Deer Hunting and Therese of Lisieux
During the November hunting season, when a day is done, I read. I'm too tired from sun and cold and miles of walking in the woods to move another step–a physical state good for a life of the mind. This year I had along in my duffel bag a new book called LEADING LIVES THAT MATTER, a thematic anthology tilted toward college students and choices of vocation (and "callings"), published by Erdmans Press 2006. My short story "The Undeclared Major" is in the book, which I had not yet looked through; I was quite curious to see where I fit among Aristotle, C.S. Lewis, James Baldwin, Willa Cather and Leo Tolstoy. The book's editors are from Valparaiso University, and their literary and philosophical selections form, in accretion, a religious-college type of ethos, though an understated and inclusive one. I'm finding it to be a fine book–well worth a look; one would have to be a hard-hearted lug not to be moved to personal reflection by some of the writings. I'm only part-way between the covers but among my favorites is a short piece by C.S. Lewis called "Learning in War-time", wherein he lays bare his Christian faith in sentences as clear as vinegar-scrubbed glass. (It never hurts any of us, believers or non-, to read about other people's faith.)
Which brings me to Dorothy Day writing about Therese ("the little flower") of Lisieux. Therese Martin (1873-1897) was a French school girl who went into a severe Carmelite convent when she was 15 and died there when she was 24, of tuberculosis. Largely through her letters and writings on the "little people", and her singular tendencies toward self-abnegation, her canonization was fast-tracked. She was beatified in 1923 and sainted in 1925. Dorothy Day, activist and advocate for the oppressed, developed a grudging respect for and then a true fascination with St. Therese--so much so that she (Day) wrote (yet another) biography of Therese.
I gave Day's piece on St. Therese my full attention, but just didn't get it–Theresa's life, that is. My wife, Rosalie of St. Paul, says it's because I didn't grow up a Catholic and have never read or studied the lives of the Saints. That's true. But I countered by saying that Therese would likely not have gotten tuberculosis and died young had the convent been heated in winter, or had she been given more than "one thin blanket."
"You're missing the point," my wife said. "It's all about self-abnegation, which, in the constructs of most faiths, is a good thing."
I show her some lines from the book, allegedly from Therese herself, how she prayed that God "turn all things in life bitter" so she would not be attracted to earthly things. "What kind of life is that?" I asked.
"Not mine," my wife said (she is steely in her former-Catholic resolve) as she turned away. She went on about religion as a man-made construct (emphasis on 'man', which is her biggest complaint against the Catholic Church), and as a way to maintain hierarchical order. Which all made sense. However, it didn't dissipate my jangly, agitated feeling left over from the essay–one akin to having gotten a major and unsettling peek behind the curtains of the Human Condition.
Then I realized where that feeling came from. It was from being in nature for several days. Several days sitting quietly in the little cell of the my deer stand, in complete silence, watching the rhythms of light, wind, clouds, birds, squirrels, the occasional deer (too small to shoot). Only by that "seat time" (woods time) can one join, understand, and appreciate fully the intricacy and completeness of nature a closed and perfect system–a living body– in which everything works. Maybe true religious faith is like that, too.... But coming from a perspective of and immersion in nature, religion is perfectly crazy.
A deer stand and a convent cell are both suitable to deep thoughts, and when I try really hard I can find one fundamental intersection between nature and religion. I do not think it's possible for the human animal (us) in the natural condition to conceive of life after death–without a little help. That help, logically, would have to come from a source beyond a this world, 'other' from it, i.e., from God via His messenger(s). Which if that really happened, as Flannery O'Connor's famous "Misfit" character observed, "Thown [sic] everything off balance."
Maybe that's what I was feeling.
Posted by will weaver at 11/13/2009 9:43 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: deer hunting Christian faith Leading Lives That Matter Flannery O'Connor Dorothy Day nature. St. Therese
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: deer hunting Christian faith Leading Lives That Matter Flannery O'Connor Dorothy Day nature. St. Therese
Wonderful piece. I wandered to your site because I'll be presenting the film "Sweet Land" as part of a little film festival in Monmouth, IL, in February, part of the Smithsonian's "Journey Stories" project. I place the movie, along with David Lynch's "The Straight Story," among the best contemporary films about the Midwest.
Anyway, I appreciate your comments about faith and the "perfectly crazy" nature of religion. My own Catholicism has never permanently lapsed, but it sometimes kicks at me like a cornered deer--which makes perfect, crazy sense. Flannery O'Connor knew the feeling well.
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