Cows! Then More Cows!

        Joe was out doing an inspection this morning on a country road. He glanced over at a  small herd of cows, grazing in a wooded pasture alongside the road. He did a double-take when he realized that one of them had four little feet protruding from underneath her tail. He called me immediately. Naturally I was torn, wanting to run over but thinking that I wouldn't make it in time for the big event. Ten minutes later he called to say that the cow had laid down, and the baby had slid out with a characteristic bovine bloop. 
     All of the other cows meandered over to see the baby. Joe reported that mother cow was exhausted and didn't immediately lick the newcomer, who was still in a sack. The farmer wasn't home. As many of you will remember, I have some experience with cows and this didn't sound right. I called the vet who said the membrane had to be broken pronto because otherwise the calf wouldn't be able to breathe. Joe went wading over in the mud to do the job. He was halfway there when the membrane broke and the new calf was welcomed in to the world by the other cows, who mustered up about as much excitement for the blessed event as cows ever do.
     I went over there about two and a half hours after the birth and saw mother and baby, standing side by side under the trees. The calf was up on all four feet and nosing around, and while I was there he nursed. The herd were mostly belted Galloways (those black and white cows that look like OREO cookies) but mama cow was all black with a white face, and baby cow was all brown with a white face. There was a great peace in the field, in the little shelter underneath the trees. There always is a sense of great peace in the first few hours after a birth. It doesn't matter if it's an animal which comes in to the world, or a human, that same feeling of peace attends. Sometimes this peace is be felt in a room where someone is about to die, or has just departed. It's a very palpable feeling, an energy if you will, but it is fleeting. This is why I went over as soon as I could. 

     Driving back home I thought how it was exactly one month to Christmas. Now I think we all know that the Christmas story is indeed a story, rather than historic fact, but it's a good story. Stories are a lot like dreams. A good story originates in the same part of the mind as a dream. We can examine a dream and learn something about the individual dreamer. We can look at a story that is held in the collective consciousness and learn something about human kind. 

     In the nativity story, the only witnesses to a birth which was the fruit of a marriage between earth and heaven, are the cow and the donkey. These gentle, placid beasts are stabled in a cave. The first people to witness the child are shepherds and their flocks—simple people who spend a great deal of time alone, in the pastures by day and beneath the stars at night. The actual birth is witnessed only by animals. It's the arrival of spirit born in to nature, represented by the animals. The only people to share in that great feeling of peace which attended this birth are the shepherds. Anyone who came later—and this is basically the rest of the world—missed those first bright moments. I don't know what this means, but I like the shepherds. They came upon the birth as simply as Joe came upon the birth this morning. He was alone, and he witnessed something wonderful. They are blessed in a way that the kings, whose journey was the result of a great deal of thought and intellectual calculation, are not.