[Geoff Wright]

A SHEPHERD

I really shouldn’t be talking to you. This job, being a shepherd, is really crucial to me. I’m not originally from around these parts, and people in Bethlehem are suspicious of me, being a stranger and all. We’re not really popular in town anyway, smelling of sheep and dirt as you do after a few weeks out here, so I only go there when I have to.

You seem like reasonable sorts, so I’ll tell you about what I know.

The job is the same anywhere I suppose. Find grazing and water during the day, secure and count them at night, be alert to predators, four legged and two legged, find the one’s that wander off, bring them back and account for them to the owner.

I spend almost all my time up here on the hillside, higher up in the summer where the grazing is good, and lower down, nearer the town in the colder months.

It gets very busy at lambing time. You don’t want to lose any because they mean money to the owner who sells them for food, skin, wool and for sacrifices in the temple. They take the female sheep’s milk, once the lambs are big enough for slaughter, make cheese from it and sell that as well.

The major, regular, dangers around here are wolves and rustlers, but recently I’ve had the feeling that I’m being watched. Nothing definate, you understand, just fleeting glimpses of people who aren’t normally up here. I regularly find places where they’ve camped overnight over the last week or so. Why are they up here if not to watch us?

I’ve been shepherding all my life really. But I’ve only been here for, oh it must be a couple of years or so. Before that I was way over on the other side of Jerusalem, a long way away, I think. I was brought here because all their shepherds were arrested and then disappeared and I really don’t want that to happen to me, so I have to be careful and keep myself to myself. I didn’t really want to come here, but I had to so that my families debts can be repaid back home.

It seems that one night, before I got here, the previous shepherds apparently all got tanked up on wine, or those special mushrooms, you know the ones that you lick, and smoked some sort of herbs, not that I know anything about that sort of stuff.

Whatever they had, they all began hallucinating about angels and bright lights in the sky. They left their flocks and went into town raving to anyone who was around about a baby in a stable. The town was packed solid with people who had travelled from all over to get registered. The kings troops arrested them, and anyone else they could find, apparently, and they were never seen again. Which is when I was brought here.

No wine, or anything else, is allowed on the hills any more by order of the king, and that’s enforced by his troops who pay us visits every now and again to check what we’re doing. Naturally, they never find anything. Although they’re a bit busy down in the town at the moment to have time to bother with us up here.

Someone took some lambs into town yesterday to sell them but came back with all of them.

Apparently the whole town is restricted. No-one is going in and no-one is coming out. He was told by a soldier that they were searching every house looking for a group of foreigners and to identify all the babies and young children. He said that these foreigners had come to town to start an uprising against the king and were saying that a new baby or young child, in the town, is the real king.

The king in Jerusalem is quite angry about this, understandably from his point of view, I suppose.

I’ve heard quite a bit about this king, Herod, not a nice person to know at all, it seems he is prone to fits of violence and has had killed all sorts of people who’ve annoyed him. He doesn’t like foreigners in particular. So I keep my head down as much as I can.

It’s strange, because I saw a large group coming down the road from Jerusalem a week or so ago. They looked like a small village on the move.

There were loaded pack animals, mostly mules, lots of people on foot, they had their own flocks and shepherds as well.

They seem to be led by a few people who were riding at the front, but I couldn’t tell you who they were. They weren’t local, that’s for sure, you could tell by the way they were dressed. Their hats and cloaks were nothing like I’ve ever seen around here. Their tent making bundles were quite big and there were lots of them, that’s why I think that they were a village or community on the road.

They didn’t appear to have any troops with them at all, just a few people who looked as though they could take care of themselves, but absolutely no military presence.

They had to be wealthy because of the number of people in the caravan, the herd of spare horses and mules, lots of sheep and goats and lots of full skins swinging from the pack bundles, whether that was water or wine, I couldn’t say.

They went along the valley below where my sheep were grazing towards the town of  Bethlehem. I saw some unusual lights that night, down in the valley as I put the sheep into the fold, and so I assumed that they had pitched camp near the town.

They must have been ready to rest because they all looked weary, weary from travel I suppose. With the amount of stuff that they had it looked as thought they had been on the road for many months and that they were ready for many more months of travel ahead of them.

I didn’t see them come back from town, which is strange, so they couldn’t have found anything worth staying for, and probably continued on their journey on another road.

I doubt that they were the people that the troops are looking for because you would hardly come a great distance to start an uprising without your own army, would you?

Then, the day before yesterday, in the afternoon the day before the unsold lambs were brought back, I saw a group of locals leaving the town on the Jerusalem road, towards where this other group had come from.  They looked pretty important, dressed in their finery and hurrying along with a group of troops around them, for protection I suppose.

Some of them came back that night, with troops around them again. They didn’t sound happy at all. There was agreat deal of shouting from the troops, who were really causing them to rush, and a lot of loud grumbling from the towns people, who were looking quite dischevelled compared to when they went out.

Still, I’ll continue to keep my head down while all this is going on. I can’t risk going near the town while they are lookng for someone to arrest who is a foreigner. I don’t want to disappear, now do I?

Anyway, you had best be moving on, I think I can see a patrol heading up from the valley, and I don’t want to get caught talking to anyone, even nice people like you.

Go quickly, and don’t get caught.

How does this account add or detract from the story that you know?

What concerns, if any does it raise for you about certain people and places today?

 

Perhaps you will be able to take something from this session into the rest of your day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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