Finding the Shepherd: A Tale of Two Loves

By Wayne Talbot

Finding the Shepherd is pseudo-biographical, taking the reader to the more exciting countries visited by the author as he recounts a quite fictitious life. Blending his love of high mountains, trekking, and motorcycle touring with his search for a personal understanding of God, whom he perceives as his Shepherd, the author traces a fictional version of life from early boyhood to his autumn years in Israel. Each season is not without incident, and along the way he develops a yearning for female companionship without quite understanding whose love he is seeking: a childhood friend or a later acquaintance.

An underlying thread throughout the story is the conflict between the beliefs of the authors Christian upbringing and his later affinity for the Jewish faithwhich truly identifies the Shepherd?

From a region but dimly described to allow readers to find their own footing, the narrative follows the authors adventures from the craggy mountains of Patagonia to the majestic peaks of the high Himalayas and the quite wonderful people who populate these remote areas of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512723687

Wayne Talbot

The author, Wayne Talbot, was once a Christian, but continually struggled with what it was that he should believe. Not quite sure, he went back to a beginning, questioning whether in truth, the existence of God was believable. He concluded for God, publishing his reasoning in his first book, “If Not God What?”. Raised in the Catholic faith, but finding some doctrines having no basis in the bible, his studies directed him away from Catholicism to non-denomination Protestantism; from there to Evangelical Christianity; from there to Messianic Judaism; and from there to where he is today - a theist believing in the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, but aligned with no identified religion. His quest for an understanding of God has him studying the ancient texts of Scripture, guided by the published works of numerous Old and New Testament scholars – Jewish, Christian, and secular. Focusing on specific issues has allowed him to see through the fog of doctrine, dogma, and theology, and reach conclusions which he has published in numerous studies, this analysis of prophecy fulfillment being his thirteenth. His journey continues, one that he believes he will never finish, for on many issues, he has only managed to uncover untruth. Though a late starter in the literary field, Wayne Talbot has published a novel, Finding the Shepherd, a pseudo-biographical account which alludes to his own theological wanderings against a background of places he has been, but entirely fictional people and events. He has published a refutation of Richard Dawkins’ Greatest Show on Earth, entitled The Dawkins Deficiency, and an entirely original treatise, Information, Knowledge, Evolution, and Self, which contends that the posited mechanisms of evolution are insufficient to account for the cognitive information and knowledge in humans.

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Copyright © 2016 Wayne Talbot.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-2369-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-2370-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-2368-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015920678

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/6/2016

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

Twenty Nine

Thirty

Thirty One

Thirty Two

Thirty Three

Thirty Four

Thirty Five

Thirty Six

Thirty Seven

Thirty Eight

Thirty Nine

Forty

Forty One

Forty Two

Forty Three

Forty Four

Forty Five

Forty Six

Forty Seven

Forty Eight

Forty Nine

Fifty

Fifty One

Fifty Two

Fifty Three

Fifty Four

Fifty Five

Fifty Six

Fifty Seven

Fifty Eight

Fifty Nine

Sixty

Sixty One

Sixty Two

Sixty Three

Sixty Four

Sixty Five

Sixty Six

Sixty Seven

Epilogue

Author’s Note

"I don’t think anybody should write his autobiography until after he’s dead."

~ Samuel Goldwyn, American film producer, 1882-1974 ~

The first question that friends asked of me regarding this novel was: Is it autobiographical? Well it is, and it is not. If it was an authentic biography, I doubt that I would have been inspired to write it, and even more doubtful that anyone would want to read it.

This story is autobiographical in the sense that the central and other characters display the more favourable traits of the people whom I have most admired during my seventy years, or who have played a significant role in my personal development, such as it has been. Thus whilst I can honestly state that all characters in this publication are fictitious, I cannot assert that any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental: on the contrary, the resemblances are deliberate. In truth, I wonder how any writer of fiction, other than science fiction, can make such a claim. If there are persons in the story, then their resemblance to real persons must be deliberate else how could we recognise them as persons? In what way do their characters NOT resemble real persons? Quite confusing really!

I will contend, however, that any attempt to identify my fictitious characters with real persons would be unsafe, to put it in legal terms. You may well know somebody like one of these people, but it is not the same person. However, I wanted to make this correlation with the people I have known to acknowledge their contribution to what has been a most satisfying life, despite the many difficulties that I have, at times, had to work my way through. These events also appear in this narrative, but metaphorically only, the purpose being to illustrate some season of my life. In that sense, the novel is also my story but narrated in such a way that the reader gets but fleeting glimpses of what may have occurred, rather much as I do when looking back upon it, such is the infidelity of memory.

There is one character who appears from time to time, and who has significantly influenced my life, particularly in the latter years. He is real, not fictitious, and he has graciously consented that not only may I identify him, but that I might represent him as I perceive him to be, erroneously or otherwise. If you have had the good fortune to meet him and enjoyed his presence, you can judge for yourselves my portrayal of him. He has read the manuscript and I have heard no objections from him, so I can only assume that if I have misrepresented or offended him, I have not done so egregiously.

Throughout the narrative there are places named and unnamed. For the most part, I have been to all the named locations although the more notable events recorded there never actually occurred, to me at least. The unnamed locations are again metaphorical, but do represent real places as I experienced them. You may find such locations in many countries around the world, and I have been deliberately non-specific to allow your imagination to place yourself in familiar surroundings. I could admit that this abrogates any responsibility that I might have as an author to provide artistic descriptions, but that would be an admission too far.

As I write these words, I am reminded of that quite delightful but poignant song: "To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before"¹. That is not at all what I have in mind, well not specifically, but I wanted to pick up on the general theme. To all the people I have loved before, who in this life have travelled in and out my doors, I am glad you came along, and thus dedicate this novel to you, one and all. Thank you for making my life what it has been for without you, I cannot imagine that I would have much to say beyond the opening chapter.

Wayne Talbot

Kelso NSW Australia

September, 2015

¹Songwriters: Hammond, Albert / David, Hal, lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

Prologue

"Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face

And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market place;

And close behind, the dead man came with a face like a mummy’s mask,

And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwonted task."

~ Robert E. Howard, Dead Man’s Hate, 1930 ~

I looked at the faces around me, fresh young faces displaying at the same time fear and wonderment, anticipation and excitement. Their eyes glowed fiercely reflecting the pot-bellied stove stoked red hot, sending streams of warmth from the front whilst from the back, the darkness spawned icy tentacles of dread. The room was far from ideal, in summer or in winter, but in the spring the louvered glass windows would open to the cooling breezes mixed with the warming sun, bringing a renewing freshness to the minds and bodies of the children.

But this was winter: windy, bleak, and cold, so bone-chillingly cold that this was the time I savoured the most. During these brief hours, I warmed their bodies with the heat of the stove, and chilled their souls with glimpses of horror and of a world gone mad.

One

"The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day"

~ John Milton, Paradise Regained, 1671 ~

My childhood was not what city folk would call idyllic, but was nevertheless carefree and wonderful, with wide open spaces giving free rein to a young boy’s imagination and enthusiastic enterprises. We lived in a small rural town nestled in a valley mostly beset with drought. There was water, lots of water, from a river which never failed to supply our needs, but rain was infrequent and the land remained parched except where the people irrigated to grow crops. Upstream the valley led to the mountains, brown encroaching on dappled green before giving way to azure blue, sometimes mottled with puffs of cotton wool, and at other times pregnant with heavy gun-metal clouds which chose to give birth in the mountains, but not on the plains. I would gaze at those soaring towers of rock and snow, and taking my cue from the clouds, imagined that here was where all life began.

Downstream, sheep and cattle dotted the rolling hillsides and we were fortunate to have fresh meat whenever the farmers needed cash, which was not infrequent. They were of a coarse disposition, these men, perhaps because the land they farmed was coarse and harsh, never giving an inch, each penny of worth yielded begrudgingly. We did not mix very much, the townspeople being of a more genteel disposition, almost without exception attending Sunday church and the various holy days on the liturgical calendar.

My father ran the local post office, ably assisted by my mother. The community was quite small so it was not a very profitable business. My father was also the local postman delivering mail whilst my mother minded the store. Fortunately for my own financial well-being, there were times when my father’s attentions were elsewhere and I was co-opted to make the nearer deliveries on foot, for there was only one bicycle in the family and father was always using it. I was paid the princely sum of one penny per delivery round, usually about twenty houses, but even in those days, pennies had to accumulate before anything worthwhile could be purchased. I had set my heart on a fishing rod with a shiny silver reel, dreaming of sitting by the river hauling in fish after fish, though whether trout or salmon, goldfish or guppy, I had no idea.

There were not many children of my age: the population was declining, the elders aging, and the youth departing for better prospects in the cities. My best friend was Isaac whom everyone told me was Jewish, but whether that was reference to his intellect or his hometown was beyond my understanding. It was some years before I met his father, a sombre man with a strange black hat and long, unkempt beard, who spoke in a strange accent that I guessed, must have been a part of his being Jewish. Isaac no doubt acquired his strange accent from the same source. Neither he nor his son attended church, but to me our congregation was synonymous with our football team so if you were not interested in football, there was no reason to go to church.

I never knew what to make of our pastor, a rotund man with whiskers protruding from his face, nose, and ears. His voice was gravelly, except when it rose into a shriek as he stirred his congregation to fear God and hate the Devil. He would hammer the pulpit with his fat fists, rock to and fro almost to the point of teetering from his rostrum, and would rile against sexual immorality and the demon drink. Everyone sat motionless in the pews, not daring to move lest they drew attention to themselves, yet I sensed that no-one was listening. As was his habit after farewelling his parishioners, the pastor waddled rather than walked to the manse and the bottle of whiskey which always seemed to hand with just a few drops remaining. I should not have followed him but I did, for it was always best to know about the powerful people in the town.

Another non-church goer was Caitlin, she of the red hair and green eyes, skinny like the rest of us because food seemed more of a luxury than a necessity. Caitlin was not interested in football or footballers much to my disappointment, but I suppose that is why she did not attend church either. I asked my father why her family were outsiders and he thundered more brusquely than usual, Irish Catholics! I was none the wiser but felt a stirring toward her without knowing why, so I took myself off to the local library, small as it was, to learn more of this mysterious girl. In a book on Irish names I found the following:

Devotion to St. Catherine came to Ireland with Christianity. Revered for her courage and purity, Catherine in the Irish form, Cathleen, became such a popular name that W. B. Yeats chose it for the heroine of his 1899 play The Countess Cathleen which was inspired by an Irish folktale. In a time of famine, the Devil offers food to the starving poor in exchange for their souls. But Cathleen convinces Satan to take her soul instead. When she dies the Devil comes to collect her soul but God intervenes and carries Cathleen to heaven, saying that such a sacrificial act cannot justly lead to evil consequences.

Oh, my! I recalled a Sunday sermon on one of the few occasions when I chose to listen, the pastor fiercely hectoring his congregation about following the DEVIL (in capitals, for the pastor often hectored in capitals) and what would happen to them if they did not repent and return to God. The story of Cathleen / Caitlin held me in its spell, and I felt bewitched by this local incarnation of an Irish heroine who was prepared to sacrifice her soul to feed the poor. In truth, I felt at the time that I would gladly trade my soul for just one smile from her lovely lips.

