Reminiscences on the Life of My Brother: Earl's Last Hunt

My oldest brother Earl's 83rd birthday is today, June 11. Since both our birthdays are in June, and he was 10 years, 18 days my senior, I never forgot it as I sometimes did my other brothers’ birthdays. I had planned to mail him a home-made birthday card produced on my MS Publisher program with a hand-written message and a complimentary close of the one word, “Love.” Unfortunately, I was too late because he died suddenly last Sunday, June 5. Take heed.

He willed to me, among other things, his Winchester Model 94, .30-.30 carbine with which I killed my first deer on Red Mountain, East Fork, Trinity River, Trinity County, in 1956. I just realized that I had returned the favor by loaning him my Model 99 Winchester .308 with which he killed his last deer, probably sometime in the 1960s. After that exhausting hunt, he said he realized, "I don't have to do this." He came to prefer to see the beauty of the living animals and rather disapproved my continued willingness to hunt and kill them. Aesthetically, I agree with him, but like biblical Isaac I still have a yen for venison. I last hunted in 2009 and we didn't even see a buck--until we drove back through French Gulch where they hang around on the lawns even (or especially?) in the middle of deer season.

Henry David Thoreau had a similar development. While at Walden Pond he liked to catch and eat the pike. Later, he gave up such fare, but he admitted that if he returned to live on the Pond, he would be sorely tempted by those tasty fish. As a Transcendentalist (Pantheist) like Emerson, he probably had spiritual reasons for renouncing the killing of animals. As a Christian, I am free to take and eat meat, whether that of wild game or of livestock. Since the forgiveness of sins, my very salvation is based on the shedding of the innocent blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, I realize that in some circumstances, the shedding of blood is required for life to be preserved.

Thoreau thought that boys and young men should be allowed to pursue wild game because it brought them out into nature. But he viewed it as a stage through which they perhaps had to pass on the way to maturity. For myself, I'm not dogmatic, but I think those like my brother who renounce the chase have the better part. And perhaps those like my young Christian friend Brian, who never wanted to start hunting have the best of it.

Still, for some hunters, there is another aspect of hunting, the hunter's bond of trust formed over years of hunting together. You always put your life in the hands of your hunting partners and these relationships can become very close. Killing game becomes secondary to the ritual of the hunt, love for the wilderness in which you hunt and the relationships nurtured by the hunt.

Moreover, in gutting and skinning a deer, with blood at least up to your elbows, you get some sense of the reality of what happened to Christ on the Cross when he shed his blood for the sins of the world. And without the shedding of that blood, we all would be lost.

A Tale of Two Cities: New York and Paris

So French Eurocrat Dominique Strauss-Kahn, key official of the International Monetary Fund, stands accused of attempting to rape an African-immigrant housemaid at a luxury hotel in New York. And the left-wing in France is outraged according to this report on National Review Online: "In French press accounts, one distills a veritable caricature: 'How dare those backward Americans do this? Do they have any idea of who Strauss-Kahn is and what he represents, or how we civilized and sophisticated Europeans deal with these dime-a-dozen sort of low-rent sexual accusations against men of culture from mere chambermaids?'”

According to an international report in the Record Searchlight, Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to run for the presidency of the French Republic despite reports of his affair with a subordinate. Indeed, his reputation as a womanizer had given him the nickname, "the great seducer."

But what I find interesting about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault on the African housemaid in New York is its parallel with a key incident in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. The sin that motivates the unjust accusation against Charles Darnay (Evremonde) in Dickens's story was the rape of a young peasant woman by his long-dead father, the French noble, Count Evremonde. It seems that the French elite have yet to learn the lesson that Dickens took from the French Revolution, that if you oppress the masses of ordinary people without limit and/or treat them with utter contempt, sooner or later your class (or you) will pay the price.

La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose. N'est ce pas?

Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! Mea Maxima Culpa!

Yesterday I was on the Shasta College campus here in Redding sharing the gospel with students to whom I hand out leaflets raising questions about Jesus Christ. It's easy because many of the students who pause to take a look at the leaflet are willing to volunteer their opinion of who Jesus is in response to my inquiry. By asking questions and listening first, I find that many students are willing to listen to what the New Testament says about sin, salvation and the Savior. And about every other time I go out there, at least one of the students has been prepared by the Holy Spirit to confess Jesus as Lord.

That didn't happen yesterday, but a couple of young men were willing to read from the Scriptures what the Bible says about Jesus and our salvation and let me pray for them. After several hours of leafleting and sharing, I went upstairs to a room off the balcony above the cafeteria where InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IV) was having a Bible study. We started small but soon an alumnus of Pelican Bay State Prison showed up with his guitar. The IV group leader seemed to identify with the visitor and mentioned that he was a former drug addict and a graduate of the Redding Mission's recovery program. A couple of black brothers came in and I found myself sitting beside a lovely young woman from Bethel's school of ministry who was from Romania and was reading the scripture from a bilingual Romanian-English Bible.

