Communication as a form of shepherding

We've all heard the story of the shepherd who leaves his flock and goes searching for that one lost sheep. And it's easy to imagine when your mental image of a sheep looks something like this lamb. The innocence and trust on the lamb's face are hard to resist, and arouse an unconscious urge to protect and defend.

But not all sheep are this adorable: like cats and people (I think dogs remain puppies for life; it's what's so irritating and endearing about them) sheep change as they age. They get more stubborn, more suspicious, and often less adorable, although, presumably, the shepherd must appreciate them anyway, as they are his chosen flock and livelihood.

My husband called and woke me this morning with a suggestion that we start a community blog. The purpose of the blog would be primarily to share information about a proposed sewer sytem, because he sits on the sewer committee and frequently needs to disseminate information. Since I have been producing community calendars for the last 5 years he thought we could also use the site to post recent photos. It all sounds very reasonable.

The idea came to him because he ran into a couple of part-time residents on the ferry; they were heading for the airport to fly back to Florida, but had been on hand for a recent sewer information meeting at our house. This particular couple have been embroiled in a neighborly dispute for the last year or so, and I had been pleased to see them at the meeting because, in some ways and for a variety of reasons they are often our community's lost sheep (we have several lost sheep; trust me!) (and note that I don't say black sheep).

So then, when my Thomas reading for today was the lost sheep passage, it occurred to me that our society loses sheep all the time, and that communication often serves as a way to bring them back into the fold. I am thinking specifically of teenagers, and remembering a brochure about drug and alcohol use that the school sent home when our daughters entered middle school.

What I remember about the brochure is that it specifically said that studies had shown the single most important indicator for kids who were likely to go off the deep end in these areas was parental communication. If, it said, we could stay in touch with our kids, listen when they spoke, eat with them regularly, be clear about our expectations and equally clear about our support, our children would be significantly less likely to get in over their heads with illegal substances.

It's easy to love our kids when they are little, just like it's easy to love this little lamb. But it can get harder when they get older, more distinct from us, less innocent, sometimes a bit spotty-looking, and often very opinionated. It's particularly difficult when one of their opinions is that their parents are clueless bozos!

But we did take on the job of parenting (however little we may have understood what that entailed) and so we do our best to continue through the tricky phases. We hear on the grapevine that it does get better over time, and that at some points we'll all be civil to one another again, if not bosom buddies. Certainly that has proven true with our own kids, though I'm sure there will still be challenges to face.

I'm thinking that when we choose to live in a community, especially a small one, where the houses are pretty close together and many resources are shared, it can be the same kind of commitment, with the same kinds of challenges and the same sort of ebb and flow over time. The trick is, we're all grownups here, with lots of demands on our time, and we can't use the parental role to dictate appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.

But we can use communications to explain where we come from, to air hopes, concerns and expectations, to share pleasure and hear grievances -- all hopefully from an equal plane, without judgment or condemnation. It would, I think, be sort of like shepherding one another -- or maybe a bit like herding cats! But certainly worth a try.