Originally posted on 4th January 2010, corrupted since, now restored
Woke up this morning to recall that it’s my first ordinary day for weeks. I’ve emerged from a season of interruptedness, in which celebration took the form of reuniting with family; not all at once in a single gathering but serially; noting my kinship and resemblance with this one or that; seeing the big or small things which unite us; the differences which separate us.
Taking the outside world as a whole, I find it easier to see it as alien than populated with my kin. To feel brother to all takes a certain consciousness and effort, which I hope to return to more readily now that the ordinary days are back. Not that the ordinary days are any less remarkable—no, they are even more remarkable, or so it seems at 4am this morning.
I head this piece “Life’s predicament” on purpose, carefully avoiding the division inherent in using the adjective “human”. I recall a teacher at school defining an adjective as a word which limits the universality of a noun. If I spoke of the human predicament, it would be tantamount to denying that a similar predicament exists for sheep.
Yesterday I walked with Karleen and my sister Mary to the little parish of Swyncombe, hidden in a fold of the Chiltern Hills, consisting of a manor house with a tiny church alongside, named after St Botolph and dating from before the Norman Conquest of 1066. A little booklet inside traced its history, and we could see from looking around how well it has been loved over the centuries. One rector served as its priest for 56 years. A beautiful carved screen was added as recently as 1914, and the organ is even more modern (1984). It’s the size of a Hammond. The building is too small for an array of organ-pipes.
On our way back we decided to take a different route, circling round the House on the southern side to catch the sun, to let it warm our backs as well as melt the frost on the meadow-grass. I tried to photograph a low-flying red kite, showing off its russet feathers to us in the low sun. But it took time to remove my gloves and I missed it. A sheep stood on tiptoe to lap from a water-tank whose ice was melted at one corner. Hundreds of other sheep were scattered over the meadow slopes, grazing; some making a pilgrimage to or from the tank. Then we saw one with its head stuck in a wire fence, silently struggling. In fact, there was no bleating on the hillside.
We were unsure what to do. There was no other human in sight. The shepherd probably lived miles away, guardian of many flocks, contactable by mobile phone, if only we knew the number. The trapped sheep became agitated at our approach. I said we should keep our distance and not distress it more, letting it extricate its head in relative tranquillity. But then we realised it might have been stuck there for hours, exhausted and dehydrated. So I went nearer, with a plan to ignore its panic and somehow pull the wires away from its neck. At my closer approach, it wriggled violently in a paroxysm of panic, convinced that its death was imminent. After a few seconds it managed to pull its head free. We felt as though we had rescued it, though in truth we did nothing.
From a distance, we watched what happened next. The released creature (“I once was lost, but now I’m found”) went to meet one of its fellows. They greeted one another with fraternal nuzzling, then stayed together a while, the freed one repeatedly nibbling the neck of its companion, as if to communicate its recent adventures, and share the joy of salvation and communion. After a while, it went to greet another, and another, repeating the same intimacies.
Such was the practice of empathy amongst the flock. Of a sudden, we saw the oneness of life; and life’s predicament.
a wayfarer’s notes 
I'm curious about the appearance of the archer on the blog. And beautiful writing. thankyou.
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Thanks for the appreciation, Robert. I appreciate yours too—rather silently of late, but I have marvelled at your awareness and analysis, without daring to intervene with my crude comments.
The archer is that mythical half-man, half horse, the centaur, who is usually portrayed with a bow and arrow.
It started with a Blogger template, “Harbor” by Douglas Bowman—coincidentally! I decided to replace his lighthouse drawing, as part of a gradual evolution to a template of my own. The weathervane on top of a cupola with ladder and scaffolding came from a snap I took of the Guildhall in my home town during refurbishing, so it was serendipity that first led me to adopt the centaur as a personal icon.
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A sheep herd need a shepherd.
Let it be. Amen.
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!
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Beautiful essay Vincent
Your attitude toward the other anminals reminds me of Leizi:
Tian Qi was holding a feast for a thousand guests. Fish and geese were being served at the head table. Tian looked at the fare and sighed as he said,
“Heaven is so indulgent to humans! For our use it generated the five grains and gave birth to the fish and fowl!”
The guests all responded their echoing approval. But a Mr. Bao’s twelve year-old son stepped forward from the group and said,
“Sir, what you say is mistaken; all the kinds of beings of heaven and earth are the same as humans. No species is intrinsically precious or mean. It is simply a matter of size, cunning, or strength that lets one dominate the others, that lets one eat the others.
It is not that one particular being is born designated for another’s use. Humans catch what is suitable to eat, and eat it. But can we take that to mean that heaven created them specifically for man’s benefit?
On the other hand, mosquitoes and gnats bit his skin; tigers and wolves eat his flesh. But we don’t assume that heaven created man for the good of the mosquitoes and gnats or to provide meat for the tigers and wolves.”
Here is the Chinese for the heart of that piece:
類無貴賤. 徒以小大智力而相制,迭相食
No species is intrinsically precious or mean. It is simply a matter of size, cunning, or strength that lets one dominate the others, that lets one eat the others.
Hi keiko amano
I really like this:
'Emperor Wu asked Bodhidarma, “What should be the primary consideration for saint emperors?” Dharma said, “Our world contains no saints.”'
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This was a fascinating account, Vincent. But I am curious about an unmentioned aspect of ovine empathy. While that one sheep was struggling, did any other members of the herd appear (to human eyes) to be concerned/involved? Or was the empathy you observed all post factum?
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Gentleeye, I am curious too, and oddly there is a discussion of Darwin's ideas on the same notion in this post by Prof Larry Anhart, in which Darwin writes, controversially for his time: “If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.”
So what does a flock of sheep, or the victim's mother indeed, think when one of their number gets trapped in a fence? I have observed that when a suckling lamb gets under a fence and can't get back, the mother is as distressed as her offspring. We would expect that.
We also know from social history that in England and doubtless elsewhere, parents tried to avoid getting too sentimental in their love for any one child whilst it was at a young age, for the mortality risk was high, and they could produce a replacement if it died. These days it is different.
Back to what I observed in the Swyncombe meadow. I may have imagined retrospectively that the lack of bleating was due to concern amongst the flock for the one who was trapped. When the lost sheep was restored to its freedom, the flock didn't rejoice in any Biblical manner. Let us remember, it was the shepherd and not the lost sheep who rejoiced: “he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.”
So I think that when a member of the flock gets into these difficulties, the other sheep are perhaps internally distressed (they might see themselves in a similar predicament) but don't do what we might do – try to help, or utter words (bleats) of sympathy. It's not that they are more heartless than dogs or elephants who are known to behave differently; simply that sheep can't mount rescue operations for their adult brethren.
But I do believe that sheep entertain themselves with observing the grand drama of the flock and the humans who pass through. They are intensely curious. And we saw with our own eyes that it was the freed sheep which felt the urgent need to tell its friends or relatives about its ordeal. It must have had scratches or bruises to its neck, and seemed to communicate this by nibbling its friends' necks.
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Raymond, yes! It's not all about us! When Galileo announced his suspicion that the earth goes round the sun and not vice versa, it seemed like a blasphemous slap in the face to the prevailing orthodoxy as expressed in Genesis: “So God created man in his own image … and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Words which aren't worth defending any more.
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Gelukkig Nieuwjaar to you too, V.
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Beautifully observed/told, Vincent. My heart was in my mouth waiting for the sheep's resolution.
They suffer as we do, and rejoice in ways clearly recognizable. When will the larger number of humans realize that we each have lives we value? We each have our moment of eating instead of being eaten, but none is superior. It is simply our moment.
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