(Mass under the pines at Huntington Lake)
Père Boyardee will be blessing our children’s school backpacks this morning at mass in what he calls La Bénédiction des cartables. I intend to throw my purse up on the altar, too; I’m sure Père will oblige.
Last Sunday he gave a rousing sermon in which he revealed, in the manner of Aesop, the veritable role of the padre. “Brother and Sisters,” he began, “the shepherd cannot be everywhere at once, and as you know, there will always be stray sheep…” Here he paused, throwing a recriminatory eye over the parishioners. “So what happens to the lost, defenceless sheep who sets off looking for greener pastures?”
While we parishioners pondered the question, Père began earnestly bleating from his pedagogical pulpit; indeed, his baaas brought his pastoral scene to life so vividly they transported us to the meadow where night began dropping its curtains around a lone, bleating and suddenly terrified mouton.
“Brothers and sisters, who loves nothing more than to gobble down – baaa, baaa – the run-away sheep?” My son raised his hand in the front pew. “People…uh no, I meant, the wolf!” “Yes, the wolf!” confirmed Père, though my son’s first response was perfectly correct; wolves can’t possibly enjoy lamb; they have no idea how to cook it.
Père continued:
“But answer this question, brothers and sisters: Who scurries out after the lost sheep, who rescues and protects it from the wolf? Who is the shepherd’s hand servant?” Though many had the answer, none divulged.
“That’s right,” Père mind-read his flock, “the sheepdog! And if Jesus is our shepherd, and you are His flock, then who, brothers and sisters, is the sheepdog?”
“C’est vous, mon Père,” a woman announced flatly from the third pew.
“Mais oui! C’est moi, c’est moi le chien berger! I am Jesus’ sheep dog, the one who leads you back to Him when you’ve gone astray…”
Friends, I will leave Père here, before he starts seriously barking us all into the confessional, and say a word or two about pastoral canines.
I am no stranger to sheepdogs, both real and metaphorical; for many years my family cohabited with Chappo, a black, short-haired collie from my grandfather’s sheep camp. Chappo was unfit to be trained, charmless, quasi satanic and a danger to any man subject to plumber’s crack. One day, having escaped out the gate, he returned with a Foster Farms chicken between his chops, still in its cellophane packaging. Manifestly he had looted a neighbourhood matron carrying her groceries into the house and I tremble still at my imaginings of that encounter. On another occasion, Chappo plunged at the crack of a beefy Ponderosa telephone company employee, driving a John Deere tractor up to our cabin. I remember the amount of crack-exposure being quite impressive and feeling a sinking worry: where’s Chappo?! Before we could restrain the beast, he lunged at the poor fellow, plunging his canines into the exposed folds of flesh rising, mountainous from the canyon which decency prefers to conceal beneath proper fitting pants. Chappo had his target in his jaws and no intention to let go.
This was one of several instances whereby our sheepdog nearly led us straight to the court of law. Fortunately, divine intervention must have interceded on our behalf, and like the papal wand sparing straying, pedophile priests the discomforts of the world’s tribunals, made the necessary arrangements.
Miracles happen every day, my friends. Look! Virgin Mary drops made from holy Lourdes water, brought to me by friends Brent and Cécile who made a pilgrimage there this summer.
And now, before tossing our purses to the priests (wallet and check book not included), I suggest we get aprons on and stir up some purple dust. Shall we?
