Brian’s Reflection: Friday, July 24, 2009

Dead Cow Farm

An ancient saga tells us how 

In the beginning the First Cow 

(For nothing living yet had birth 

But Elemental Cow on earth) 

Began to lick cold stones and mud: 

Under her warm tongue flesh and blood 

Blossomed, a miracle to believe: 

And so was Adam born, and Eve. 

Here now is chaos once again, 

Primeval mud, cold stones and rain. 

Here flesh decays and blood drips red, 

And the Cow’s dead, the old Cow’s dead.

- Robert Graves, poet, born on this date, 1895


Well, it’s been over three years now I think. That I have been writing these Reflections, five or more times a a week. I have over a thousand of them now. I’ve sent them to friends, and parishioners. They have been forwarded by many to their friends. I’ve been linked to a website or two here and there. I post them on my Blog - and who knows who sees them there! I think of them floating out there in cyberspace. I think of them as part of my own journey, shared. I think of them as encouraging people to think outside the box – and that is primarily why I write them. I have no desire to “tell” anyone what to think or believe. That’s up to each of us. Primarily, I write them for myself; they are part of my Journey.

What a delightful mythological image for the “primeval Deity” – the First Cow! I’ve never liked the Judeo-Christian idea of a Male God in that role! Very problematic, right down to today. Along with Graves, I can live comfortably with the First Cow – as I rather like cows, especially as they usually smell OK!

I think Graves is correct: the “old Cow’s dead” – the “old gods/goddesses” have slipped into oblivion, mostly because not of their own irrelevance but because of human lack of imagination. And we are back at a place where “primeval mud, cold stones and rain” have slithered over what we often call “civilization”. We are again at a time when “flesh decays and blood drips red”.

Ah. Where shall we go?? To what image of the mythical licker-into-being of a noble humankind – for I note a distinct lack of nobility among us but for a very few examples? I remember from my childhood Elsie the Cow on the side of our milkman’s cart. As a child, a winsome image of “All’s Well”!

Our concept of “God” – if we must have one - must change. The images we have created over the millennia have slid into hideous piles, useless as nourishers of a humanity sprinkled with nobility and delight and beauty.

The deities are our own creations – icons of that which hold us to our superb human dignity. It is time to reinvent them.

Brian+