The Black Sheep Who Became a Goat

 It has been a while since I posted to this blog but found this draft in my documents which needed wider audience!  This draft was originally written over 15 years ago.

(Authors note: This is an attempt to explain the my present journey to refute a view that I am going through a mid-life crisis and am trying to "find myself'. It arose out of a comment made by close friend that, in his opinion, I was a 'lost sheep' and was in need of guidance back to the flock by our Pastor, who, according to the parable, would leave the flock unprotected to save one errant sheep.)

I have always been close to the animal world, having been born and brought up in Kenya where the wildlife and native population gave me ample opportunity to appreciate our origins on this earth. However, I was also brought up in the Christian faith and this indoctrination kept me superficially content with the belief that I was living my life well. However, it also kept me from deeply investigating my rational beliefs into the meaning of my life on earth.

The events of September 11, 2001 brought about a change in focus for me as it must have done for a majority of those who were exposed to it. I realized that my life on earth was finite and that I had really no control on just how and when it would end but that I had every control on the quality of each and every day I lived. Being a busy professional, I had let my personal and physical existence slide. I realized that I was fighting a losing battle with weight and hardly enjoyed my family. I needed help and found it in a weight loss support group for men. This positive experience encouraged me to join another Catholic men's group that I had been resisting the call to serve with. The height of my involvement with them coincided with the Papal visit to Toronto and the concurrent international World Youth Day celebrations, a distinctly Catholic phenomenon.

However, after a deeply 'religious' experience of being involved intimately with the Church, I have come to suspect, on my own, that the God of the bible is a fabrication of man's imagination, predating Jesus by several thousand years and reincarnated every several hundred years by one or another 'prophet'. It originated with the awe and fear of common geophysical phenomena, attributing them to supernatural forces and using this ignorance to create rituals to appease or placate the Gods that were suspected of causing them. This evolved into a more complex theology that encouraged a belief in an afterlife which has been espoused by the monotheistic religions and delivered to their adherents. This concept was hijacked by fundamentalists and others who used it to their own ends, eventually exposing its power on that fateful Tuesday morning.

On further studying the evolution of religion, I realized that my life could be much more satisfying without the confusing concepts of afterlife and all that it promised or threatened for my soul. In fact, the concept of a soul as distinct from the human personality was pitted against my biological bias towards the care, understanding and treatment of animals. The bulging fatty neural tissue in our skulls called a brain was the seat of the thinking mind that in turn was the creator of our emotions and personality that was the only distinction between us and lower species. And this capacity was wholly dependent on the fact that we evolved larger brains and consequently abstract thought processes only in the last several thousand years, a virtual instant in the overall context of the evolution of life on earth. This recognition was a personal one and on investigating this blasphemous concept, I realized that I am now an atheist with a secular humanist philosophy. This personal change was fostered by a realization that essential spirituality is not the exclusive domain of organized religion. Unfortunately, the conduct of the church leaders in our community did nothing to change that perception but helped strengthen it.

I do not consider myself a 'lost sheep'. I have not wandered away from the flock through a breach in the corral in search of greener pastures. There was no overcrowding or overgrazing of the pasture, the grass was greener inside the corral due to the constant refertilization from the rest of the flock, each one thriving on the manure dished out by the rest. The shepherd was attentive and spent a lot of energy on the lambs, nurturing them to be obedient and co-operative when shearing time came along, so that he could exploit their wonderful soft coats. And when hungry, he slaughtered the fattest one without so much as a plaintive cry from its mother, who nursed and reared it so diligently and offered it up for sacrifice. Neither was there any protest from the rams in the flock, who had usually formed a protective circle when the threat of wolves was raised. And this was aided by the rest of the villagers who, whenever a little boy thought he might have some fun by crying "Wolf", got them all running out to protect the flock that provided them with milk, meat and wool.

I was tired of providing wool to the shepherd, who asked for more every time he had the opportunity as he was knitting a fabulous coat of many colours by which he would be recognized in the community. He also came to expect more of his rams in protection of the flock by forming an honour guard at every function. They would go out to collect wool from other sheep outside the corral that were addicted to gamboling. They also supported the villagers with a limitless supply of wool and meat by impregnating the fertile dams as soon as they had weaned their lambs, for birth control was forbidden. The nursing dams were milked dry by the villagers who cajoled them to produce more milk by weaning off the lambs early and through Sunday morning motivational sessions, promising them rewards in an irrational place called heaven for their contributions.

