Ever since farm days in Ayrshire I've regarded sheep with affection and interest. Jack Duncan was a good farmer - knowledgeable about the land, and careful and respectful of animals which he referred to as 'the beasts'. He was a keen if not great golfer who took a couple of clubs and some golf balls out into the fields on a summer night to practice and we got two shillings ( probably around £5 nowadays) each for retrieving them.
It was on his farm that I first helped with sheep dip, sheep shearing and working the sheep with a dog. My father trained working dogs, always the border collie, and sold them to other farmers, some of them going abroad. Not many people know that! I still remember a spring night walking miles across the fields with Jack Duncan, the dog gathering the sheep, and Jack taking out one or two that were limping, examining their feet, cutting off the horn where foot rot was beginning to take hold, and putting ointment on.
It's such experiences, listening to the peewits complaining loudly at our intrusion, and displaying the most stunning aerobatics as they dived and swerved towards us. These same memories are what makes the cry of the curlew the most poignant and powerful Scottish sound to my ears. I still can't hear that cry without a lump in my throat and a sense of gratitude that, for all that I might have missed brought up in the country miles from shops, I have a love and affinity with the woods and the fields and the hills, and all who live therein, that is part of who I am.
Jack Duncan's care for his 'beasts', (he's standing at the right in the photo taken when I was a boy!) and my father's reputation as a first rate dairyman who cared for the herd, mean that when I read Psalm 23, or John 10, I have no sentimentality at all about sheep and shepherds, or cows and byres (I helped muck them out at weekends!). It isn't sentimentality that sheep need - but watchful care, reliable provision, a safe environment and a knowledgeable shepherd.
The coloured photo above was taken on a walk to Drum Castle - the photo could be better, but the image of sheep sheltering under a massive conifer is biblical, pastoral and evokes memories for me of a boy wearing large wellingtons, a holy jersey, and stressed jeans long before they were made fashionable, chasing across fields after a sheepdog, taking seriously the welfare of sheep. And whatever else the Lord is my Shepherd might mean, it has to do in my mind with that welfare that comes looking for us, that protective wisdom that singles us out for care and healing, that watchful care that means there are indeed times of green pastures and still waters, dark valleys and tables spread. If the goodness and mercy that follow me all the days of my life are the perfect expression of Jack Duncan's humane husbandry, then without an overload of sentiment it is true to say 'I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me'. By the way, that one line contains an entire theology of divine - human encounter, the I that I am, encounters the Thou that God is.
Psalm 23 is never quoted in the New Testament but the pastoral image is recurrent, as Jesus described variously as the Good Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd and the Great Shepherd. I've read many a commentary on Psalm 23. It is such a richly textured, spiritually resonant text that echoes throughout the corridors and cathedrals of Western Christianity. The best reception history of this psalm is in the remarkably fine book, The Psalms in Christian Worship. A Historical Commentary. Bruce Waltke and James Houston (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) pp. 416-445.
But Jack Duncan remains in my mind and memory as the most persuasive existential commentary on the spiritual experience of being a sheep under the care of a good shepherd.
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