Daniel Boone, the Appalchians, and a certain kind of man

As I rode the airplane to Wisconsin this week I began reading Boone by Robert Morgan, a biography of Daniel Boone. The Fess Parker version of Boone on TV was the myth I grew up with, but he was also still talked about by my dad and the folks where my dad grew up in eastern Kentucky. My dad's hometown, Williamsburg, KY, is along the Cumberland River not far from Cumberland Gap. Daniel led many groups of settlers, including Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, across that Gap, and as a 'long hunter' he made many hunting and trapping expeditions into the area where my dad grew up. Boone most likely ran trap lines along Jellico Creek and Beck's Creek in same areas where my dad later trapped muskrat, raccoon, and the occasional mink.



Reading about Boone has been somewhat like reading about my father. Morgan comments at one point in the first chapter that 'there was almost a Franciscan humility and reverence for life in the young Boone, yet he was a hunter, a killer of wild animals.' That description is true of a great many hunters I have known but especially of my dad. Later Morgan comments 'the young Daniel often demonstrated a tendency to wander off without much concern for the worry his absence might cause others'. When on a hunt or out fishing, that was certainly true of my dad, and also of my brother, who would wander off for hours some times when we were in high school, wandering through the woods until my mother thought he must have been in an accident or something. Later, Morgan quotes Thoreau from Walden saying, "There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are 'the best of men', as the Algonquins called them". I think this concept of the life of an outdoorsman like Boone as the best life, the life most in tune with God's world, resonated very much with my dad.



The book makes it clear how in Boone's day when game was plentiful this could also be an economically viable life. I had read of how the Appalachian settlers had pursued a 'farm and forest' economy where hunting trapping and farming were both vital parts of their income. The book points out how, during a winter hunting/trapping trip that might last several months, Boone would return with hundreds of deer skins and beaver/muskrat/mink/otter pelts that would provide as much income as an entire year of business for a blacksmith or weaver. By my dad's time, however, that kind of harvest from the woods had long since ended. Nonetheless, that ideal of the woodsman providing vital income lived on though the reality had died out.



That vision of the woodsman as the best of men and the best provider for his family never resonated with me as it did with my brother. Yet I can relate to it and understand it from having seen it so vividly in my dad while growing up. In some ways my dad and all those who share that vision must feel like they were born into the world at the wrong time. Yet I think that very balanced view of the natural world, both revering it and harvesting it at the same time, has an important lesson in it that both the environmentalists (who revere without harvesting) and the industrialists (who harvest without revering) get wrong. So I am grateful for having seen that view of nature lived out before me as I grew up. It is a very Biblical point of view.



I am also grateful for the love of the woods though I am not a hunter. Boone's love for the Appalachians in particular is shared by most of the people who live there. Growing up I both loved and hated the place. I hated the poverty that was so rampant, the lack of education and the lack of basic facilities even. I was in junior high school before my grandfather's house got indoor plumbing, and going outside to the outhouse in the dead of winter was no fun! Yet there is something about the mountains, the forests, the woods that still draws me to the place. I am awed by the American West, its canyons and majestic peaks. But there something about the Appalachians that seems to be in my blood. It was in my dad's blood, too, and in Daniel Boone's from what I can tell. From the Smokies in the south to the bluegrass in the north, it is a special place. I can understand why the Cherokee viewed as almost sacred.

Change you can REALLY believe in

President Obama has been speaking today about how 'we can't keep relying the failed policies of the past' in regard to the economy. He is talking about tax cuts as a stimulus as the 'failed policies' as opposed to his 'new', enlightened approach (which is remarkably like FDR's, which was equally discredited). In reality, both the tax cut approach to stimulate consumer spending (as in last's years check's mailed to homes) or the current over-sized proposal, both fail to deal with the problem. The problem is one of a phony economy based on spending more than we earn. Until we adjust down to only spending what we can afford to spend, artificially trying to spend more than we have money for only prolongs the time when the real adjustment has to happen. No matter what, we cannot indefinitely spend more than we have. At some point we have to adjust downward in spending to allow positive savings (as opposed to the NEGATIVE savings rate of 2% the last few years). This is to say that we have to repent of our evil ways.

Repentance is not something we hear much about. In the broadest sense it simply means to renounce our bad behavior and change for the better. We most often think of it as a purely religious term--repenting of our sinful behavior and turning to God for a new way of life--but it applies to the economic mess as well. We have to change our ways. Our greediness, our demand for instant gratification, our refusal to live within our means all must change. Both parties have ignored this, they have just ignored it in different ways. Whether we send tax money back to households to spend a brief time longer, or create new government programs to 'create jobs', either way we still have to change our ways or when the spending ends we still have the same problem. We have just deferred it. The economy will still have to downsize to the amount we can actually pay for, not the size that has significant amounts of bad debt built into it. The portion beyond what we can pay for is the 'phony economy'. That can never be more than temporary.

Government is not the answer. Getting our personal and corporate finances right, to live within our means, is the adjustment that must happen. The question is when. That is the only change that will turn this around for the long run.

Baptism and the Office of 'Christian'

A couple of weeks ago I made mention of the fact that both marriage and Christianity are an office as well as a relationship. Today at church we had a very special worship service in which those who had professed faith in Christ but had not been baptized since that profession of faith were invited to be baptized right then, in that same service. Provisions had been made for changes of clothes, robes, towels, make-up, etc. The response was terrific, with 32 folks stepping up for baptism during the early 8:30 am service, and many more in the other services that followed. (Addition on 2/2/2009: there were 226 baptisms across the 5 services!) It was really a wonderful thing to behold. Some were professing faith publicly for the first time, but most had been sprinkled as babies and had never been baptized after coming to a personal faith commitment.

I was pleased to be there and to hear this renewed teaching on baptism, since it is not often discussed from the pulpit or in Bible classes. As with marriage, we talk lots about the relationship but not much about the office to which we are commiting ourselves. The relationship is the prerequisite, of course. We do not get married, in our culture, without first establishing the love relationship before hand. It has not always been this way, though. Marriages have been arranged for people by parents in many cultures for much of history. It is debatable whether marriage by choice results in better marriages. However, even in arranged marriages the paricipants have to make a choice: will they choose to love this person they have married or will they simply co-habit without love? Some choose to love; some do not. But this choice still comes as an adult, as one capable of choosing. In some ways the choice is much more deliberate in an arranged marriage. When you are confronted on your wedding night by this person someone else has chosen for you, you are immediately confronted with the need to make a choice. When people fall in love, they often assume that 'love is all we need', and don't really come to the point of making a deliberate choice until, as they say, 'the honeymoon is over' and they realize that this marriage thing isn't so easy after all. As C.S. Lewis says about falling in love, 'Eros makes promises she can't keep'. Love ISN'T all we need. We need a personal commitment as well, a choice, a marriage., indeed a marriage that includes vows. In the end, that is what the wedding ceremony is all about:making a commitment.

Baptism is to Christianity as a wedding is to marriage. That is why infant baptism is similar to infant weddings. That is also why today's service was so special.