When Synapses Go Bad

Fishermen and Nets

 

 

He told them to “Follow Him” and He would “Make them fishers of men”. Yes, “fishers of men” indeed.The morning was quiet, just like the beginning of so many other days. The young boy, Pasquale, was still half asleep. He had the will and the desire to be like his father, Francesco and the other men he so admired, but the young boy was just that, young. After all he was barely twelve years old and recently stopped going to school. He had been in the sixth grade. “Who needs more school”, he said, “I need to fish with Pappa”. So fish he did.

He learned to rise very early in the morning, four a.m. was typical. This was a good time as the waters were calm and smooth, usually. Not always of course. You could  count on the occasional storm passing through with rough seas and dark, turbulent depths not normally encountered. This would prove especially challenging for the boy as the waves would swell and cover him completely. The bottom would be churned up revealing new depths from holes and gullies in the seas sandy bottom. He would sink into these and kick with his feet, paddle with his arms and break through to the surface once again. He was a brave young boy. Foolish perhaps, but willing and honest in his desire to make Pappa proud. After all, though he was just a boy he was still the eldest of a brood of nine children, or was it twelve? Whichever, he was to be the leader, the care taker of his brothers and sisters and this appointment he took with the  sober mind of a man, not a child.

 Pasquale did not grow up to be a religious man but as a child he would listen to the stories of God and Jesus spoken of by his mother mostly and the women of the town. As most other children his age, he was expected to attend mass at the eight hundred year old church, so he did. So many sermons were preached directly from the bible, in Latin of course but so what, it was close enough to Italian and by now the boy had come to learn the words of the bible spoken in Latin. Pasquale was familiar with the parables of Jesus, the calling of the twelve disciples and especially Peter, the Rock, the great fisherman of the sea and fisher of men. Peter, now there was a man he could see himself taking after.

As the young boy pulled his share of the great nets, side by side with the men of his father’s fishing boats, he would think, he would dream still somewhat asleep, his mind on other things besides the fish about his feet and net, the darkness of the waters, and the scant light of the approaching new day. He dreamed of a new life, a new way in another time, in another day.

~ by Vinnie on July 28, 2009.

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