The Shepherd

Being a City boy from the Bronx, I always assumed that men were the shepherds.  We Catholic kids saw pictures of Jesus carrying the lost/wayward/lamb.  Two things about that.  First, Jesus was a “want to be.”  He was a carpenter, not a shepherd.  Second, men did little shepherding in his day.  Children and adult women did that.  Men were busy with other stuff.  I get it that Jesus with the lamb is more symbolic.  Orpheus, the god, carried a lamb too.  So why not have images of women being the shepherd?  Well, it would mess with institutional religion’s idea of who is the boss.  In my case, the ordained are called the shepherds.  This is just an example of taking one cultural reality, girl and women shepherd, and changing it to fit another cultural reality, men are the boss.  So keep that in mind ladies when some male tries to culturally boss you around.  And think of the lost sheep.  A male probably would have written it off to a loss rather than bother looking for the lost sheep, since money is often the bottom line with us.  Or if they went to find the sheep they would have killed and eaten it so it would not run away again.  A woman shepherd would have been more compassionate and attached.  But this is just an opinion.  I think Jesus was a challenge to men.  Maybe that was more the point of the story.