I had muddled my way through Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote, and sometimes imagined myself as just such a knight, brave and noble rescuing damsels in distress, but then King Arthur’s knights intruded, adventuring in Crusades and defeating Saracens. These flights of fancy would at that point always fade, for fighting in foreign lands was far less interesting than pursuing romance, whatever that was. To me it was a union of souls seeking solace in one another and from that time on, I sensed the beginnings of loneliness, glimpsed rather than understood.

Two

"I live with regrets - the bittersweet loss of innocence"

~ John Geddes, A Familiar Rain, 2011 ~

I had been fishing and was eager to show off my catch, a solitary sorry looking specimen that I should have thrown back, but as it was my first triumph over nature I was keen to demonstrate my prowess. As I strutted up the dusty street, my trophy on a stick held high for all to see, it was hard to miss the crowd that had gathered outside the church. It was noisier than at any football match I had been to, with great shouting and gesticulating, some faces red with anger, others white with anxiety, and I wondered whether the pastor’s threats of hell and damnation were about to come true. Perhaps Armageddon itself was at hand! Either way, life as we knew it was about to come to an end.

At the centre of the crowd stood a man in a rumpled suit, a Government man attempting to be reasonable with a crowd that had neither wish nor reason to be reasonable. The State’s population was growing, progress had to be made, and for that the populace had to have water. Our ‘democratically’ elected leaders had decided that about a mile downstream, a dam was to be built and our town flooded. A vision came to me of building an ark like Noah’s to save all that was precious to our community, and again I imagined myself as Don Quixote, but this time in the utter futility of tilting at windmills for as father had always said, you can never beat the Government. What would become of Isaac and his father, those mysterious people known as Jews? What would become of the bewitching Caitlin and her family of outsiders: would they manage to find other Irish Catholics, as mysterious to me as were the Jews?

As we sat down to our meagre fare that was dinner on a Tuesday night, my father explained that we had twelve months to resettle elsewhere. It would take longer than that to build the dam and flood the valley, but the Government had decreed that the workers would need our houses and the town itself would become the administration centre for the duration of construction, for this was where the only road came in. Father then launched into a tirade about politics and democracy. He insisted that whereas democracy began as a means of ensuring freedom for the individual, it had been corrupted into a system whereby a minority of powerful men controlled the majority by buying votes with promises that they never intended to keep. He talked of totalitarianism, socialism and communism, and bringing out his dog-eared copy of a book entitled Animal Farm, would recount Orwellian prophecies of doom. This meant little to me at the time, and I wondered whether Animal Farm was an updated version of the Bible, for it made the same predictions which seemed to be coming true.

Father and mother both trusted in God, though at the time I was afraid to ask: trust in God to do what? God certainly was not helping at the moment with all that was going on. Father did claim that Man (with a capital M) had lost his way thinking that he could take charge of his own destiny, but people were foolish because all that was really happening, just like at present, was that some men were taking charge of the destiny of others. I understood that those some men were the despised Government men. Nonetheless, this sense of the powerful taking away the freedoms of the less powerful remained with me, and no doubt shaped my life in later years.

From that day forward, from the time that the Government man came to town, everything about our lives was different. There was hustle and bustle but lacking the usual good humour, each activity carried out with resignation and gloom. Where people normally greeted each other with a smile and kindly words, now there was but the occasional nod to be seen, almost in acknowledgement of the fate that had befallen us all. At one end of town the building of two new houses and a store had earlier begun, but now they were abandoned, standing derelict, their stark skeletal frames a harbinger of the doom to come. My mind wandered to a phrase that I had heard in church, from dust to dust, but from my rapidly developing irreverent sense of humour, I heard myself pronounce: Yeah, more likely dust to mud in this town.

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Time moved on, the population had dwindled for a while but was now growing again as workers and the occasional family moved in. There were just a few of the original community making their final preparations to go wherever they intended to go. Some were staying on to work on the dam, fortunate to have found employment and to be able to remain in their homes for a few years more. Father was still running the post office, and I heard talk that his services may be needed for a while longer as the working population was expected to grow to four times the size of our original community. There was both gloom and excitement in equal measure, depending on the fate of the individual household, but in the midst of all this I was troubled: my life had been turned upside down as if I had moved out of town rather than strangers moving in. It was all very different and not at all like the town of my earlier days.

