Ennis: "You'll run the sheep off again, if you don't quiet down."
The Five Stages of the Soul:
"Suddenly we understand that our bargain with life has been based more on wish fulfillment and the need for security than on any heavenly guarantees. We realize that the agreement we made with life was really just an attempt to manipulate reality, and attempt at striking a [...] deal with Providence. Unfortunately, the contract was signed by only one party - ourselves."
Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:
"[The discerning voice] advises distance and opens up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning of a situation might emerge."
"When serenity is restored [...] the tired machinations of the ego are abandoned."
"Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience."
"While beauty usually quickens our senses, awakens our delight, and invites wonder, there are occassions when the force of beauty is disturbing and even frightening."
The world is full of maledictions - "If you do this, then this will happen." They are often curses of damnation, statements of moral supremacy, or perhaps the well-meant advice of a superstitious nanny.
But in this particular sentence humor is invoked because both parties realize there is no correlation between the playing of a damaged harmonica and the running off of sheep. At the same time, Ennis does seem to be offering some advice to Jack - perhaps to look back on their recent, harrowing experience. To explore the full meaning of everything that has just happened and what they accomplished together.
The worry has faded from his expression, and the anxiety. Jack and Ennis emerge from their struggle triumphant and serene. Both are capable of putting aside their controlling egos and relax in the companionship they simply enjoy.
A trying event - spiritually, mentally, emotionally - as though God or Providence had sought to scatter the sheep to test their resolve and their spirits, and perhaps more importantly, their relationship. These trials have all been comprehended by the heart and soul and bared all in its beautiful splendor. The trial opened them up completely and melted the last barriers between them.
The one most resistant to this raw experience is Ennis who is in very unfamiliar ground with the development of a heartful and soulful relationship with his own guilt and self-attacks through the knowledge of his upcoming nuptial obligations and the social "wrongness" of their particular relationship. Ennis does learn to respond with full emotionality: to laugh, to open himself, and extend towards Jack to perceive a limited beauty in their relationship; to open further through their harrowing experience, but here - after extending trust and hope (see Meditation 10) after relating deeply to Jack by involving himself in their mutual project - Ennis fears some forceful experience in their evolved relationship, some new awareness based upon the trial through which they bonded even closer.
In fear, and maybe trepidation, he uneasily expresses the humorous (and yet meaningful) statement. "You'll run the sheep off again if you don't quiet down."
We might see this in one of two ways: "Wouldn't it be funny if the sheep ran off again?" and on a more subtle level, "That was some experience back there as we rounded up the sheep, and now I feel awkward and have to say something to feel normal again."