Catching Hope: The Hidden Spiritual Wisdom of Fishing

Open your heart to the hidden wisdom and beauty found at the water's edge.

Priest and fisherman Pete Nunnally loves to teach people how to fish for fish and, through that, how to fish for what their soul is yearning for: to come alive. In Catching Hope, he takes his readers fishing with him. Each chapter explores a different aspect of the fishing process--from preparing your tackle, to reading the landscape, to finally catching something (or not). But this isn't a book about how to fish. It's a book about the bigger and more profound truths about our lives that the act of fishing reveals. Along the way you'll learn how fishing connects the human condition to the divine presence in all things. And even if you never go fishing, this book will open your heart to the hidden wisdom and beauty found at the water's edge.

Fishing is an exercise in hope. In a world where every answer is at our fingertips, fishing is transformative for its sheer unpredictability. You never know what is going to happen. While the potter knows they will make a pot, the fisherman knows only that they will be at the water's edge, watching and waiting, anticipating the moment when the pole bends and something wild joins the story. In an age when we are more removed from nature than ever before, fishing also reconnects and draws us into an ancient dance with the natural world, our true home. Let's walk to the edge of the water together, toss out our lines, and wait to see what happens next.

Pete Nunnally is an avid fisherman and an ordained Episcopal priest. Born and raised in Virginia, he taught middle school physical education for five years before moving to New Orleans to work in Hurricane Katrina recovery with the Diocese of Louisiana. He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary, and is the founder of Water and Wilderness Church, a sustainable outdoor church and watershed community of spiritual and religious seekers who worship, read and study, and retreat together in the wild places of God's abundant creation. He lives in Washington, DC, with his two cats, Mumphus and Sassafras, and can be found making music with friends, browisng the farmers market, hiking the trails, and more often than not, somewhere at the water's edge with a line in the water.