The Bible study was from Matthew 12, a chapter in which the Pharisees criticized Jesus disciples and Jesus himself, calling them Sabbath breakers because Jesus' disciples plucked some stalks of grain and ate the still tender grains and because Jesus insisted on healing the man in the synagogue with a withered hand on the Sabbath Day. Jesus defended his followers and himself summing up his argument by saying, "If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice' (Hosea 6:6), you would not have condemned the innocent" (Matt. 12:7).
The main point of the study seemed to me to be that God was more interested in our heart attitude towards him and towards our neighbors than in ritual obedience.

After discussing the Scripture, we joined in worship songs with help from the visiting guitarist and the young woman from Romania and prayed for one another. I went out to my table on the quad in front of the cafeteria to eat my lunch and distribute a few more leaflets. Almost immediately, I was tested on the study: Would I put mercy ahead of ministry?

A lovely young woman approached and since I didn't immediately recognize her, she reminded me of her name (say, Natalie) and that we had discussed the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses with whom she has been studying. I instantly remembered her and began my apologetic demonstrating that Jehovah's Witnesses are polytheists. Their calling Jehovah "Almighty God" and Jesus "mighty god" (Isaiah 9:6) and "a god" (John 1:1, New World Translation only) leaves them with not one God, but two, a high God and a lesser god. This is rather like the situation of Greek mythology with Zeus as the high god and other lesser gods like Hermes. The Witnesses limit their god count to two, but they are, nevertheless, polytheists, not true monotheists.

But providentially, Natalie was interested in bigger game. She innocently asked me why we believe in the Trinity. Now I was ready to lead her to biblical answers to that question, but our guitarist, my brother from Pelican Bay, appeared and offered to help us out. I was none too pleased with his interruption of an ongoing witness I have been working on for a while, but he had a Scripture and Natalie wanted to see it. When I saw that he was taking us to 1 John 5:7 in his King James Version, I lost it.

In anger I told him (the truth) that the Jehovah's Witnesses would chew him up over that verse because it is not in the ancient Greek manuscripts (and therefore not in the original). He stood firm on his King James Bible, but in my anger I succeeded in driving him away. Amazingly, Natalie seemed not greatly affected by our altercation and I continued with my defense of the Trinity by pointing out that the Scriptures refer to three distinct persons as God and yet insist that there is but one God. Thus, God differs from us in that while there is but one person in the unity of each human being, God exists on the high order of Trinity in which there are three persons in the unity of the One Divine Being. I also shared on the personhood of the Holy Spirit from Acts 13:1-4 and on Jesus' claim of divinity in John 8:58 ("Before Abraham, I AM.") by identifying himself by the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14.

Indeed, I was so caught up in my ministry to this endangered soul that it was not until she had left and I was ready to head home that I began to realized that I had just been tested on the teaching at the IV meeting. And that I had flunked the test bigtime. I had put my ministry ahead of mercy. What my brother needed was a little mercy from his more knowledgeable brother. Instead, I beat him up verbally and got rid of him.

Today, I went back to the college to see whether I could find my offended brother and ask for his forgiveness--to no avail. I pray that God will comfort him and that I will be able to find him next week to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. Meanwhile, I find myself to be the one most in need of mercy. Thanks be to God whose mercies never come to an end.

Happy Thanksgiving! But Whom Do You Thank?

Whom will you thank next Thursday on Thanksgiving Day? The Pilgrims thanked God the Creator, but what if you don't believe in the Creator? What then?

Well, you might thank your parents for giving you life. Especially, if you were born since 1973, since they could have offed you before you were born, all in accordance with the Law of the Land. But what if you're not even sure about the meaning and purpose of your life anyway? Whom do you thank then?--What about this man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth?

Graphic: See Albrect Durer's "Bearing of the Cross," 1512: www.backtoclassics.com/gallery/albrechtdurer/bearing_of_the_cross_no_10/

Yes, Jesus Christ, who loved us and "gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2b). Why not thank him for what he did when he allowed himself to be humiliated, tortured and murdered out of love for us sinners?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

Hawking on Religion

It is true that if the Christian God is the infinitely wise and powerful Creator of our meticulously designed (to support advanced life forms) planet, solar system, galaxy and universe, then he must be transcendently different from us. And yet, the biblical revelation tells us that we are like him in significant ways, made in his "image and likeness" as personal beings. And this means at least that both God and we can think, choose and act, and love.

Stephen Hawking recently contrasted science and religion (see paste below) and said that religion is based on authority, science on observation and reason. This kind of statement suggests first of all that we should not passively accept his authority when he speaks on subjects outside his field of physics. And then, we must point out that Christian faith is based on reason and observation as well. For example, eyewitness John the Apostle begins his first letter, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Fathher and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:1-3).

