Jesus is not found in a vacuum

CatholicAnchor.org

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, suggesting an Alaskan book to a readership of Alaskans who have no doubt devoured this book by now. But if somewhere on the Last Frontier there’s a person who has not read, “Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier,” do not wait. Read this book.

Tom Kizzia has studiously researched and eloquently written about Robert Hale, who was introduced to us originally in Daily News stories as Papa Pilgrim. Remember the adorable family of bluegrass musicians who wandered out to McCarthy to live in isolation, and eventually butted heads with the Parks Service?

Well, we all know that ended badly, with Papa being exposed as an abusive husband and father. We all read about Papa passing away in jail; we all hoped that the family could find peace in their new life.

But in delving into all this, Kizzia gives us history of the Kennecott Mine and McCarthy, a fascinating glimpse of Robert Hale’s own mysterious life, his meandering into the counterculture of the 1960s, his embrace of a religion he would ultimately pervert to his own uses. There’s something in this book for everyone.

I was intrigued by the faith aspects of this book. I’m not as old as Hale was, but I came of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. For those too young to remember those days, let me say it was a wild time. It was tinged with a lot of idealism — John F. Kennedy had challenged us to ask what we could do for our country, and the Peace Corps was born and blossomed. I spent the mid-1970s in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and there was this naïve but real belief that together we could save the world.

At the same time, there was a burgeoning mistrust of institutions, provoked by fire hoses turned on civil rights protesters and a growing despair about the war in Vietnam. Then, in 1972 came the Watergate break-in that eventually sealed the deal — trust in government plummeted and other institutions, like organized religion, started to take a beating, too.

What does this have to do with Papa Pilgrim? Well, I don’t know if Hale ever really embraced a faith in Jesus, or if it was all a narcissistic power trip right from the get-go. But I knew people who sounded like Hale. In those days, we called them “Jesus Freaks” and they were on their own personal faith quest. Remember John Denver singing, “Blow up your TV, throw away your paper … eat a lot of peaches, try to find Jesus on your own.”

That didn’t work out too well for a lot of folks. I remember my cousin bringing home a Jesus person. For many, drugs animated the search for faith, and I think my cousin, like Hale, got confused about whether he was a disciple of Jesus or maybe the Lord himself. He brought his own apostles, but my aunt threw them all out so I’ll never know the end of that story.

The message in all this? Hale’s complete exodus from all forms of community — his children were so isolated they weren’t even taught to read — is extreme in the max. But the last few years tell us that, unsatisfactory as institutions can be, we need them. We may be critical of things in the church, but we are well advised to remain loyal. As Papa Pilgrim’s tale shows all too well, the Holy Spirit doesn’t live in a vacuum, but thrives in community.

The writer is formerly from Anchorage. She now lives in Omaha, Neb.