Reader Writes - February 2021

Just past the winter solstice, ground as hard as iron, night sky swept clean and black with a firmament of bright stars, no moon, still still celestial night slowly turning. A wolf spoke far off, then another and another. The dogs’ ears pricked; the flock lay still. He pulled his long sheep skin tighter against the intense cold. He liked this place, its perfect symmetry of volcanic rock (we know it as Hanter). A good place to fold the sheep, where dogs could sense the approach of danger; they had fought off predators many times. Looking up he was amazed by the stars; so many, such a splash of uncountable tiny lights, and larger lights that dipped and rose and sometimes stayed into the dawn. What mysteries, what joy!

I’d like to tell you his name, but I can’t; not even speculatively. A Celtic people with languages and stories and names and lore that hailed once from far away, even beyond the Danube and Europe’s great mountains. Dark voyagers, shepherds, hunters; they had come. When Abraham looked up at those same stars and spoke to God and heard his promptings to get up and travel, our shepherd was already here and spoke to our same God. Why? How? Because “God made man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them”. Putting it another way, as recorded in Ecclesiastes, “He has put eternity in the hearts of man”.

All of us are touched by God’s fire; a homing instinct calls us to our maker and our God. This shepherd looked up and wondered in delight; grief for a lost parent or a dead child gave way to hope. If the sun came up bright in the still dawn, and a lark flew up and sang, he would say thank you for mountain sermons, the Creator’s handiwork. Eternity in his heart, although he had no language for such an idea; but it was there.

Paul in his letter to the Galations lists the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Did even bronze age tribes know such things? Did our very distant ancestors debate in their minds the measure of such virtues against the costs and risks of survival? Of course they did. Look in archaeological collections. The clay pot, the clever tool, the crafted weapon; they are all testament to prehistoric ingenuity. But here too is the fractured and mended femur; a horrible accident, a kicking elk, who knows? Yet there it is, testament to kindness, care, the risk of love in nursing a kinsman unable to hunt or care for his family.

Is it possible that the argument about value is just the same today as it was say 3000 years ago? Strange thought! Our world has pitched itself on monetary measure, inevitably on short term revenues. We need them to pay our rent, to buy new trainers, to put fuel in the car. But that’s not real value. Perhaps even the pandemic has made us see better our shared mutual dependency. Look up and see the stars, the dipping planets, our Radnor hills; and marvel. More than anything, seek kindness and joy, perhaps not through the mended femur but in the mended relationship, the healed brokenness, the circle of human sympathy.

Robert MacCurrach