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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday October 16, 2000 Volume II Number 42
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FOCUS - The Shepherd
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a start. A sudden awakening. No noise startles me. No alarm. No intrusion of light illuminating my room. No coyotes howling outside my window screaming in celebration of a moonlit kill. No neighborhood dogs baying in the distance. There is no apparent cause. I just wake up. To what feels like full consciousness.
I’ll check the luminescent red letters of the clock that keeps track of time beside my bed. It may be two-thirty. Or three forty-five. Or one-fifteen. And occasionally, the darts strike.
Little fiery darts. Piercing little mental darts. They are purely imaginary. But powerfully real. Interrupting my sleep.
That long list of goals and objectives and chores and levels of achievement that really should be done by now. The disappointments. The missed opportunities. The dumb things I’ve said. The failures I’ve tried to forget. Ouch – another fiery dart. Those bitter memories I’ve repressed, buried somewhere in one of those deep folds in the gray matter. Ouch. One has been resurrected. And another. Then there is the fear that it’s all gunna collapse. That I’m not going to make it. The calamities that just might strike one of our kids… or all three. The feeling of inadequacy. A sense of unworthiness. The demands on the schedule. The demands on the checkbook. The stock market nose-dive. Turmoil in the Middle East. The challenges we’ve tried to resolve, but it just won’t be fixed. The people out there (I know who they are) who would like to see me suffer – and just will not be appeased.
It’s two in the morning, and the heart rate picks up speed. I’m restless, searching in vain for a position in the bed that will settle me down. … My arms here, my legs there… blanket this way… blanket that way… I can hear my own heartbeat, my ear against the pillow, thump thump thump, and I think about how many times that muscle has flexed and then relaxed, keeping the blood flowing out there to those extremities and up to my brain, and I wonder if there is perhaps a yet undiscovered defect, or if all that butter is beginning to clog things up and how many more times will it beat again, and I think curiously about the number of my days remaining and a coolness mixed with moisture forms on my forehead making my pillow damp. Ouch – another fiery dart. My eyes are wide open in the dark of my room, and I wish for stillness, and long for a return to deep sleep.
But it has eluded me.
* * * * * *
I was in my late twenties when I made friends with a Rabbi.
He was nearly retired. He devoted his life and career to his study. He invited me there. The walls were stacked with shelves filled with old books, reference works of theology and language and philosophy and history. Floor to ceiling. His wife lay ill in the back of the house. She suffered a slow onset of an irreversible cancer.
On his desk, a well-worn rack of briarwood pipes, each with teeth marks on the stems and blackened with carbon on the shaped wooden bowls, one or two of them carved ivory, and beside them a canister of tobacco. The room smelled of smoke and musty books. We sat in two stuffed leather chairs, feet up on one ottoman and talked. The Rabbi would light his pipe, and then take a long slow draw as he would nod and think, and then a twinkle in his eye would signal a lively thought, and we dialogued and laughed in the room he loved the best, among the books, and the mahogany desk with the hardwood floor and the braided rug.
He didn’t like Christians very much. But he liked me. He told me about the difficulties his people suffered at the hands of people who called themselves Christians and I didn’t have much of a defense, at least not in his eyes. I would listen as he told me about his Bible and his people, and the suffering of the generations and his interest in building friendships with others outside his little world of Judaism. He told me he was a liberal.
His name was Rabbi Mordecai Soloff.
And he told me the thing he liked the least about the Bible was those passages that referred to believers as sheep. He called it an insult. Sheep are dumb. Stupid. Co-dependent. Compliant. Timid. Fearful. Ignorant. God could not possibly think of his own creation in such disparaging terms.
Impossible, the Rabbi said.
* * * * * * *
Lately, I’ve tried something new.
On those occasional nights, when those darts come at me like a barrage of enemy fire, I recite an old poem. I learned it as a child… I didn’t understand it then like I do now. But I’m thankful they taught it to me.
David wrote it thousands of years ago. As far as I know, David had no last name. He was a musician, a poet, a warrior and a leader. A philosopher King. He wrote in Hebrew. Thankfully, his words have been preserved to this day and are translated into English, along with about every other language you can think of.
So instead of counting sheep, or reading a novel, or hitting the refrigerator for a midnight slab of lunchmeat wrapped around a hunk of cheddar cheese, I close my eyes and recite these words from memory…
“Because the LORD is my Shepherd, I have everything that I need…”
That’s a paraphrase. It helps me understand the opening line. When I memorized it as a child, it frankly made no sense to me. “The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” I couldn’t understand why people didn’t want the Shepherd. What’s the point? The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want him is what I thought. Oh well, they want me to say it. Word perfect. So I did. “The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”
Then later, I figured it out. I understood that desire, this longing to possess, this need to have what does not belong to me, this “want”… is a powerful distraction. It is, perhaps, the greatest contributor to anxiety. The poet is saying, with the LORD as my Shepherd, desire is irrelevant. This need to know. This need to monopolize. To control. To manipulate to my liking. This need to contain. To occupy. To own. It is all unnecessary. Because the LORD is my Shepherd.
