My Father’s Bow

The early morning breeze whistled through the pines, making its way past any outerwear and into our bundled forms that were still masked by fog and shadow. With the warmth of the rising sun trailing close behind, the pre-dawn light began stretching its golden limbs across the forest which was now slowly rousing from its short summer slumber.

I was only a young boy at the time, but looking back on that morning I now realize it had little to do with hunting at all and almost everything to do with spending time together as father and son. But had you asked me in the moment as a boy of about eight or nine, we were most certainly hunting—lying in wait as we were for some unsuspecting turkey or deer, when in reality the only living creatures we saw that morning beyond one another were the occasional squirrel or odd bird taking flight.

Growing up, our country property was teeming with all manner of wildlife both in and out of season. Auburn foxes slipping by stealthily amongst the flaming colors of fall; packs of coyotes howling their nocturnal tunes on moon-lit winter nights as their forms cut dark silhouettes on pale-white snowdrifts; birds of all shapes and sizes breaking the stillness of the morning air with their spring songs; but most admired above all, and my father’s personal favorite, were the herds of deer that would pass through our front lawn to graze in the early hours of the day as they migrated out of the woods to other, greener pastures.

Indeed, my father loved deer, particularly the ones that called our home their own. I think he felt a sense of responsibility for these herds, much as a shepherd would his sheep. Which is why, had a deer wandered onto our path that still morning as the pair of us hid in the bushes with our bows, I am quite sure that my father would have let the creature pass in peace. Just because he could have killed any beast that came his way didn’t mean that he had to.

By contrast, though I had no idea what I was doing, I nonetheless felt sure of the fact that I was there to hunt; and though my father absolutely knew what he was doing when it came to hunting, he was there simply to spend time with his son. And, even had I wished to do some creature harm, be it a deer or a lone turkey, there was little chance that my flimsy bow was up to the task. Now, my father’s bow—that was a different story.

Anyone who has ever shot a bow knows that not all bows are created equal. To begin with, there are many different sorts of bows. There are more modern inventions, such as crossbows—which are more like a gun than anything else—and compound bows; and then there are traditional makes, such as longbows, self bows, and my father’s personal bow of choice, the recurve bow.

To one degree or another, what all bows have in common is the simple requirement that the archer draw back the bowstring to release the arrow in the string—this chiefly distinguishes a bow and arrow from a gun, which only requires that you squeeze a trigger to shoot. A bow’s strength—that is, how far and how fast its user can shoot an arrow—is dependent on the bow’s draw strength or draw weight. The more force, or weight in pounds, required to draw back the bow’s string, the more powerful the bow. And, of course, the more powerful the archer.

For this reason, there is something distinctly human about archery—something very raw, personal, masculine, and even primal. It takes strength, self-control, and no small amount of skill to operate a strong bow, both in stringing it and shooting it. A bow is personal, bending to the personal needs and intentions of its master. Throughout history, a bow, much like a sword, was seen as an extension of the warrior’s person. The two were one. To wield an exceptionally powerful bow well often meant that you were also an exceptionally powerful person.

Going back as far as I can remember, very few people could even string, let alone shoot, my father’s bow. Not even me. As a boy, it always appeared to me as a large, imposing weapon; a great bow for a great man, encapsulating so much of what I thought manhood and fatherhood were supposed to be as a child. It was an old-fashioned recurve bow; simple in its appearance, strong, and sturdy, much like my father, but not without a few contemporary upgrades. It was made of a combination of materials, wood and carbon fiber chief among them, with darkly-paneled arms and an ebony inlay.

As my father and I sat silently in our hunting perch that early morning—his blackened bow ever close at hand against the light of gathering day—it must have appeared to me then, though not for the first time, that he and his weapon really were as one. I could not string it, nor could I shoot an arrow straight with any degree of accuracy or power, even if he handed me the bow strung and ready. It was his bow, and none others’. “The bow maketh the man, and the man the bow.”

This is the entire premise behind the final act of Homer’s The Odyssey. After nearly two decades away from home, heart, and hearth, Odysseus finally returns to his kingdom of Ithica. When he left to fight in the Trojan War nearly twenty years earlier, Odysseus left behind a wife and a young son, both of whom have been sustaining his legacy over the years with only their fleeting memories. And when Odysseus finally does return, in the guise of an old beggar to veil his identity no less, he finds a kingdom in turmoil. Once faithful servants have abused the kindness shown to them in the past, leaving the estate in shambles; the citizens have all but given up on the hope that Odysseus should ever return; and worst of all, a vast host of suiters are within the palace walls, all eagerly vying for the affection of Odysseus’ wife, the Queen, whom they now suppose to be widowed and ready to take on a new husband as King.

With a burning desire to heap vengeance on the ruffians who have devoured his household and abused his family over the long years of his absence, the disguised Odysseus proposes that a trial be held to determine who should take the place as the new King of Ithica. The test is seemingly simple: string the great bow of Odysseus, the presumed-fallen King, and shoot a perfectly aimed arrow through a succession of axe heads, just as the man himself had done countless times in their presence in the years before Troy. On the suggestion of her son, who is secretly working in league with his now returned father, the Queen accepts the conditions of the challenge—as do the suitors.

