Going Toward the Fire: Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire

Sermons from Grace Cathedral

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

1. What stands in the way of having a deeper faith? On August 5, 1949 a crew of fifteen elite US Forest Service smokejumpers, or airborne firefighters, stepped out of their plane above a remote wildfire in Montana. Within an hour all but three of them were dead or mortally burned. They were caught by flames as they ran uphill through dried grass on a steep slope trying to reach a higher ridge. [1]

The University of Chicago English Literature professor Norman Maclean (1902-1990), who himself had experience as a fire fighter, happened to be in town and took the time to visit the fire even as it still burned. The men who perished were mostly in their early twenties and their stories haunted Maclean until he retired from teaching decades later and began writing about them.

He begins his book Young Men and Fire saying, “The problem of self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem for all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.” [2]

Maclean found his self-identity wrapped up in the tragedy. And so he studied what happened intently: the physics of fire (how a blowup happens and burns uphill), the geology, weather, terrain and botany of that particular river valley and hillside, safety changes that the tragedy inspired at the Forest Service.

Maclean notes that from the arrangement of the bodies rescue crews observed that most men had fallen and gotten up again. He writes, “at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever... what we last hoped to do on earth.”

His last paragraph says, “I, an old man, have written this fire report… it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men, whose lives I might have lived, on their way to death. I have climbed where they have climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature… I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead… I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death.”

2. What stands in the way of having a deeper faith? This week in a group my friend Chris directed this question to me. At first I didn’t say anything and let the conversation flow. I had in mind the writer Mary Karr’s observation that, “Talking about spiritual activity to a secular audience is like doing card tricks on the radio.” [3] But then another friend asked me the same question. So let me try to answer here.

I do not think that the major obstacle to deeper faith has much to do with belief. This is made more complicated because in our time of relative spiritual naiveté many people do not seem aware that we have to learn an adult faith. Paul writes, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Cor. 13:11).

Another factor is that many modern people feel that they don’t have enough time to come to church or pray. Their work life and other obligations squeeze everything else out. Twenty years ago Robert Putnam pointed out that instead of joining bowling leagues as they once did many people are bowling alone. In other words, people are more isolated and not joining groups and civic organizations in the way they once did. Some people may have an idea of who they might find in a church and simply do not want to be around that kind of person. I can imagine someone with integrity being afraid that faith creates an obligation to take care of other people. And it does.

Despair is also a barrier. Some look at pain in the world and think God is at fault or that this proves there is no God. They have never been introduced to a more subtle form of faith in a God who suffers along with us in the person of Jesus.

I did not say any of this in our conversation. Instead I offered a short response and said: A profound barrier to having faith in our time is rapidly accelerating capitalism. This worldview has become so pervasive today that we are living examples of David Foster Wallace’s joke. You remember the old fish swims past two younger ones and says, “How’s the water?” The younger fishes swims on for a bit. Then one turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?” [4]

What I mean by capitalism is an expanding set of values that colonizes our inner life and every domain of our daily experience. This includes a sense that the world is inert or dead, that everything can be measured objectively and valued. It makes our interactions into transactions. It turns gifts into investments and makes non-work activities seem somehow wasteful.

This kind of consciousness leads us to see ourselves as insatiable consumers who can never get enough and others as means to our own ends. It erodes a sense of gratitude and implies that good things have all been earned. It makes radically accelerating inequality seem inevitable even when this destabilizes democracy (and all other forms of community). Above all in our case capitalism is leading us to an extreme individualism that does radical damage to human dignity.

In response, my friends talked about how great life is in the twenty-first century and how it was not that long ago when half of Americans did not have access to warm showers. And I told them about how a society’s income inequality is directly correlated with mental illness, and about the misery I encountered that day going twice through the Tenderloin among people suffering so gravely from mental illness and addiction.

I have a friend who lives in a small city apartment. Yes, she has a hot shower. But she wants me to call her every week because she is so alone that no one will even notice when she dies.

Climate scientist Gus Speth writes, “I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy – and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we scientists don’t know how to do that.” [5]

3. My friends should have asked a more interesting question, “what can remove these obstacles to faith?” The English translation of today’s gospel states that those going out to see John the Baptist were “filled with expectation.” A better translation of this (prosdokōntos) would be foreboding or dread. That was not the world of what some would prematurely call late stage capitalism, but the shocking violence of those times would not be entirely unfamiliar to us.

Did you wonder about the verses that were omitted in our reading (Luke 3:18-20)? They interject a short reference to King Herod who later killed John in prison. And yet Luke writes, “John proclaimed the good news to the people” (Lk. 3). What is this good news? First, even though our inner lives seem thoroughly colonized by a world picture that seems to be leading to the death of our humanity and our planet, we can be changed. The word Luke uses is metanoia and means a change of mind or heart which we call repentance.

Second, don’t be confused and think that there are some people who are wheat and others who are chaff. Just as a single grain has both parts, each of us do too. And through prayer we have Jesus’ help as we try to separate what is good in our life so that it will thrive and minimize the prejudices and destructive thoughts that distort us.

Finally, let me assure you that deeper than all our thoughts there is a place within us where we can meet God. That voice that speaks quietly to Jesus says the same thing to us too. If you listen this morning you will hear in your own way God saying, “You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased” (Lk. 3).

My friends what stands in the way of having a deeper faith – not just in general, but for you? The world around us is burning. 153,000 LA County residents are under mandatory evacuation orders and an area greater than the size of San Francisco has been reduced to ash. Our governor and next president are publicly feuding. [6] Many of us feel a sense of foreboding as if we were trapped halfway up a hill only just above the rising flames.

Through a lifetime of studying their story Norman Maclean saw similarities between those young men each one knowing he was alone at his death and Jesus. In Young Men and Fire Maclean writes about the group’s foreman Wagner Dodge who lit a safety fire and tried to convince his men to follow him into the protection of the already charred land. Strangely enough going toward and more deeply into the fire was ultimately what saved his life. Perhaps this is true for us also.

In our time we have fought fire and inquired into its nature. Each of us is trying to reach a higher ridge. After we have lived for a better understanding of ourselves and those close to us we each arrive at the same place. And at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion that is where we meet the one who has climbed everywhere we have climbed, the one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. And we shall hear the voice of the One who loves us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Gulch_fire

[2] Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) xiii, 300-1.

[3] Matthew Boulton, “Theologian’s Almanac,” SALT, 12 January 2025. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2025/1/7/theologians-almanac-for-week-of-january-12-2025

[4] David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water,” Commencement Speech, Kenyon College, 2005. https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

[5] Cited in a letter from Rev’d Dr. Vincent Pizzuto sent on Friday 10 January 2025.

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/11/us/los-angeles-fires-california