Such release. Such liberation.
The mere thought of it deflects the darts. I’m already relaxing. The tension eases. It’s a paradigm shift from that self-destructive mode of thinking just a few moments ago. I really am a sheep who needs a shepherd.
“… he makes
me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside the still waters.”
The meadows of green. Soft, fresh long grass. Silky soft. Waves of grass in the warm breeze. The blade you can pull out from the root, and clean, yellow tasty stems fresh and sweet on your tongue, chewable under a blue sky as fluffy white clouds drift by. And the waters are still. Reflecting the colors of the shoreline rocks against the deep blue… and the stillness mirrors a serenity of the spirit, when the Shepherd is near.
“He
restores my soul.”
That’s it. It’s the damage that’s been done to my soul. It needs repairing.
And I remember when I first heard James Taylor sing Carol King’s tune, “You’ve Got a Friend.” He warned us, “they’ll take your soul if you let them…” And I hadn’t thought of it that way, but he is right. They are after my soul. They want me to sell it. To hand it over. To them. And out there in the congestion and the competition and the high pitched, fast paced world of getting and accumulating and spending and racing, the greatest casualty of all is my soul. It is damaged.
James Taylor sings, “They’ll take your soul if you let them… ah but don’t you let them.” But I have. They got too much of me. And I am paying the price on this sleepless night. I need help.
The Shepherd restores my soul. He gives it back. He repairs the damage. He makes it whole. That’s what he does.
“He leads me in the paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake.”
There’s a right path. And a wrong path. Part of me wants the right one. There’s a part of me that’s inclined toward the other. I’ve wandered down that one a time or two. It’s a dead end. It makes me an insomniac.
The path of righteousness is not prudish or puritanical. It is right. It is wholesome. It is healthy. It is good. And traveling down that road doesn’t make you more worthy. It makes you appreciate the Shepherd who took you there.
“Even
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I
will fear no evil.
For
you are with me.”
A change in voice. The poet shifts from a description of the Shepherd to speaking directly to him. The narrative becomes a conversation.
What can be more terrifying than death? We block out the thought, until the sound of a beating heart in the middle of the night reminds of a mortality we choose to ignore, and then like a shadow, in the valley, we ponder the question – “for whom the bell tolls.” When will it toll for me? Will arterial clog mark the end at some unexpected moment… or will I grow old enough to become so tired, so weary…
Even there, even then, I will fear no evil. For you, Good Shepherd, are there. With me.
“Your rod
and your staff, they comfort me.”
The Shepherd prods. Nudging his sheep forward down the right path. Keeping them in the safety of the flock. His hook pulls the wanderer back. He is the conscience that enables us to say no. His is the voice that makes us uneasy in the company of those who pull us away from where we belong. He draws us back. Home.
The Shepherd is vigilant. His work is to protect. To comfort.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
Some say success is the ultimate revenge.
My enemies are His. His enemies are mine. They are out there. They are real. My Shepherd prepares a banquet table – filled with abundance. Choices. Tasty, rich, wonderful entrees. Healthy. Nourishing. Even in the presence of those who would wish me harm. They watch as I dine with my Shepherd.
The fiery darts have no effect as I take my place at the banquet table.
“You anoint my head with oil.”
The oil brings healing. It sooths. It relaxes me. It is the sign of royalty. I have an identity. I have a name.
“My cup overflows.”
The blessing wells up from somewhere deep inside, and cannot be contained. Because it is alive in me, it will flow on outside of me on all the others who depend on me… my wife, my children, my colleagues, my friends, my world.
“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all
the days of my life
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.”
When I finish the first, I recite David’s poem again. I ponder the rich lines. A second time. A third time. And maybe even a fourth.
And then something wonderful happens.
I slip back into a blissful sleep.
* * * * * * * *
I cherish the memory of my good friend Rabbi Mordecai. I learned from him. But I disagree with him entirely on the “sheep” thing.
Yes. We should be strong. Self-sufficient. Intelligent. Independent. Courageous. And we can be.
But we are also like sheep. Sheep in need of a Shepherd. All of us.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
They say you are strong. You are effective. You are visionary. You are talented. You get things done.
And you are all those things.
But sometimes, in the still of the night, the darts fly.
You’ve got a Shepherd. You’ve got a Friend.
Find the green pastures. The still waters. The banquet table.
They are there. For you.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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