Only, none of the men assuming to take the place of Odysseus can even so much as string his great bow, much less let fly an arrow through the line of axes. All the men try and fail. One particularly resourceful suitor by the name of Eurymachus suggests warming the bow by the fire to loosen its frame after its many years of idleness, making it easier to bend and string—a clever trick to be sure, but he too fails the trial. Wits and tricks are of no avail in this challenge: only raw strength will do.

And then Odysseus at last arises to the trial in his long-awaited attempt.

“Odysseus the master of craft had by now handled and surveyed the great bow up and down. Calmly he stretched it out with the effortless ease of a skilled musician who makes fast both ends of a piece of twined cat-gut and strains it to a new peg in his lyre. Changing the bow to his right hand he proved the string, which sang to his pluck, sharp like a swallow’s cry... He snatched up the keen arrow which lay naked there upon his table—all the others which the Achaeans were so soon to feel being yet stored in their quiver—and set it firmly upon the grip of the bow. He notched it to the string and drew; and from his place upon his settle, just as he sat, sent the arrow with so straight an aim that he did now foul one single axe.”

Indeed, “The bow maketh the man, and the man the bow.”

There is something important to be gleaned in the sheer simplicity of Odysseus’ triumph. Notice how there are no fancy tricks or surprises at play; no warming of the bow to make it more pliable, no divine intervention from the lower-case g gods, there’s no magic or supernatural strength present. There’s just one man showing everyone else in the room exactly why he was the King to begin with: not because he was the most clever (which he is), not because he is among the most wise (which he is), but because he is also strong, far stronger than all of them. Odysseus is “Mens sana in corpore sano”—“A sound mind in a sound body.”

As one writer puts it, “[We] already know Odysseus is smarter than everyone else. The point of the bow is that he’s also strong. In other words, Homer’s Odyssey is not a parable of brains over brawn, about how the nerdy weakling beats all the big dumb bullies. It’s about what it takes to be a man in full, which means it’s important for the hero to be smart, brave, and tough.”

Some years after my father went home to be with the Lord, our family prepared to leave my childhood home in the country. During the move, I stumbled across my father’s old bow. I turned it over in my hands, allowing my fingers as well as my eyes and memory to run over its weather-worn exterior. And then, as though to prove to myself that I could, I calmly stretched out its frame with some effort—like a skilled musician who makes taut his instrument—drawing together the two ends of the bow with the string to make one.

“I did it,” I thought within myself. “I finally strung his bow.” Had it always been this easy for him?

There were no celebrations or laurels of victory. The mounting silence, broken only faintly a moment before by the aching of the bow and the tightening of the string as I worked it, had now finally prevailed. There was something disquieting about the fact that I could now do as a young man what I as a little child supposed only my father could do.

A decade later, and I am now a father myself. My son is only a few months old, but in no time at all I expect he will begin to form some assumptions about me, as all little boys do about their fathers, however incorrect or far-fetched they may be. He may begin to think that I am far faster than I actually am, or much smarter than I in reality happen to be, or significantly stronger than I have any right being other than in his heightened imagination.

Indeed, I had all these thoughts and more about my own father. He lived up to many of my supposed expectations and fell short of many others—he was, after all, just a man at the end of the day, as even the best of fathers are. For every bow he could string, there seemed an equal number that he could not. As I grew bigger, some parts of him grew smaller. At about the same time, however, I began to see and cherish parts of him that I had never before seen or appreciated as a foolish youth—qualities such as his gentleness, his kindness, and in particular, his faith.

Finally bending my father’s old bow into submission came well after I had already seen him fail, fall, and—most importantly—repent and get right back up again. He was, and in many ways remains, the greatest man I have ever known. Well, the second greatest. For you see, what made my father a truly great man was not to be found in his strength, bravery, or wisdom, of which there was plenty, but rather in his faithful obedience to the One who is truly strong, brave, and wise beyond all comparison. He faithfully fulfilled his duty as a father not by trying to do it all, but by telling us as his children about the man who can do it all—directing our attention to the far greater Odysseus who not only strings unstringable bows, but who opens unscrollable scrolls and throws open unopenable gates.

At some point or another, your strength as a man will in fact fall short. Whether you are a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, or some combination of all these titles, you will inevitably come up against trials in life for which you will find yourself bitterly unprepared and incapable. If it hasn’t already happened, there will soon be a day when you come across a bow you cannot string, much less shoot squarely.

Try as we may, we are not always the Odysseus in our story. My father was a hero to me growing up, as I hope and pray I will be in the eyes of my own children—but neither of us will ever rise to the stature of Christ, the Hero. As a father, there will be many bows that I cannot string in my own strength, and that will be plain for my son to see. And that is quite alright. We must, all of us, look to another: to a greater Odysseus for whom there exists no bow too strong to bend, no target too difficult to hit truly, and no enemy too mighty or innumerable to overcome. As a father, it is now my joy to point my son to such a man, even as my own father did before me.

“Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’”

—Revelation 5:1-5

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Photo by Paul Earle, Unsplash

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