I was down by the river fishing, my back against a tree that provided shelter from the sun. The fish were not biting, perhaps there was no longer bait on my hook, but I was contentedly absorbed in thoughts far beyond my years, and perversely discontented as a result. Before I could notice his approach, a black suited man sat down beside me, the father of my Jewish friend, Isaac. I thought that they had already left town, but Abraham, for that was his name, informed me that he had yet to finalise his plans. We engaged in small talk for a while and then overcome with curiosity, I asked him: What is a Jew? Why do you not play football or go to church with us on a Sunday? There was a sadness in his eyes that I had never seen before in anyone, even when I had been to the funeral of my father’s brother who for some reason had hanged himself from a tree. Abraham looked at me and asked: Have you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament? I figured that is was acceptable to lie in a good cause so responded that I was familiar with that holy book. Did you know that it was my people, the Jews, who wrote that book telling the story of their relationship with God, interspersed with years of persecution and banishment from the homeland that God had promised them?

I was not sure of that first part but being kicked out of your homeland resonated with me, so I nodded in an attempt at feigning wisdom. Did you know, he continued, that the leaders of your church were among the greatest persecutors of my people, and that even now when over six million Jews were tortured and killed, that many of your church people are against us returning to our homeland? This was getting interesting, six million tortured and killed, my imagination was reaching fever pitch. But I sensed that this was not a trivial matter, that the death of so many of his fellow Jews troubled Abraham greatly, more than father and mother were troubled by my uncle’s hanging.

I came to this country because I was not welcome in the land where I was born. This has ever been the fate of my people, and now I find that I am no longer welcome in this valley. Many people have turned against me and my son, Isaac, your friend, and once again we must seek refuge elsewhere.

I wanted to ask whether this was because he spoke funny and maybe people were afraid just because he dressed funny and spoke the way he did. I sometimes heard Isaac say really stupid words like "oy vey when things did not go the way he wanted, but I sensed that questions were not allowed at that point. Instead I squirmed nervously and said, I don’t understand."

You will, my son, you will, and with that he arose and walked away.

I never saw him again, but his words continued to haunt me: what did he mean and why did I sense that it was important for me to understand?

Three

"The seal of the Almighty is truth"

(Shabboth 55a; Yoma 69b)

The trees had ceased their sighing, the glass no longer rattled for the wind had calmed, and in the corner the cooling stove had succumbed to the gloom of the night. I knew not how long I had stood there after shooing the children off to their cold beds of starched sheets and thin blankets. Too late even for the cleaning of teeth, I nevertheless insisted on their saying of prayers kneeling on that cold floor, and then I quickly tucked them in and bid them good night. They had hurried nervously down the long corridor, skittish from the endless rows of louvered windows which offered no protection from the ghosts and monsters not yet cast out, still lurking to frighten them as they hastened to the safety of their dormitory.

I had returned to the little chamber of horrors, for that is what I had called the room where I haunted the children with stories by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, James Hogg, Daniel Defoe, and other famous purveyors of words both gruesome and delicious.

I was troubled, and had been for some time. I knew what was troubling me but was not yet willing to admit it to myself, for the implications saddened me and brought back lingering doubts, doubts that would surely lead to despair.

Four

"Drink and the devil had done for the rest"

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, 1883 ~

The trouble began in an establishment for which previously our community saw no need, a drinking house. The construction workers were mostly single men housed in huts, six to a room on bunk beds, not a place that was naturally inviting after ten hours toiling on the dam in all weathers. Mostly they were good natured and drank their beer as they joshed with each other, particularly with the married men who had left their wives back in their hometowns, vowing to save the generous wages that the company paid and return home sooner than later. It seldom turned out that way, and the boredom of