David Michael Miller
I am neither religious nor spiritual. Outside of weddings and funerals you won’t find me in a church — and even then I sit there wondering why we couldn’t have done this in a nice park someplace. When something goes bump in the night the hair does not stand up on the back of my neck. I suppose it’s the wind and I go back to sleep.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment when I lost my religion, but I do remember one morning at Thomas More High School. I was in catechism class, and the Brothers of Mary were warning us off of cults. The mid-1970s were big for transcendental meditation and nutty ideas like Erhard Seminars Training, and Helter Skelter was on the best-seller lists. But it occurred to me, as I listened to the Brothers’ frightful warnings, that we had just come from Mass, where I had been told that I was eating the body and drinking the blood of a guy who had died two thousand years earlier and, by the way, he was the Son of God. So there was that.
I can work myself into some anger about what irrational beliefs and superstitions have done to the world (witness Paris last Friday), but I know too many people who I respect who are also believers. So I tend to think that it’s better to just acknowledge that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in anyone’s philosophy. As long as you’re not blowing up infidels or abusing women or molesting children, hey, knock yourselves out.
But then comes deer season, and, at least for one long weekend in November, I reconsider my position on ultimate questions. For me, it’s the closest thing to going to church.
Deer season has its rituals, even its sacraments. The gathering on the Friday evening before the hunt. The holy Brandy Manhattan. Early morning wakeup on Saturday. The walk in the cold dark to my stand. The quiet. The listening for a rustle in the leaves that is not another squirrel. And, if I’m lucky, the sight of a deer or two. And if I’m even luckier, the chance to shoot at one. And if I’m still luckier the opportunity to find it and gut it, my arms covered in its blood. Then there’s meeting back at camp and the stories and the traditional Saturday night dinner and, if we can stay awake, a few hands of the sacred game, which is Sheepshead.
Deer hunting does have elements that echo my fallen-away Catholicism. Time alone in the deer stand when the whole idea is to be as still and quiet as you can leads to reflection on the year gone by and your accomplishments and transgressions. The ritual sacrifice of the deer (which happens to be just about the same size and weight as an adult human) conjures up thoughts about what it means to take a life, when it’s justified and how best to honor the life you’ve just taken. The communal aspects of the hunt cause a person to consider how interdependent we are just to move the deer, not to mention to share in the enjoyment of the experience. The traditions that are repeated year after year call to mind the comforts of continuity. The remembering of the camp members no longer with us gives a person hope that he’ll be remembered similarly when he’s no longer occupying a chair in front of the fire.
For me at least the most honest answer to all ultimate questions is, how on earth should I know? I’m turned off by anyone who expresses too much certainty on these things because it seems to me that anybody who is sure about God or an afterlife — much less God’s position on a flat tax — just hasn’t really given it much thought.
The Church of England recently commissioned a study that found that the more their members talked about their religion, the more nonbelievers were pushed further away from it. That makes sense to me. I find that I respect spiritual or religious people in inverse proportion to how loudly they proclaim their beliefs.
So early Saturday morning, before the sun rises, I’ll be in the woods, sipping coffee, listening, thinking about life and, above all, just being very, very quiet. I’ll be preying.
