The Gods and the Sheep Mock Me

Reader Contribution by Brian Miller
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Childhood readings of my grandmother’s Bullfinch’s Mythology have colored my sense of how the world is ordered more so than childhood attendance at my family’s church. I tend to expect divine intervention, if there is any, to be shaped by petty, meddlesome beings acting for their own benefit.

Last week, I headed outdoors to feed before driving into town for a work-related visit. The chickens were fed, pigs fed, ducks fed, chicks fed and all watered without drama. Time for the sheep: The sheep are kept up in the barn for protection from predators at night. Each morning the 10-by-12-foot barn door is slid open to allow them into an outer corral with access to one of three small pastures. Cindy recently built a service door into the larger sliding door to make the job easier.

Opening the smaller door, I was trampled as usual by the flood of our flock surging around me to get outside and enjoy the spring weather.

Walking back to the house to get dressed I paused for a while to herd one of the lambs back into the pasture. This lamb, the smallest of the newborns, searches for freedom each day by crawling under gates. It has spent most of its short life escaping and then wandering along the fence line bleating to its mom for instructions on how to get back in with the flock. A short ten minutes of chasing it back and forth and I was back in the house.

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