God of the Hunt

Pastor’s Epistle—November, A.D. 2015 B

Come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains. —Song of Solomon 8:14

Deer hunting is Minnesota’s secular sacrament. It’s not terribly difficult to see why. The forest has always been a spiritual place, filled with both risk and reward. On the cusp of winter, as we can feel the autumn bite in the air, few things could be more rejuvenating than to leave behind workplace stress and household chores, to climb a tree and sit in silence, distracted neither by man nor machine. For children it’s a rite of passage, one of our few remaining coming-of-age rituals. To hunt, to hang, to prepare a deer for your family’s table—what could be more basic, more primal, than that?

In Celtic mythology we find the figure of the antlered man, “Cernunnos.” We don’t really know anything about him. Was he a hero, a god, a shaman? No idea. But he is depicted in ancient carvings surrounded by all manner of beast, and so he has come to represent a primal union with nature, a wild spirituality, which we in the West have largely left behind, yet for which we often yearn. This may simply be the cost of modernity, the price we pay for civilization and security, or it may be deeper than that. It may go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden, and to our sin’s disruption of that original, intended unity shared between God, humanity, and the natural world.

Oftentimes I see people with tattoos depicting antlers or stags or the tree of life. The phases of the moon are very popular as well. These seem to express a spiritual yearning for a living relationship with the natural world—a yearning that is every bit as Christian as it is pagan. Christ is often portrayed as a stag is Christian art, thanks to the Song of Solomon. And many of the saints throughout Church history have been characterized by a holy friendship with nature and the wild beasts, as envisioned by the prophet Isaiah. The difference is that the modern pagan worships nature in and of itself, whereas the Christian venerates the beauty of Creation as a reflection of her Maker’s glory.

When we draw nearer to Creation, we draw nearer to the Creator. God is in the woods with the hunter, in the workings of nature that both humble and inspire us. There is bounty in the forest, yes, and beauty aplenty, but also fearful mysteries and awesome powers that humble us, thrill us, remind us of our place. Think of Esau and Nimrod, mighty hunters before the Lord. Think of St. Hubert, who found a vision of God in the antlers of a deer that he was hunting. Think of Thanksgiving, when the fruits of the forest shall satisfy the needs of our beloved, feeding family gathered around the warmth of hearth and home.

Always remember to be cautious, to be thankful, to be respectful amidst the trees. November is life and death, weal and woe. Nature is born of the same God Who fashioned us, and His Spirit, like the wind, blows as powerfully as ever through the wild places of this earth. As we sit alone amidst the quiet crackle of the forest, one cannot help but wonder: Are we the hunters here? Or is it Christ Who hunts for us?