James Rebanks wrote a book called A Shepherd’s Life (2015), a book by a modern day shepherd on belonging to a community (the Lake District) and a vocation (shepherding) that comes with values and commitments that are handed down rather than chosen. Imagine if Wendell Berry moved to the United Kingdom and became a shepherd. Except the whole point is that Rebanks didn’t move anywhere.
It’s funny that I loved and resonated so much with this book. Rebanks doesn’t imagine working and living (or traveling, even) beyond the place he grew up and I, of course do not work and live in the place where I grew up (neither do my parents for that matter), surrounded by people who are originally from various different cities and countries. He lives in a shepherding community that hasn’t changed in centuries and I live in Manhattan where things change every 20 minutes. I wondered if I was reading and enjoying it because I was subconsciously longing for something similar, that I was tiring of our transient place of work and longing for a more steadier pace.
But I began to realize that I actually resonated with his narrative because he was describing a kind of inheritance and sense of belonging that was a given rather than earned. He was writing about a shepherds life and community but he was reminding me of how Christ offers us a sense of belonging. Rebanks isn’t a Christian, but he beautifully described what I think belonging to Christ feels like even if my calling in this world is in a place where I often have to say goodbye to people I love. There’s a deeper permanence that stabilizes me in Christ that actually fills my sense of exile in the world with meaning and significance. In a place that is in a hurry to come and go, we can be a witness to a deeper fullness.
I love this paragraph:
Almost everyone I am related to and care about lives within sight of that fell. When we call it our landscape, we mean it as a physical and intellectual reality. There is nothing chosen about it. This landscape is our home and we rarely stray long from it, or endure anywhere else for long before returning. This may seem like a lack of imagination or adventure, but I don’t care. I love this place; for me it is the beginning and the end of everything, and everywhere else feels like nowhere.
“And everywhere else feels like nowhere.”
To take this reflection one step further—Rebanks lives in a place that we would call permanent and I live in a place that we would call transient. But frankly, transience is pretty baked in across the board. Soon, Rebanks will lose the people he loves, the Lake District will be overrun with tourism, and he will have to say goodbye to things that he deeply belongs to. This process just happens a bit faster for me. The sense of belonging and permanence that we ache for is transcendent to both our contexts. In the end, we are both in transient places.
I do long for permanence despite my love and calling to a transient city. I do ache when we say goodbye to people we cherish and neighborhoods change from what we knew them to be. But our belonging to Christ allows for an inner steadiness as we wait for permanence. Waiting is a discipline I have to be intentional about in a way that maybe Rebanks can just assume. Nevertheless, permanence will come.
This is a great post, and I too came across this book after hearing it recommended by a few folks - it's certainly well done.
I do want to note that in my reading of the book, Rebanks, while he says his family doesn't go on holidays (vacations), does in fact travel. He has a second job as a contract advisor with UNESCO, traveling to parts of the world that have gone heavy on tourism and trying to find a way for traditional ways of life to be preserved. Though he never says as much, I am guessing this is in part based on his life experience. As you allude to, much of the Lake District is in preservation (thanks in part to the estate of Beatrix Potter) and draws a lot of tourists, yet is also home to dozens of working sheep herders. Think of his reference to the sense of loss he detected in an Asian woman who could no longer tend flocks of ducks because the manure would get on tourists' shoes. "My shoes should be mucky."
All that to say, that is still relevant to the question of the church and the Christian today - which is, how can one be faithful to what one has been given, stewarding it well, and yet engaging faithfully with a culture? How too does the church hold on to its core articles of faith, yet witnessing in response to the specific needs and sins of the local community? I wouldn't be the first to point out the Bible starts in a garden and ends in a city, meaning there is a dynamic, technologic arc of history. Rebanks' musings on the long duration of it taking generations to know if breeding decisions pay off rhyme in a way with the Christian need to take a generational view of the redemptive arc of Scripture - the sometimes long in coming between sowing and reaping.