Skip to main content

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image


The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10].

A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy.

I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possessed the maturity of a Messiah at the age of 17. As we grew older, his fascination with my erring ways snowballed. I must have been some sort of a curio for him, I assume. Or, maybe, he is such a good shepherd that lost sheep are his raison d'être.

I loved the attention he showered on me all along. The birthday cards, the personalised messages on occasions like Christmas, his self-sacrificing readiness to meet me at the railway station when I was travelling through his place, the special food packets he brought along on such occasions, the trips we made together… That’s a long list. Such friends are rare.

Levin never hesitates to express his view in very clear terms even if it may sound hurtful to the listener. He will never resort to euphemism if he has to speak about a spade. Keenly perceptive as he is, his opinions can be like deadly arrows that penetrate through all shields of defence that one may put up in unpleasant situations. He hits the bull’s eye most of the time. But he will be there with you after that, the good shepherd with his magic wand and also with the redeemer’s abiding compassion. He knows what he is doing. He knows that he is a shepherd with the mission of bringing the lost sheep back to the fold.  

He visited us – Maggie and me – when I was navigating the perilous contours of the hell that Reverend Machiavelli [more about him in next post] had hurled me into. He stayed with us for a few days and carried out his research in North Eastern Hill University [NEHU]. Before leaving us, he gifted me a few books on Foucault, Derrida and others who never made any sense to me then or later. I liked Foucault’s metaphor of the Panopticon, however. I was caught in a Panopticon when Levin was visiting us.

When I wrote a prelude to the A2Z series of which this post is a part, Levin was quick to warn me of the pitfalls of hindsight. What we call hindsight can be just a veil for hubris, he texted me. I hope I have succeeded in steering clear of my intrinsic hubris in these posts. I did my best anyway. One problem with priestly Redeemers is that they are not as eager to appreciate the good you do as to point their finger at the sins you commit. Levin is no exception.

Levin is a good friend, however. He will point out the possible pitfalls on your way. He warns you well in time. In spite of that, if you happen to walk into the pit, he will stretch out his arm to pull you out.

We have little in common, Levin and I. He is a Catholic priest and I am a nonbeliever who wears his atheism on his sleeve. He is an intellectual who loves dialectics and hermeneutics while I love the spirit that froths in a drink of whisky and the dance of fireflies in the twilight. Yet he was there with me all along for reasons that I can only ‘conjecture’ (one of his favourite words). 

AI-generated image

Whenever I think of Levin, the image that tends to rise in my mind, more than that of the good shepherd, is that of the guardian angel as described by my mother when I was a young boy. I had to cross a river in order to go to school. Those were days when even little children walked their way on their own. Nobody would kidnap them and rape them as it happens nowadays with alarming frequency in spite of the increasing number of good shepherds of all possible hues and shades. The bridge across the village river was made of wooden planks. Many planks were broken and a few were just not there. “Walk carefully,” my mother would advise me before I left for school, “and know that your guardian angel is there with you preventing your fall.” I never fell into the river at any time from that bridge. Children have more sense than adults.

People like me are destined to fall in life many times, however. Levin knew that. Hubris is the cause. So he decided to be my guardian angel and my good shepherd. Without the judgmental self-righteousness that usually accompanies the Redeemers. I know he was not judgmental. And it is quite impossible to be a Catholic priest without a good measure of self-righteousness.

Some people are condemned to learn certain basic lessons of life the hard way. If you are one of them, you will have it tough all along the way. On the way, you will meet people who will look down upon you from their high perches where they reached because of their cleverness and ability to get away with things. Having never found their own lights, they will only want to put out your own little light which is not to their liking. Levin is different. He carries his own light and he lets you find your own. I know he is a genuine friend. Never mind the good shepherd and the guardian angel. 


PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z 

Previous PostsA,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  G,  HIJ,  K

 

Comments

  1. There are persons who influence our life in a positive or negative way. Persons like him increases the hope on the society and life.

    //Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10].// I'm writing a museum tour script. One of the artifacts is the angels from an Indian church. I'll include this versus in my script! Hope the angels be happy :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The toast is my translation! In the original, it is "angels rejoice". Go to the original when you quote for serious media 😊

      Delete
  2. Hari Om
    A character of depth and integrity, to be cherished all the more for the clarity provided by keeping company with... Your series continues to deliver, T, and while the warning may have been fair, it's also true that to provide the consistent voice that you have, a small amount of the ego must shine through! I am at last parked for a few days in one place, so hope to be more consistent in my comments too 🤗 YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Yam. I'm glad you'll be able to comment more regularly now. You make much difference here.

      Delete
  3. It's good to have such a good friend. Although, he sounds a bit judgmental. But you if you get along, that's all that matters, really.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not exactly judgmental. As I implied, it's difficult to be a Catholic priest without being also self-righteous to some extent. It's part of the training, I guess.

      Delete
  4. That last paragraph. Tough world out there. I won't put it out there in the Universe, though, i've already had certain experiences but...nope. i guess, i'll wait for my Levin. Definetly need one of my own! Good friends are a luxury.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tough, no doubt. At the age of 64 (turning at the end of this week), I still hesitate to confront many people...

      May you discover your Levin soon.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation