He is alone. The dyke is still wrapped in morning mist and the sheep that keep looming up are standing motionless, except for one pleading lamb, mewling softly and nuzzling into her mother’s fleece to find her teats.
He climbs over the green-stained wooden fencing, and the wet grass sticks to his trousers. His hands by now are also green, and he wipes them on his already stained trouser legs. He hears the sloshing of waves against the basalt boulders on the bank, where weeds and bits of wood gather in dark green and light patches. He would like to walk there, but knows them to be slippery, not to be trusted. He could step here and there to avoid slipping, but the dry patches are too scattered. On top of the dyke then!
By noon he figures he will be around Oost [Terschelling], where he will walk past the tractor shed of cousin Kees’ farm, back to the main road.
New sheep loom in from the haze. Some are lying down, others stand, but they take no notice of him — a frightening figure he is apparently not. The mist will lift gradually and then it will become more pleasant to walk the twenty-kilometre dyke. He does this every holiday on the island — this walking along the dyke. He experiences an irresistible urge to be alone in this wide world — green meadows on one side and the grey Wadden Sea on the other.
This then is Johannes Cupido, now alone with his thoughts but raised up amongst people – a people ever striving to protect their lands from a stormy sea.
Just last year, he had walked here humming happily, knowing himself to be as safe as the land behind the dyke, as sheltered as a farm surrounded by shade-giving trees and happy that he was never alone, even on this deserted, lonely dyke. For beside him walked the dear Lord Jesus of his youth, the judgmental God of his young adult days, and the Holy Spirit whom, in later years, he had begged to make Father and Son more present in his life — a life which seemed to stretch out before him as endlessly as the dyke.
So much had he been taken with service of God that, at the sight of sheep, he thought of the Good Shepherd and, contemplating on a suckling lamb, would imagine the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, while every jubilant sky and sun-sparked sea reminded him of Psalm 19. In his busy, daily life however such analogies rarely came to mind – crowded out by pressing orders, procurements and numbers.
Having struggled for years to redirect his sharp focus and nervous energy into a life which actually expressed the love of Jesus, he strove to be kind to his family and good to the factory staff right through all the busyness. And then, with a holiday on the island to calm his mind, he could still reliably make his experience of God more immediate by absorbing the island’s nature and stillness.
But now, as the sheep stood there without a Good Shepherd and the lamb suckled hungrily so that she would, next year, come to be just like her mother, it brought no slaughter to mind. As he walked alone along the length of the dyke his thoughts did not dart from sheep to Shepherd and from lamb to Lamb — he did not even try to go there anymore.
Perfectly calm, utterly one with the island, settling in pleasantly for the long dyke walk, he was more content with the life he now led. Sometimes a cloud of self-pity hung over his mind, he would think back with some wistfulness to the long time when life made sense for eternity, and then he would feel somewhat abandoned — but now he was very sure that everything to do with God rested on nothing but human blunders.
Notes
Herman’s father was born on Terschelling and Herman himself visited there many times. Kees (Cupido) is, actually, Herman’s cousin. Canadian artist Matt Cupido is Herman’s third cousin ( they share the same great-great-grandfather)
Though Herman was prone to depression and was honest about his doubts, his faith never left him. But you can sense his empathy for the deconstructing Terschellinger.
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