Sheepish Confession

The priest who contributed meditations to this month's issue of Forward Day by Day responds to John 10.10-11, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd...." She confesses that she knows no sheep and has always accepted what she'd heard, that they are stupid animals. But, no:

Sheep have strong opinions, complex emotional lives, astonishingly good memories, and the ability to run at speeds of more than twenty miles per hour!

That changes the Good Shepherd metaphor:

[Jesus] is not describing us as helpless or expecting us to follow him without question. Instead, he is promising to lay down his life for us exactly as we are: by turns headstrong, doubtful, fearful, and joyful, sometimes eager to follow and sometimes reluctant.

She concludes that "if we can find it within ourselves to follow him, he will lead us into abundant life."

In this context, the word "abundant" suddenly revealed its DNA to me. The prefix a- means no and bund is related to our English boundary, itself related to a binding as, being bound in chains. I've always pictured "abundance" as a pile of stuff, but it really suggests freedom, fearless exploration, going "out of bounds" in a good way.

I'm glad that I checked into Sheep 101 info, a web site run by Susan Schoenian of the University of Maryland for the benefit of 4H and other youth programs. She includes great examples of smart sheep. My favorite one is the flock that figured out that they could roll across the cow-catcher bridge on their backs to reach the neighbors' garden.

But how did sheep get their undeserved reputation? That comes from their being followers, Shoenian says. But when there's a predator, safety for the individual lies in being close as possible to your neighbors. Smart ewe: Who knew?