For Amanda

December 21st, Longest Night, our annual celebration of Yuletide, and the day Amanda died. 

Amanda was a Jersey cow. She was a pretty young thing with a beautiful udder that would have lasted for many years. We bought her in September to help stem the tide of our fast-growing market for raw milk. She came from a good Jersey farm where cows were kept on pasture, not pushed to over-produce. But soon after she came to us we realized she was frail. 

Amanda was timid and nervous but responded with the touch of her soft nose when we extended a friendly hand. She liked her grain, the pleasant heat of the milk parlor, the feel of warm water as we washed her udder. But she was not accepted by the other cows. They shoved her around and bullied her, forcing her to stay on the edges of the herd. She seemed sad and we were sorry for her. When the veterinarian came that last day, he said she was dying of heart failure, probably congenital, a condition that sapped the strength she needed to nurture the calf growing inside her body. 

Her life reminds me of the passage in Isaiah about the suffering Messiah: “Despised and rejected, full of sorrow, and acquainted with grief.”  But unlike the King of Kings, Amanda’s life will not be recorded in a great book; there will be no Handel to write an oratorio in her honor; she will receive no Hallelujah Chorus. 

Since Amanda died, leaving no offspring, most would say it ends here. On the Greenwood, we see it differently. We know Amanda’s life counted. Every day, she gave willingly of her milk, the pure essence from her own body. She gave this same gift to our customers: People with names like Marilee, Diane, Jason, and Kim. Each drank her milk not only for taste but to improve their health. When Saul drank it, he was reminded of his childhood in Mexico. Mac’s first taste, poured in a frosty mug, brought an epiphany. 

What response shall we make for such extravagance: The gifts of health, memories, and epiphanies?

My response to Amanda’s death has been increased awareness. I began noticing and cherishing those, who like Amanda, give extravagantly of themselves. The assistant who has such a magnificent work ethic she willingly does all the tasks no one else wants to tackle; the employee with such exorbitant patience that she spends hours adjusting dentures on patients with senile dementia; or the worker with such outrageous enthusiasm for her job that she  showers it upon the rest of us like rain on a parched field.

Closer to home there is Owain, our Border Collie, whose will to please drives him to work his sheep with such reckless abandon that he would die of exhaustion before he would fail to heed a command. Emma, our Great Pyrenees, has such a fierce sense of duty for guarding the sheep that she willingly protects the flock day and night, rain or shine, foregoing a life with us in the house; and of course, Holly, who lavishes upon all of us here on the Greenwood  an extravagant and unconditional love. 

Perhaps this story has touched you. If it has, then the future has been altered. Chaos Theory posits that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can change the formation of a tornado on the plains of Kansas. If this is true, then is it not conceivable that the life and death of this humble cow, Amanda, has changed the fate of the world?  This is no mean thing.