SERMON: "To Hold Deer"

Rev. Paul Beedle

July 9, 2006

READING: from Jamesland by Michelle Huneven

So you open up your trunk, and out jumps a deer. You knew it was in there; you put it there yourself. The surprise is that it kicks to life, so that you have to step back for safety, and then jumps out and flies into the woods. Just because you slammed it full-on with your car, why did you think it was dead?

This is my favorite episode in Jamesland. The little old lady who hit the deer is a priceless comic character, a sort of Mrs. Magoo. She couldn't see whether or not the deer was dead – remember those thick glasses? – and she wasn't going fast enough to kill it. But, as she puts it, she was “afraid” she had killed it. Her fear was her conviction. Acting on that conviction, she got out, hoisted the deer somehow and put it in her trunk. A strength surge? Come on. This was not lifting up the car to pull a child to safety. This involved opening and closing the trunk, and quite an engineering job, I would think, to fit the deer into the trunk. In the process she made it “a tangle of legs and hooves, the head at an awkward angle.” What she had was a surge of over-responsibility. And now she's looking for “a zoo person,” a proper authority to take charge of it. The deer, having entered the human realm, has to become somebody's responsibility. But not if the deer has anything to do with it. Alice took a good, deep look into its eye, and yanked the little old lady out of danger – had that been harder to do, she might have experienced a strength surge. The deer escaped.

I take this episode as a symbol for the dilemma of conventional living. We are in danger of moving through the world in heavy armor, like the little old lady in her Lincoln Continental. We are in danger of trusting our most nearsighted perceptions, of mistaking fear for conviction, of referring reality to the proper authorities. Or, we lament injustice while vilifying the authorities, still wearing our heavy armor and still mistaking fear for conviction. What are we afraid of?

Perhaps it's that good, deep look into the eye of life. Perhaps it's the encounter with what is external to the conventional system of our lives: the wild and untamed, or the transcendent. For me, that moment when Alice looks deeply into the eye of the deer, is a moment of truth, of clear perception of reality, of contact with the spirit of life itself. The deer is not just a wild and untamed thing, but a symbol of the transcendent.

The deer as a religious symbol is very old. History records a wave of cultural influence that washed westward from the middle East into Europe, through the agencies of the Persian and Greek and Roman empires. Archaeological evidence suggests an earlier, prehistoric wave that washed eastward from Europe into the Middle East. You can see artifacts of it at the Menil art museum, among other places. The deer – or stag – seems to have been an important religious symbol in that culture, as was the tree or forest. These symbols were related. The stag's antlers resemble trees, and as the trees shed their leaves so that stag sheds its antlers, and they return – leaves and antlers – in the spring. Also, the stag lives in the forest, elusive, skittish and shy, like a mythical forest spirit. To us, the forest is not home. If we live in a forested area, we don't live among the trees, though we may live close to them. We create clearings. The forest symbolizes the landscape of the transcendent, and the stag is associated with its mystery and secrets.

In his book The White Goddess, Robert Graves wrote about the symbolism of mystery and secrets that he thought derived from this prehistoric culture. What symbols depict our experience of secrets and mystery? He named three animal symbols: the dog, the lapwing, and the roebuck. The dog, of course, guards the secret – that's what dogs do, they guard things. The lapwing – a bird which protects its nest by deceiving the predator, drawing it away with a misleading protective display somewhere far from the nest – disguises the secret. The roebuck – the deer – hides the secret, flying off elusively into a tangled wood. That's what the little old lady's deer does. It can't hide the secret when it's stunned or locked in a trunk. It has to be free to live out of its own nature and to move in its own habitat.

Think of entering a forest, and how that feels: sometimes it's a tangled thicket, and sometimes it's a cathedral-like space. I remember when I was a boy in Ohio, we lived in a (then) new housing development. Some years before, a straight, dead-end road had been cut into a wooded tract, and houses were built along it so that every back yard was at the edge of the woods. Then along came our builder, who extended that road, built a “T” intersection with a short street about three blocks long that had two dead ends; off that short street he made two cul-de-sacs, and we lived on one of those. So most of the houses in our development didn't back up to the woods, but many did. Beyond the end of our cul-de-sac was a big meadow where we kids would play. Down on the far side of it, with no paved path leading there, was a ball field with a fence. At the edge of that meadow were wild blackberry bushes.

At one end of that short street with two dead ends was another big meadow, and on the far side of it was a path into the woods. It was a broad natural trail canopied by the high branches of huge old oak trees. It felt very much like a medieval gothic cathedral, with the trunks of those old oaks for columns and the high branches forming the vault. The path extended about half a mile, or so I remember, ending in the back yards of another housing development. It was an enchanting place to walk. I went there a lot; it was sacred ground to me and going there really was a religious act for me, a kind of pilgrimage.

