As the grand words New Year and New Millennium drifted through my mind, I found myself glancing around, hoping to hang some magnificent wish upon the wall of my life for the coming year. Yet, despite all the talk of a new millennium, no special word rose to the surface. Instead, quite suddenly, only a childhood dream returned to life.

It was graduation season in my third year of middle school. While filling out my personal information sheet, my homeroom teacher once asked me, “What do you want to do in the future?”
Without hesitation, I answered, “A shepherd!”
“A shepherd?”

The memory is still vivid: the teacher, glasses perched on the tip of her nose, stared at me blankly for a moment—and then burst into laughter, clutching her stomach, leaving the entire class bewildered. I still do not understand why she laughed so hard, but my dream then, as now, has remained unchanged: I want to be a shepherd.

My desire to become a shepherd began in childhood, when the popular song Danny Boy was often sung. The Korean lyrics began, “Ah, the shepherds’ pipes echo through every mountain valley…” and through those words, my eyes were opened wide to the call of nature. In an instant, the dream of a young girl flew straight into the mountain valleys and built its nest there. Even on this morning of a new millennium, I discovered that within my small, unchanging wish to become a shepherd, I am still meeting the truest version of myself.

Of course, shepherding is not exactly a glamorous job. Imagine a person wandering from hill to hill, herding goats. And goats—dropping little black pellets like scattered black pearls, bleating in their not‑so‑beautiful voices, “Maaeeh, maaeeh,” whining for attention. Living among such creatures may not be the most delightful life. Yet why do I still dream of being a shepherd?

Perhaps the laughter of my teacher—who heard a naïve girl boldly declare her dream—still echoes in this new millennium. Maybe she laughed because she saw before her a foolish child.

As I continued to sing that song over the years, I came to realize that Scripture—its sacred joy and peace—could be found within nature itself.

Birdsong and rainfall, the wind wandering through snowy mountain valleys, the murmur of streams, the crack of breaking ice. In spring, the songs of new sprouts pushing through the earth. Enchanted by such nature, perhaps I discovered myself within the image of a “shepherd.” But my teacher, hearing the word shepherd, may have imagined a poor girl steeped in the smell of cows and horses, rising before dawn to boil feed, driving goats and swarms of flies across the fields—and laughed.

In my life of faith as well, I have often found my soul opening endlessly whenever I step into nature. When the evening sky blushes red, as if saddened by the departing sun, bringing tears to my eyes; when I find joy and freedom in the splashing of ducks on a lakeshore; when the scampering of squirrels up and down trees reveals yet another facet of God’s character—those were the moments that made me laugh with delight.

During my school years, I considered being tied to academic study the greatest torture. I hated studying. I was sensitive to every color, loved expressing things through drawing, enjoyed working with my hands—cutting paper, touching materials, tying ribbons. But the symbols of mechanical engineering and mathematics gave me headaches; I didn’t even want to look at them.

— Yoon Wanhee, January 2, 2000