As a software engineer, with databases being my specialty, I've said more or less the same thing to people dozens of times, but Card gives a clear, non-technical, yet correct and compelling treatment of the question.
In a prior review, OSC recommended the books of the author writing under the pseudonym of K.J. Parker. I picked up Devices and Desires, Book One in Parker's Engineer Trilogy, last week and I've had time to read about a third of it. So far I'd say it is well-written and a welcome departure from the typical medieval-type fantasy. The characters and the setting have depth. The conflicts are complex. My complaint is there's a certain flatness of affect that I have been unable to shake -- but it could be a personal problem. None of the characters strike me as particularly likable at this point. I only mention it now because of the following quote:
The truth is, Valens realized, you can only hunt what you love. Chasing and killing what bores or disgusts you is just slaughter, because you don't want to understand, get in its mind.
You only hunt what you love.
No one loves the animal more than a real hunter. Sure, there are people who seem to only care about heads and butchery, but they aren't hunting deer or elk or moose, they are hunting bragging rights, prestige, or status. They are hunting to impress others with their prowess.
The true hunter is hunting for himself, to know himself by knowing and understanding the game he pursues, whatever it might be. Using Parker's definition it is easy to see hunting isn't limited to going after something with a gun, a bow, or a flyrod. The artist, the poet, and the musician are all hunters. They are trying to capture what they love. Inevitably, and necessarily, something is lost in the taking of the quarry. It exists only in that moment when the shot is made or the net enfolds. By its nature it is as transient as it is transcendent.
What is the saint doing except hunting God? As always, there must be loss.
But everything that was gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him, I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ -- the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have also been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus. -- Philippians 3:7-14
I'm on the hunt.
1 comment:
Good post! I haven't read the link yet, but I plan to when I have more time. I bookmarked it.
The thing that's hard to appreciate, at that mment of loss you mentioned, is that the loss is really our gain, as Paul says.
Later we can see that, but at the moment we capture our love there is that simultaneous feeling of loss.
But there's always that next hunt.
I never thought of it that way.
Thanks, Mushroom! :^)
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