs.

On close examination of how much the river has changed, the salmon seem like the alien species of the river, given the fact that if the funding to move the fish up and down the river dried up, it is not a far-fetched idea that, the fish we know as salmon, would cease to exist in the Columbia.

In the world of river management, the salmon become almost a religious theme. The old memory of the river is quickly becoming myth. The old petroglyphs on the rock walls around Celio Falls and other great fishing spots of yore have been transposed to the sterile information on government signage in the visitors centers at the various dams up and down the river. In many of them you can watch the processional of fish make their way up the concrete fish ladders. Reading the information provided, you're almost thankful that so much is being done to help the salmon. Somehow you think the causes of their demise lie elsewhere because everyone here seems to be doing everything they can to make the river a better place for them.

But the salmon we are watching will never really mature in this river, the managers know that. There are too many artificial constructs that must stay. The dams are not coming down. They cannot. We don't have the know-how or the money to do it. And if the dams don't come down, in time the salmon will die out. So now we must begin the process of altering the memory of the salmon. The salmon and the Native Americans were connected to a lively river. However, this will be commemorated and memorialized to show that they sacrificed themselves for a great utilitarian cause. It is the stuff of great religious and political oration.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hard reality of the Columbia River sheds new light on religion. If we focus hard on the religious system to help us grow spiritually, we will grow. But our growth will be mainly two-dimensional, more acclimated to citizenship and doctrinal agenda than spiritual maturity. Our growth will be measured on a corporate scale in the aggregate and on our willingness to be endlessly managed and led. We also have to be willing to be satisfied that our individual destiny is not critical to the operation of the religious organization we belong to, and know that our spiritual beginnings and endings, the brackets of our spiritual destiny, will be highly managed affairs. True meaning will remain elusive. Real connection to the God who made the river and the people around us will be frustrated. There is nowhere in the world where people do not acknowledge the divine. That yearning for a divine connection exists in us like the genetics in the salmon. The yearning exists in potentials. And these divine potentials will only be realized in the turbulent world of everyday human relationships. The essence of Christianity, those divine unctions in us, point us toward passage, maturity, relationship and ultimately death. It is the fearless existence. It remains a river safely outside the managed world of economics, politics and religion.

The river of human relationships is a personal one. It contains the most risk and the most responsibility. Like the wild salmon in a lively river, the hunt for food goes from authentic moment to authentic moment. There are no timed feedings in this world. It is a world of experience married to information and instinct. But we go through our "river of life" never expecting real spiritual food to come our way in the form of ordinary relationships. We are not cued to expect wonder from our fellows. Our world is, in a religious sense, one of doctrinal condescension. We are taught to see our peers as inferiors and our leaders and teachers as superior. It is the world of the divided and we have a tendency to dismiss most of life spiritually before we encounter it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder about my first communion experience, looking back at myself as a little boy with my tongue hanging out. Why did a man, dressed in the clothes of an ancient Roman nobleman, and myself dressed in the period clothing of his son, lay a machine stamped piece of bread on my tongue? Why were we still wearing 2000-year-old styled costumes? Were we as disconnected as we looked? I see now that in my confession I joined him in that great ritual of disconnection. By participating, I was able to easily side step things I should have said to those who loved me. A relational dynamic was removed from the family. And it was a relational dynamic that spun outward into life. The food he dispensed on a schedule was from a gold chalice. The costume, the gold and the ritual all seemed to be there to intimidate us. This grand show of authority, ritual and contrived beauty hinted that maybe this wasn't for God--it was for us. It was a great performance that we could see, touch and feel--a perfectly managed performance and the delivery of spiritual food--a performance that wouldn't change over a lifetime. How many hosts would I have to swallow to understand that I really wasn't going anywhere? Wholeness would have to be discovered in my own intimate world. Potentials would have to be exercised in real relationships. Real spiritual maturity would have to be found outside of these performances.

Back to the Introduction

Forward to Chapter 8