Of course, it's all gone now, those great oaks and both of the meadows; and the people who live there, I'm sure, have no idea of what's been lost. This is in suburban Cleveland, which at one time was called “the Forest City” – there's still a chain of lumber stores by that name. It's said that when Americans first found Ohio, a squirrel could travel from the Ohio River to the shores of Lake Erie without touching the ground. There are still plenty of trees in Ohio, but the squirrel can't make the same trip. And about a dozen years ago I heard an environmental expert describe Ohio as the most polluted state in the union. Possibly that was an exaggeration, but – what with big steel and auto manufacture and the river that burned and all the rest – possibly not.

I feel sure that our housing development represented suburban sprawl reaching “the country.” First came that older development, which was probably marketed as a secluded refuge from the concrete jungle. Then came our houses, prime lots in a developing suburb – a good investment, that's what my folks always lived in. Our lot was graded flat and bereft of trees, the soil rocky: a cheaper lot. Dad planted young trees which today look pretty good. I planted a pussy willow branch that I got at church one Easter – Dad picked out a place for it – and it grew into a respectable tree: but tamed, not wild.

Maybe the first residents of that older development saw deer in their yards; I never did. We were solidly in the human realm. Not that wild life was absent: there were the wild blackberries and the many varieties of wildflower that grew in those meadows, and bugs, and toads. I once found a praying mantis in our back yard. I caught it, made a terrarium for it, and caught grasshoppers to feed it. Poor thing must have been terribly bored. After a week or so, I let it go back into the back yard. I'd had experience inflicting slow death on store-bought turtles, you see, and I didn't want to go there again. I realized that the mantis could catch its own grasshoppers. I didn't need to be responsible for that.

These ways we relate to nature – as children, as homeowners, as developers, as lumber dealers, as industrialists, as motorists – are realities, experiences, things that demand our responsible attention; and they are stories, narratives replete with meaningful symbols.

The same boy who sorted out his responsibilities for a praying mantis stood in awe beneath the soaring branches of those old oaks. Sorting out responsibilities is of the conventional human realm; standing in awe is another level of experience. It was a curious awe of the miracle of a praying mantis that drove me to capture it and to let it go. It was the weight of responsibility for catching all those grasshoppers that determined how long the mantis was captive. I was learning about how to spend myself. I was also learning what I held dear. The conventional human realm and the transcendent realm each shaped my grasp of values, contributed to my practice of them.

Religion is about cultivating virtue, that is, how to spend ourselves in a way that honors our own worth, and honors at another level what we hold dear. But, as the little old lady in the Lincoln Continental discovered, it's not so easy to hold deer. And when you hold the deer in the human realm, it loses the symbolic power it has in the forest. Not only that, it resists. Look deep into its eye, and you can see a force of life beyond your control.

Values are like that. What we hold dear, in practice, is hard to hold. Indeed, it flies from our grasp. It leaves the forest of time out of time, and visits the realm of our days in its own way, sometimes surprising us. We learn by doing, how to live our values. Values arise from experience, which cannot be conveyed. Only the story can be told, the symbol drawn, the feelings shared. We bring the stories and symbols into conversation with reason, and so make the conventional norms that we live by.

To have virtue is to have a cultivated emotional life – feelings disciplined by spiritual practice. For example, courage is a well-developed capacity to feel confidence and fear in the right places, at the right times, and in the right degrees of intensity. The little old lady in the Lincoln Continental was not courageous. She let fear guide her conviction. She gave over to conventional authority her responsibility to engage the unconventional, to look deeply into its eye, to have feelings about it. Alice, on the other hand, had the moment of truth. She took a good, deep look into the eye of transcendent life, and acted to save both it and this very conventional stranger from harm.

Now, that's how I want to be when I grow up! So I'm always thinking about what I'm trying to become and whether or not my habits are helping me get there. Is my conventional life, as I construct it, serving only myself, or does it also serve life and the spirit of love and wisdom? And I ask myself if I am living in a way that disposes me to take a good, deep look into the eye of the transcendent when it appears. Some days I do better than others. The main thing, I think, is to stay open, to see and to learn.

And so I would invite you to ponder and to engage in conversation about virtues – things like courage and patience, wisdom and compassion. Reflect on the wisdom teachings about virtue that you know. Consider how these inform your conventional life, and your openness to the unconventional, the transcendent. May your reflections and conversations bring you greater clarity about the virtues you strive toward. And may you honor in your living what you hold dear. Amen.