Learning from the Family Cow

It was a perfect spring day. Fluffy clouds floated in the sky overhead. Lush grass carpeted the ground. A chorus of wrens and chickadees chirped continuously in the trees. Mother, father, and three towheaded children enjoyed the vernal splendor; two friends joined us. Together, we walked the pastures in search of newborn lambs.

Finally, we saw one. Actually, two. Two newborn lambs stood by their mother under a tree. Their legs wobbled; their coats matted from their mother’s cleaning. One lamb drank vigorously and butted the mother’s bag, demanding more; the other lamb fell down. Then, her mother kicked her out of the way. We watched nervously. “Did you see her swallow?” my friend, Martha, whispered. “Should we help her latch?”

I looked over at Martha; we’d had this conversation before. When I gave birth, Martha provided my maternity care. When my firstborn daughter did not want to nurse, Martha was at my side, coaching me: “Look! Did you see her swallow? Should we help her latch?” As I looked from the sheep to my doctor to my daughter, I had a moment of recognition. I am not just a farmer, I am a creature too.

In his book The Bible and Ecology, New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham writes:

Modern Western people, beginning with the Renaissance, forgot their own creatureliness, their embeddedness within creation, their interdependence with other creatures. They sought to liberate themselves from nature, to transcend their own dependence on nature, and conceived themselves as functionally gods in relation to nature.

We no longer look at a lamb and recognize our own experience. When we regard a cow, we do not remember ourselves. We may consider ourselves lovers of nature or lords of nature, but we do not consider ourselves part of nature.

Genesis 1 recounts the creation of the heavens and the earth. The Lord created night and day, sky and water, dry land and plants, the sun and the moon, creatures in the water, birds in the air, and beasts of the land. Then, on the sixth day, the Lord makes humankind. Humans alone are made in God’s image; no other creature bears this distinction. Humans alone “rule” over other creatures; no other creature receives this vocation. When we read Genesis, we tend to focus on human distinctiveness and human dominion, but we fail to notice – or forget – that humans are creatures too. Like the fish and the birds and the beasts, we are created. Like the fish and the birds and the beasts, each one of us has a body, a beginning, and an end.

Photographs courtesy of the author.

We are creatures not the creator. This is the fundamental distinction of scripture and Christian theology: the distinction between God and all that is not God. However, humans, in their hubris, have changed the terms. Humans – Christians – have established a new, primary distinction: the distinction between man and everything else.

But it is not so in the Bible. Again and again, scripture places humans among – not above – the vast multitude of creatures. Psalm 104 declares: “How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” Here, humans stand alongside lions and the leviathan as those who receive their food from God in due season. Psalm 148 describes the praise of lightning and hail, fruit trees and cedars, men and women. The writer of the great Christ hymn in Colossians 1 does not single out humans but includes them among “all things” in heaven and on earth. In the apocalyptic vision of John, the redeemed worship alongside every creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, giving praise and honor and glory to God (Rev. 5:13).

The Bible does not focus on human uniqueness and supremacy. In most instances, scripture assumes, but does not belabor, the human calling to rule and subdue the earth. The Old and New Testaments simply do not reflect our anxiety about human supremacy. Instead, scripture focuses on the glory of God, and it is the great multitude of creatures – not man alone – that magnifies God’s name. The variety and number of created things, all made by God and dependent on God, demonstrate God’s power and creativity. Sun and moon, shining stars, mountains, sea creatures, humans, and more; together these creatures form a chorus of praise to the one, uncreated Lord of heaven and earth. Together, they display the breadth of God’s generosity and creativity in a way no single living thing may do alone. To listen only to human praise is to muffle the song of creation. To elevate and isolate human creatures is to diminish the glory of God  – and to distort humanity.

Historian Lynn White Jr., himself a churchman, famously blamed the church for our modern ecological crisis: “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.” Yet the distinction between man and nature persists in the secular environmental movement as well. In his book Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, Wendell Berry makes this case:

The idea that we live in something called “the environment,” for instance, is utterly preposterous … An “environment” means that which surrounds or encircles us; it means a world separate from ourselves, outside us. The real state of things, of course, is far more complex and intimate and interesting than that. The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

As Berry points out, when we speak of the environment, we refer to something that is fundamentally separate from ourselves. The environment is what humans save or protect, but humans are not part of it. The environmental movement erects this separation to limit human devastation of the nonhuman world, but, still, the separation is false. It fails the test of science and scripture.

Genesis proclaims that from the dust of the earth God made the flesh of man. This strange birth resembles the origin of Eve, whom God formed from Adam’s rib. In both cases, the Lord uses something that God has already created – the earth, a man – to make something new. In both cases, the new creation takes its name from the old, woman from man, Adam from earth. Yet we read these accounts differently. We readily acknowledge the kinship of man and woman, but too often deny the relation between man and the earth.

Readers of the Bible have promoted the false distinction between man and everything else, but I believe that the Bible can help correct it. Within the pages of scripture, there is a counternarrative. Humans are part of the community of creation. We stand among – not above – all created things. Our flourishing depends upon the flourishing of our nonhuman neighbors, and we all depend upon God. God has not abandoned the world he created; he has suffered with the world, and for the world, in the person of his Son, who promised that he would one day make all things new. God is the only one who can save the world; humans are created to care for it. But in order to be good stewards, we must remember that we are creatures.

Something surprising happened to me on that perfect spring day. I had three children and had vowed that I would not have more, but the lambs changed my mind. I had remembered motherhood as isolation, being cooped up inside on a cold winter day with a newborn and two toddlers. However, watching the ewes and lambs helped me think differently, to see myself as part of a community of mothers, human and nonhuman alike.

A year later my daughter, Phoebe, was born. Like the newborn lambs on our farm, Phoebe had to figure out how to latch and how to stand. Unlike our sheep, I benefited from the help of older children and a dedicated mate. I never kicked my newborn when she wanted to nurse, though I admit that sometimes I ignored her. Even so, when the time came to wean our daughter, I wasn’t quite ready. I was ready to give up the regular schedule of nursing, but I was not quite ready to give up my role in providing sustenance for my child. So, for our birthdays – Phoebe’s first and my fortieth – I asked for a milk cow.

A few months later, my husband brought home Rosie. Rosie was the most beautiful cow I had ever seen. Her face has the delicate bone structure of a deer, not the stockiness of our beef cows. White flecks dot her brown coat, including a jagged heart on her left side. Her big, dark-rimmed eyes suggest a Disney princess, not a bovine. What a birthday gift!

For a year now, Rosie’s milk has been the staple of Phoebe’s diet. On most mornings, Phoebe walks down to the stanchion with me, and she plays nearby while I milk. One day, when Phoebe was enthusiastically petting Rosie’s calf, I had another moment of recognition: the two of them have the same diet. The calf drinks from the udder, and Phoebe drinks from a cup; but the two of them get most of their calories from the same animal.

Animals who provide care for young, vulnerable offspring to which they are not related are called alloparents by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, who has written extensively on the topic. Hrdy notes this kind of cooperation among birds, humans, and other mammals. Magpie jays in Costa Rica bring back food to someone else’s nest; lemur mothers take turns nursing the young, freeing the other mother to look for food.

You might say that I weaned my daughter, or you might say that I found an alloparent. Rosie provided what I could no longer give: milk. But I retained a role, getting the milk from Rosie’s bag to Phoebe’s cup each day. In this small way, I share one of my parental duties, not just with my husband, but with a cow.

Would you call this dominion or dependence? Maybe both. For me, it’s a new kind of partnership – a partnership that makes me feel more human and, at the same time, more like the dust of the earth.