Liahona, Gold Pendant How to Raise a Family Benefits of Parent Meaning of Parables |
There is much meat for family discussion here. Because it is quite long, I have divided it into six days, with one table talk question for each day. It could be combined with a scripture search for references to shepherds. Enjoy!
Condensed from The National Wool Grower James K. Wallace Copyright 1950 by The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., (June 1950 issue), condensed from The National Wool Grower, December 1949.  Old Ferando D’Alfonso is a Basque herder employed by one of the big Nevada sheep outfits. He is rated as one of the best sheep rangers in the state, and he should be; for back of him are at least 20 generations of Iberian shepherds.
But D’Alfonso is more than a sheepherder; he is a patriarch of his guild, the traditions and secrets of which have been handed down from generation to generation, just as were those of the Damascus steel temperers and other grade guilds of the pre-medieval age. Despite a 30-year absence from his homeland he is still full of the legends, the mysteries, the religious fervor of his native hills. I sat with him one night under the clear, starry skies, his sheep bedded down beside a pool of sparkling water. As we were preparing to curl up in our blankets, he suddenly began a dissertation in a jargon of Greek and Basque. When he had finished, I asked him what he had said. In reply he began to quote in English the Twenty-third Psalm. There on the desert I learned the shepherd’s literal interpretation of this beautiful poem. “David and his ancestors,” said D’Alfonso, “knew sheep and their ways, and David has translated a sheep’s musing into simple words. The daily repetition of this Psalm fills the sheepherder with reverence for his calling. (1) Our guild takes this poem as a lodestone to guide us. It is our bulwark when the days are hot or stormy; when the nights are dark; when wild animals surround our bands. Many of its lines are the statements of the simple requirements and actual duties of a Holy Land shepherd, whether he lives today or followed the same calling 6000 years ago. Phrase by phrase, it has a well-understood meaning for us.” 1. As daily repetition of this Psalm fills the shepherd with reverence for his calling, how can daily labors and devotions fill us with reverence*? |