But what irked me most was that the shepherd kept moving the flock in the direction that most suited his needs and the needs of his village clergy, who took their directions, in turn, from the Mayor of the village, who was infallible in matters of the village. The shepherds moved the sheep to lush pastures so that they would always be satisfied to keep their heads close to the ground, grazing. For then they would not be inclined to look up and around to see the wonderful view of the mountains and valleys and to think of what life could be outside the corral. This allowed the shepherd to herd the flock as one organism, at his whim or design, turning them left or right as a group without allowing them to express their voting rights individually. And this influenced the politics of the meadows. The sheep were expected to support whichever candidate whose views were complimentary to the village and not necessarily in the best interests of the flock. They were not allowed to think for themselves and discuss social issues that affected the flock.

Those who bleated out of turn or challenged the all powerful authority of the shepherd were tarred with pitch, making them the black sheep of the flock. Rams were not allowed to play together, butting heads or exchanging vows. Because of the breeding practices, there were many defective lambs born due to inbreeding, some with two-heads, others with predictable deficiencies that would never survive for long or would be such a burden on the resources of the flock so as to threaten their health-care system. But eating ergot infected wheat was forbidden as a natural abortifacient. So also was there no compassion for ailing rams and dams who had passed their productive years. The mayor issued an encyclical that forbade the removal of life support to comatose sheep. While elsewhere, the slaughter of young healthy sheep in the name of the Lord in far away, sandy, oil-laden lands was encouraged as a way to overcome the wolves and turn the whole world into a pasture for sheep.

I wanted so much to be a productive member of my flock and aspired to join the rams council. I enjoyed the company of other rams and took over running the lambs circle which pleased the shepherd immensely as he was assured another crop of obedient rams. But when I overstepped the invisible electric fence that protected the shepherd and his cronies, I was severely shocked by stern reprimands and veiled threats. All lamb circle projects and ram council activities that I was involved with were mysteriously undermined or overruled. The rams council was powerless to help me in my predicament with the shepherd, although he depended on them for smooth operation of the flock.

I had begun to get tired of having the wool being pulled over my eyes. As one of the black sheep of the flock, I needed to reduce my involvement with the council of rams. I started to rebel and realised that as long as I believed in the ridiculous stories the shepherd told the flock about how wonderful it was to be slaughtered for the Mayor, I would be under the control of the village and its distorted concept of God. I must have eaten some sacred mushrooms in the meadow for I started growing horns and even though my tail did not get hooked, I could sense a self-transformation into a goat. One that has decided to jump over the corral fence much to the dismay of the rest of the flock. The shepherd was oblivious to this development or chose to ignore it as he had so many other duties to take care of with his flock. He had big plans on enlarging the corral and redecorating the milking shed. He had recently been given a new hat by the mayor for his excellent shepherding skills. He has been so busy showing off his new hat that he has chosen to ignore the goat. Although other rams have tried to rationalise this new ornery image with the goat, they remain sheep in every sense of the word. They patiently await their salvation when the butcher comes, with visions of unlimited grazing, free of wolves, in an unfathomable utopia if they do the shepherds' bidding.

Until then, they support the villagers and the shepherd with the riches of the flock without questioning the moral background of the mayor's source of revelation, a 2000 year old piece of fiction called the New Testament that was based partly on an even older piece of fiction called the Old Testament.

However, what the sheep failed to understand is that this faded parchment, actually dried sheepskin from one of their ancestors, was recreated from other stories that were popular in even older flocks in Egypt. These stories were written down by four collaborators, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who were part of a small flock assembled by an influential misfit shepherd who had a very vivid imagination. He had perfected the art of mass hypnosis which must have been quite easy to perform on sheep who were already under the influence of other influences, most notably an older bearded shepherd, named Moses, who went up a mountain and came down with two tablets, (aspirin and viagra?), which held all the laws for the world. He concocted this tall tale that they were given to him by God and that all the ailments of the sheep could be alleviated by them.

I would like to climb that mountain now that I am free of the sheep-mentality and explore life outside the confines of the corral. I miss the other sheep in the flock, and sometimes return to share my stories of life outside the corral. My own lambs and their mother look at me strangely, now that I have a billy-goat beard, my curley woollen fleece is straightening out into stringy, straight hair and my soft, padded hooves that were used to the soft grass of the meadows are being worn into tight, black ones to support my lithe, muscular body when prancing from precipice to precipice. I have met a colony of wild mountain goats who, via the internet, let me know that I can have my head in the clouds and still see the wondrous view of Darwinian selection unfolding in the rolling hills and vales of the earth. I am loving this new freedom, eating berries off the forbidden tree of knowledge and revelling in the knowledge that this is the mountain path to a more fulfilling life than the humdrum security of the flock at the mercy of the shepherd and his Mayor.

(to be continued?)