While I would agree with Stephen Hawking that the Universe (the Book of the Creation) appears to be about 14 billion and the earth about 4.5 billion years old. On the other hand, I believe that the Bible is, as it claims to be, the Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16) and is therefore true when correctly understood.

The other essentials on which all Christians agree is that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal God manifested as a man, that he died on the cross for our sins and was raised again from the dead. We are saved by believing this and confessing him as Lord, the Master, our final Authority. So again, Hawking has a point about authority, by faith in Christ we come into submission to and personal relationship with the final Authority, God the Creator and Redeemer, the Holy Trinity.


Hawking on God, Huffington Post, Nicolas Graham, 6/10/10
Stephen Hawking, known for his groundbreaking work in physics, told Diane Sawyer that when it comes to reconciling science and religion, there is only one outcome: "science will win because it works." He also elaborated on his views about God.
"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."
When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

The Great Granite Wall at the Head of Stuart's Fork, Trinity River

Caribou Lakes 55 Years Later

Late in August 1954, I climbed from Portuguese Camp on the Stuart’s Fork of the Trinity River the 2000 vertical feet up the to the pass on Sawtooth Ridge and then dropped down to Caribou Lake. I can't remember whether or not I spent a night on the lake, but that afternoon or the next, I took a look at the clouds, which threatened rain, and decided to go on down to Big Flat. Sixteen years old and having spent most of the last 2 months backpacking in the Alps with only my elder brother’s .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver for company, I walked on out in one afternoon and evening without any problem.

This July, fifty-five years later at 71, it took me 3 days to walk the perhaps 10 miles of the new trail from Big Flat back up to Caribou Lake. Quite a contrast! Being older and wiser, I had replaced the 4-pound revolver and holster with my beat-up, 4-pound guitar. But with grub for 6 days (i.e., about 12 pounds of dried foods plus a few delicacies), my load was heavier than that of the nearly empty-of-food GI rucksack I had carried out in 1954. This time, I had to pace myself to about 1 mile an hour to make it at all. So I camped Thursday night at Brown’s Meadow, perhaps 3 or 4 miles short of the first lake in the basin.

Friday, I rested, headed out after 3 pm and arrived at Snowslide Lake at about 6:30 pm. I cooked my dinner of mac and cheese and bedded down in a copse of black hemlock with red fir, lodgepole pine and western white pine all around. I got unduly upset at the little white-footed mouse trying to get at the granola in my pack and tossed a shoe his way. Happily, I missed, but I remember his big, dark, mouse-in-the-flashlight eyes contrasting with his white underparts. It would have been a shame to have hurt him. Fortunately, my sturdy internal frame pack seems impervious to small rodents.

Saturday, by-passing the trail down to the Lower Caribou Lake, I took only about 45 minutes to finally make it up to Caribou Lake, which lies at an elevation of about 6800 feet. Its heavily glaciated basin has little soil so that the red fir and black hemlock are scarce except on some parts of Sawtooth Ridge south of the lake. Immediately recognizable by its pendulous branchlets, one weeping spruce stands on the east side of the lake, a rather rare tree said to be a relic species unable to compete with other conifers except in very steep or rocky terrain. Another healthier specimen grows along the trail ascending from Snowslide Lake towards Big Flat.

Sunday, I rested again, but it threatened rain so I moved my camp further south from the outlet to a site on the granite that had room to set up my tube tent. The two young men camped there had welcomed me and my guitar the night before, and we had traded a few folk, pop and praise songs, including as I recall, “I Ride an Old Paint,” “Thou Art Worthy” and “He decidido seguir a Cristo.” They had headed back to McKinleyville earlier in the afternoon, leaving me alone on the lake as far as I could tell.

Monday, I climbed the 7700-foot peak southwest of the lake for the view of the glacial gorge at the head of the Stuart’s Fork of the Trinity River containing Emerald, Sapphire and Mirror Lakes and of the wall of granite beyond them. This magnificent scene speaks to me of the glory of the Creator. And I found myself calling on him for help as I descended by a different route through the cliffs on the west side of the Lake—a route I don’t advise for anyone not equipped for rock climbing. In the evening, I moved my camp back down to Snowslide Lake to give me a head-start on the long march back to Big Flat. It was warm for the mountains and my down sleeping bag was pretty hot, what with the hood closed down to a tiny nose hole to avoid being eaten alive by the many mosquitoes, which had been absent from the upper lake.

I took the new trail both ways given its gentler gradients, but horsemen prefer the old route. Although my pack was about 12 pounds lighter, Tuesday I was on the trail about 9 hours to get from Snowslide Lake to the Salmon River at Big Flat Campground. So on this trip I learned that I’m not the hiker I was 55 years ago, but the mountains remain magnificent.