Of cows and acts of faith

The colors of the season of Pentecost

Easter

Of cows and acts of Faith

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            She was born before the midway point of the 20^th Century on a first Sunday following the first full moon after a spring equinox. As such, her name was appropriately … Easter.

            At least as far as the Wilmeth grandkids knew, she was just a milk cow of strange color. That color suggested she wasn’t a standard Guernsey that was so prevalent in the milk pens of our Grant County youth. For years, she made her home at Mangus Springs where my paternal grandparents lived and across from where Dusty and Pat Hunt now ranch.

I don’t think the milk shed where I spent time with her and my grandfather, Albert

Wilmeth, still exists. It was east from the little board and batten house where my grandparents lived and on the fence between the irrigated pasture and the unnamed pasture to the south.

As an adult, I now ponder things like unnamed pastures. Why there was no name attached to it is a puzzle of some immensity. The intimacy that existed between those westerners and that land was absolute and why it wasn’t named doesn’t make sense, but every afternoon at 4:30, Grampa would make the trek to the milk shed. If one of us kids was with him, we’d carry the pail. There is no telling how much milk that bucket caught. It was scrubbed and shining clean.

            Easter was always there and never do I remember having to gather her. She’d be there swishing her tail chewing her cud eyeing us with immense brown eyes as we came through the board gate to start the process. The little milk shed consisted of a feed room and an attached covered milking area. There was a feed stanchion on the wall against the feed room and hay would be thrown through the opening in the wall where it was attached.

            As I look back now, I think she was the only animal on the place that was fed hay regularly. Horses were grained but were turned out on the naturally sub irrigated bottom for grazing. Only Easter got the hay that was stacked neatly in the feed room. She also got a sweet feed ration that would be doled out from a worn coffee can.

            The pattern was always the same. Grampa would take his flat nosed shovel and clean the two dried cow patties off the floor that were deposited during the prior milking. He’d lift both cleanly in a practiced slice and hitch motion whereby the patty was lifted off the floor cleanly and tossed to the back of the shovel in an extended motion. I marveled at the efficiency of that movement.

            He’d then toss the shovel full of manure into the stack on the pasture side of the board fence. The pile would accumulate weeks and months of daily tosses until it was moved to Grandma’s melon patch alongside the main corral.

            Easter would then be invited in by opening the gate and she’d go directly to the stanchion. It was then Grampa would retrieve his tin of bag balm and he’d rub her teats and udder with it. Her color, which included her udder, had to have taken a daily beating in that harsh New Mexico sunlight.

            Easter would then be milked. By the time I knew her, she never offered to kick or misbehave. Her demeanor was a fitting tribute to her name. She wasn’t a big producer, but she was perfect for the house needs. As we finished, she’d get another half can of sweet feed and then we’d be done. That cow, with such a sweet disposition and born on the most holy of days so long ago, would take her leave in typical cow hocked fashion, drop her head, and wrap her tongue around the nearest blade of grass to start the process over again.

            May her memory remain for numbers of … Easters.

Colors of Easter 

            As the Christian world enters the sanctuaries of our Lord this morning, worshipers will be greeted to an explosion of light. White and gold will dominate and elevate the sensory perception of the importance of this day. The brilliance of the display stands in juxtaposition to Good Friday and its Service of Shadows with the extinguishing of light and the slamming of the Bible to symbolize the Christ’s death and the subsequent closure of his tomb. That event was drenched in darkness, black, death and mourning.

            Easter stands in immense contrast … He has risen!

The color change communicates the movement of sacred time as well as personal faith journeys through these days.

            White is an overwhelming reminder of purity, angels, and the promise implicit in the resurrection. It illuminates the gift of God’s grace.

Gold is the value of his presence. It offers added light, and exaltation.

            The days of Easter are supremely important to Christians, and it isn’t just Holy Week. It continues through Pentecost, a series of seven subsequent Sundays. That 50 day stretch is a means to shape a most sacred reawakening and a time to define what it means to be Christian.

It is a spiritual reminder for our reverent and faithful responses to God.

            Through those days, the colors of the sanctuary will change. Whereas red, and particularly red violet, symbolized the blood of Christ through Holy Week, that color transforms into joy and celebration during Pentecost.

Purple will be prominently displayed. It symbolizes our association with the royalty of our God and the shared spirituality we are bequeathed.

Yellow is a modern addition that suggests not just spring but brightness of the sun, joy, and happiness. Bright blue joins the modern additions of the sky and heaven beyond. Pink offers a fresh beginning, and, rose, joy and jubilation.

To the beginning  

            In early Christian services, the Easter vigil was also the preparatory time for new converts. Often that would be done in a sunrise service which, in itself, remains hugely symbolic. Starting in predawn darkness, the rising sun will displace the gloom of darkness, the reminder of Christ’s death. The changes mimic the steps of the process and the personal faith journeys believers share. As the sun rises, colors will creep across the horizon bringing stepwise the reawakening, the resurrection, and the promise of eternal grace and salvation.

            It was only then, in the freshness of morning light, the new converts would emerge clothed in white. They would be baptized.

            He has risen indeed!

            My grandfather was not an overtly religious man.

            Other than marriages and funerals, I never saw him in a church. I certainly never sat next to him in worship, but I did see his hands upon God’s creatures. I know he silently packed water and hay to a deer that he had cut out of a fence. The deer had been entangled in the barbed wire for days if not weeks when he found him. He nursed that wild animal hoping for healing grace, but it didn’t happen.

            I know he suffered the loss of it with private tears when he discovered the deer had died.

            He extended the same silent demonstration of kindness and empathy toward Easter, the little milk cow. Their relationship was simplistic and gentle. Perhaps her arrival was more than symbolic when she was born on that Easter morning some 65 years ago. That cow was born without any of the yellow and cream points of her Guernsey lineage.

Easter was my grandfather’s living Easter miracle … she was pure white.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “His hands were such distinguishing features … God didn’t extend the gift of those hands without something else in mind.”