Nimrod

Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD.  Therefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.  The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.  -- (Genesis 10:8-10)

A day such as this one is a precursor to Fall around here, cool and cloudy and slightly damp.  Last night, just at sunset, the coyotes set up howling at a distant siren.  This morning the cats were hunting early and have just now returned without any chipmunks, field mice or the small, short-tailed brown rats that populate the runways in the fescue.  They were just having a look-see, getting their stalk on, tuning up, one might say.  None of us are taking hunting season too seriously, yet.  There will be heat again before the first frost, unless the next ice age is impending.  I have heard fools argue that hunting is some sort of sexual sublimation.  The walking clay from which God formed us hunted long before being human.  If anything, some of the sexual deviants in the world should take up the sport.  They might find what they seek.

The dayrunning houndmen live for weather like this when the wind is not too strong and the scent hangs in the cool, moist air like a fat curveball that fails to break.  Loosed to jump their quarry before the stars fade in the east, the deep-chested dogs can run all day and push even the leggiest coyote to his limits. 

They are fewer these days, the houndmen.  Closed land, the costs of maintaining a pack, the time-pressure of the smart phone age, it all works against them.  The coyote hunters evolved, mostly, from the fox hunters.  Fox hunters were nightrunners.  They would walk or ride, and later drive, to an appointed spot with a cold-nosed Walker or two or three in tow, meeting often on a spot of high ground after the day's work was done, the cows were milked, and every creature, except those called to the ministry, had fed.  The fasting runners sensed what was coming and almost nervously emptied themselves ahead of the challenge.   One of the men might bring coffee, another a smoke-blackened pot.  Soon a fire would be lit, as much for light to talk by as to dispel the chill.  Hounds would be loosed, though not always all at first, and the mixed pack would head off in search of a race.  No one, including the hounds, wanted to hole a fox right away, let alone catch or kill one.  The object was the voice, and maybe, too, the social aspect.  The hounds wanted to run, to catch the scent of a gray, or, preferably, a more sporting red and let it fill their nostrils with a mystery that moved their tongues in ecstatic utterances. 

The old-line Walkers were relatively slow.  They did not push the circling creature too hard.  The game for the hounds was not to catch the fox but to run ahead of the other dogs, to be at the apex of the pack.  There were no sexual distinctions.  It was often a light-footed bitch in the lead.  The hounds in front are more vocal; the hounds in back or that are trying to catch up are less vocal.  Each man knew the voice of each of his hounds and those of his more frequent companions as well, if not better than, the voices of his own children.  It is fairly easy to pick up the unique notes and tones of a dog's running voice, even out of the pack chorus.  Like humans, running dogs have their tenors and basses, altos and sopranos.  Some day, as a new dawn breaks on some golden hill, I will hear again the high, fine mouth of the hound we called Dodger carrying through rich, still air above the voices of his brethren, and I will know familiar faces wait not far ahead. 

Coyotes are mostly all business in front of a pack, but they might know that coyote hounds run to catch.  The short-winded, more feline gray fox will seek escape at the earliest opportunity, but the red, Ol' Reynard himself, he is a game player.  The old-timers tell of seeing a red fox pause to sit, to catch his breath with laughing, lolling tongue, and to listen to his choir of inquisitors as if he enjoyed laying the track as much as they enjoyed searching it out.  Though these predators may fear humans -- just as they fear other predators and even some of their own kind, they have learned to deal with us.  We have brought something into the world which challenges and elevates them, a hint of meaning and an ethereal fragrance of a glory they cannot know apart from us.  But, the Disneyfied object, you bring them death.  It is true.  Sometimes we do, but death is ever the constant companion of the beasts of the field.  They, too, live by death.  The game is in playing it, dodging it, outwitting it.  Josey Wales might have been correct when he said, "Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy."  Nevertheless, dying is a part of it, the fire we dance around and that with which we pepper the game to rush the blood to our faces, the tears to our eyes, and to vibrate our tongues in chilling, joyous cries.     

Squirrel!

Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head — Christ. From Him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. — Ephesians 4:14-16

His head, however, was by no means cherubic in the sense of being without a body. On the contrary, on his vast shoulders and shape generally gigantesque, his head looked oddly and unnaturally small. This gave rise to a scientific theory (which his conduct fully supported) that he was an idiot. "Manalive" — G.K. Chesterton

On the high, dry ridges of the Central Plateau in the heart of summer, last fall's leaves are an unavoidable crunch and crackle underfoot. I was fascinated by the thought that skilled woodsmen like Kenton, Boone, Crockett, or their native counterparts could move in absolute silence. After much effort and experimentation, I concluded that the woods those worthy souls moved in were pine. My endeavors, though, were not entirely in vain. I learned that there is a rhythm to advancement under the worst of conditions, that the very nature of a hardwood forest floor is a camouflage of sorts. I learned that the way to a relative silence was to move slowly. This is no sidewalk and I'm not so much going somewhere as being somewhere. What I'm hunting is a lot more likely to come to me than I am to find it.

Hunting truth is the same way. In fact, I'm not sure that stalking squirrels isn't as much a hunt for truth as reading Ephesians or Aristotle.

The "winds of teaching" — now there's a complicating factor. Is that stirring of the leaves a six-point buck? Is that bouncing branch a bushy-tail? Or, is it just the wind? I could say the more teaching the less truth, but a wise and silent hunter can detect the true from the false. Again, it is the rhythm or perhaps the aroma of it.

For a time I thought I had a "sixth sense" when it came to finding deer. I would be moving along, and I would suddenly think that a deer was close at hand. Almost invariably when I had that spidey-sense alarm, I would jump one or more, or they would walk out in front of me. One day I was walking slowly with the wind in my face up a steep hill. I caught a whiff of something. It turns out my sixth sense was just the subliminal work of one of the original five.

Just because our ancestors had their noses full of tobacco and woodsmoke — not to mention less pleasant scents, doesn't mean that our modern, more open olfactory organs lack discernment — once we get away from the smell of exhausts for a day or two. So, too, if the Church at various points along its path of growth was dulled in its senses, it doesn't mean it will not regain them — sharper and more discerning than ever.

The Body of Christ is growing, from the Head to the Head, and we are growing together. More and more we see ourselves in unity. I'm not a Roman Catholic, but when someone attacks the Pope, I am attacked. I've never had my left foot say "Thank God it wasn't me" when I stubbed a toe on the right foot. In Christ, the pain of one is the pain of all, and it is the Head who understands that pain most thoroughly, communicating it to the other parts that appropriate action might be taken.

What is true of our pain is true of our joy. We all dance together or we don't dance at all.

The Call of the Hunter

I recommend you click the link and read Uncle Orson's review of the movie Eagle Eye. Card begins by mentioning some films he has watched at home recently, and discusses the advantages of staying home versus going to the movie theater these days. You can skip the first section if you like but by all means read what he has to say about Eagle Eye, surveillance, and computers.

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.