Here, Peter Orchard provides a short glimpse into his slow descent into shambling derelict sabbatical shepherd, and discovers something profound in the process.
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This Sabbatical year has been good for me in many ways, though ‘image management’ would perhaps be the least of them; the scrutiny of the congregational eye compels one to maintain certain ‘standards’ – but from the back pews I’ve felt no such compulsion.
So to be honest I’d hardly noticed to what pass I’d come; the immediate results of letting nature take over in the grooming department were of course obvious every morning, but I’d just plain forgotten to think of how others would be seeing me.
The realisation that I had traded in the image of ‘hip but respectable young preacher’ for ‘shambling derelict’ came one day on a rare trip to town for irrigation supplies. It wasn’t until I’d left the store in a state of bewildered amusement that I realised that having first been treated with suspicion, I was then contemptuously ignored and finally outright insulted simply on the basis of how I looked. It occurs to me only now as I write this that they must have picked me as just another Northland dope-growing castaway.
On the way home, far from being indignant, I was surprised by a sense of satisfaction. It’s one thing to pity the marginalised, to reach down to help them from a position of privilege, but quite another to show a solidarity that’s willing to bear reproach along with them, to identify with them. It occurred to me that while the former was charity, the latter was a more particular type of Christlikeness, and I mused over the idea of not just giving away a change of clothes, but in trading clothes with the next rough sleeper I happened to meet.
As I pondered the idea, trying to get a fix on just what it was that the holy spirit was impressing upon my soul, I realised that beyond an interesting experiment in liberation theology, I had perhaps just stumbled upon a way to finally get the respect I deserved.
Stoop, and keep on stooping ‘till your feet touch the ground.
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Peter Orchard is shepherd of a small flock hidden in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands and blogs at http://www.besideourselves.com.
