Shepherds

 We moved house numerous times when I was a child. My mother had a specific goal in mind. A farmer's daughter, born in 1927, raised in a Yorkshire village, she came of a family that was traditional in its thinking — shrewd, capable, intelligent, but not sophisticated. Her father was what they call a self-made man; born in poverty and determined to get out of it, which he did, with astounding success. Born poor, he died rich. The ladder he climbed was held steady by his wife, my grandmother, the daughter of educated and relatively intellectual people full of political and spiritual ideas — and equally as capable of making something out of nothing and building a life from small beginnings.

Because of the traditional thinking aspect of things, my mother — one of 3 sisters, 2 being married and one unmarried, and also with an older brother — inherited some of this wealth, but a relatively small portion, because my grandfather saw men as the protectors of women, so he left most of what he had to his son, and smaller portions to his married daughters than his unmarried daughter. I could keep you here all day on how that turned out, but maybe better not. Let us just say that the reality of people's lives does not always correspond with our imagined version.

Even so, my mother did inherit some money from her various relatives at various times. She always and only put it towards one thing — no holidays, no expensive celebrations, no treats — property investment.

In consequence, and as her adult life was synchronous with the property boom, she moved our family up the property ladder until we lived in a 13th century cottage with five acres, including a river running through the garden and a protective slope of woodland encircling it. And there, as well as hens, we kept sheep.

My mother had a byre constructed in the field below the wood and across the river, so her sheep would have somewhere to shelter at night and in bad weather. Every night as dusk fell, she would go out after she'd watered the flowers and the vegetables and the greenhouse, across the bridge that we'd built over the river (just a plank when we arrived!) and call to her sheep, "Are you all right, boys?" (They weren't all male, but never mind that). And the sheep would all call back to her.

In the morning, as soon as she was up and dressed, she'd go out to check on the sheep. In the summer, especially when they were in the orchard — because you have to move them from place to place and let the ground rest, so they don't get worms and the grass replenishes — she looked them over carefully for blow-fly, checked how they were walking to make sure none of them had foot-rot. She raised them as orphan lambs under an infra-red lamp in our barn, and if any were especially frail she bedded them down in the kitchen beside the Rayburn stove to keep warm.

They knew her voice, and they followed her when she called them (rattling a bucket of sheep nuts helped as well). She'd bottle-fed them from babyhood, and they trusted her. She was their shepherd.

I am thinking back to those times, because there has never been a time in my life when I wanted a pastor more. Present-day clergy do not know how to pastor the flock. 

When I was a girl growing up, the rector would come once a year to our home for a pastoral visit. But every day he was at the church to say Matins and Evensong, so I could go and join in, just be there alongside, become a friend. It was how he made himself pastorally available.

In the days when I was a church pastor — a Methodist minister — I followed what all my colleagues and predecessors did: the morning for desk work (sermons, correspondence, preparation for meetings etc), the afternoons for visiting, and the evenings for meetings.

I expected to visit everyone in my congregation routinely at least twice a year. Then, if they were sick or in trouble or in hospital, I always went to see them. If they were dying, I was there with them (unless it was sudden and unexpected). I listened to them, knew them, knew their homes and heard their stories. I went to their home groups on a regular basis. And when I preached in church it was as a pastor — understanding that sheep are gathered by the voice of a shepherd they know trust. You cannot build trust without spending time with people, walking alongside them not only as a crowd but as individuals.

This was the norm: not all the ministers did that, but many did; and if you were in trouble they would help you. But it seems to have faded out and disappeared. By about twenty years ago, it had gone. I saw the last remnants of it when my husband Bernard was dying, and there were still true shepherds among the clergy who cared for us and came to find us, and prayed with us.

In my present marriage, my husband has been very ill more than once. Each time, no one came. I was emailed by our then pastor who said he hoped Tony would soon be better. Yes, he had pneumonia too badly for it to be safe to admit him to hospital; I hoped so too! And Tony wasn't an occasional attender, he was a church warden.

In the churches I've tried recently, there was one pastor who actually drove me out, and a couple who did me the courtesy of letting me exist, it being of no concern to them if I was in their church or not. And you know what? It's of no concern to me, either. 

When I was a student at York university in the 1970s, Father Fabian Cowper, an Ampleforth monk, was the Catholic chaplain. Fabian lived in the Catholic chaplaincy alongside a motley crew of Catholic students, and we loved him. He was there. You could talk to him. He was quiet and unobtrusive, but so full of loving-kindness. He took for his study the cupboard under the stairs on the middle floor of the house, so everyone who came and went inevitably passed him as he sat there working at his desk in that little cubbyhole. So it was easy to just pause and say hi. This was how he kept an eye on everyone. He didn't interfere, but he made himself accessible. The theology group he ran at More House (the chaplaincy) was one of the most inspiring and formative things I've ever known. Fabian was a shepherd. He knew how to care for the flock.

It wasn't just Fabian, either. David Watson was the incumbent at St Michael-le-Belfrey in York when we lived there. I never met him, but my (first) husband did. He had some questions he wanted to ask him about the faith, so David invited him round to talk it through. You ever met a present-day clergyman who does that?

Most of my life has been spent solving problems and making the money stretch and looking after people and creating opportunities for people to explore and discover the Gospel.

I have reached a place where I am tired and discouraged and lonely, and most of my human contact is online. I am conserving and watering and feeding the little plant of hope in my soul, but it's looking very sickly. I never needed a pastor more than I do now. But I think they are extinct. All we have now is clergymen. There's a difference.