Till the Cows Come Home

A Sodium Light in the Dark

In my last essay, I mentioned living on the Eastern Plains of Colorado.

I think that a lot of who I am is informed by living here. As a child, every stick was a sword, every small stand of trees an enchanted forest. As I got older, the isolation of living in a largely rural community and the flat, open nature of the land led me to a state of perpetual boredom. Now that I’m in my late forties, this landscape is not enchanted, or boring, it is at the time nostalgic and inspiring.

The Light in the Distance

My grandparents on my dad’s side of the family lived about an hour away. Not like an hour from one big city to another. But an hour along Highway 85, from one small city to another. Speeding up and slowing down as the highway passes through small towns along the way. We would leave for grandma’s right after church (usually around 9, dad liked early service because he liked to “get on with his day”), then we would head down the highway for an afternoon of just spending time with the family (read, eating all day long). There was food, whatever sports was in season would be on the TV, usually all the cousins were there so we played a lot, and as the sun would start to dip behind the mountains to the west we would start packing up for the drive home.

I never looked forward to the drive home. It meant that I would be in the car for an hour (an awful fate for a little kid), it also meant that I was going back to my mom’s house, which I never really looked forward too. This combination of boredom and anxiety led me to just stare out the window of the car as we cruised past the darkened fields of Eastern Colorado. Today along this same stretch of highway there are warehouses, oil rigs, growing cities and very little open space, when I was a kid there was nothing. Just shadowy corn fields occasionally punctuated with a barn with sodium lights spreading their amber glow.

The stood out so boldly in the darkness that I would often wonder what they were for. Once curiosity overcame me and I asked out loud, “Why are those lights on the barn dad?”

“It is so the cows know how to get home mijo.”

This produced a melancholy in my that I struggle to explain it to this day. There was something about the singularity of the light, and the emptiness of the space that made me wonder if the cows were lost, if they were alone, and why they had to find their way home by themselves. I wanted to help, because that is what I had been taught to do. I had been taught by my family and my church that when people were lost and alone, you should help them, and I wanted to help the cow.

The Gospel I Learned

The New Testament often leans into agricultural language. Telling stories to and about people that we familiar with ranching and farming. The use of parables to illustrate lessons was not only prevalent historically but is a large part of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. His moniker “The Good Shepherd” even comes from the close connection his stories have too the pastoral nature of the stories he told. In one he refers to himself as the shepherd willing to lay down his life for his lambs, unlike the hired man that is only there for wages. The story that always came to mind when I thought about the lights in the field was the story of the lost lamb.

If you are unfamiliar, it is a parable about a shepherd with a flock of 100 sheep. As they gather back home at the end of the night the shepherd is counting his flock, he realizes that a single sheep is missing. Because of the importance of every single sheep in the flock the shepherd heads back out into the wilderness to find the single sheep. Once found and returned the shepherd is full of joy, and celebration. The outcast, the missing, the lost they are the focus. The person that is alone, and isolated is the one that the shepherd goes out to find.

This story was always so powerful to me, because I felt separated, and isolated and alone. I wanted someone to come and find me, to bring me home. Or maybe if I looked hard enough, I would see the light in the distant field and find my way home. For me the gospel was always about going to find the people that were lost, not in a spiritual or moral sense, but in the real way. People that were trapped by addiction, or homelessness, in prison, hungry alone…

I feel like there is another parable about this.

The Disconnect

In a tale about sheep and goats, and the separation between people that have and have not done the work of the Messiah, the people that are doing things right are those who serve the less fortunate. The unhoused, the imprisoned, the hungry, the naked; those are the people that the Bible says we should all rush to aid of. When talking about the wealthy, the religious elites and the politically powerful, the Gospel has nothing but disparaging remarks to make. They are called snakes, and hollow tombs, but somewhere along the line the script was flipped.

The words that I had been taught to live by. Words that told me that true power lies in true personal sacrifice. It’s easy for a wealthy person to give away money, but what about the poor person willing to help their fellow human no matter what it costs them? Words that taught me service is more important than power. What has more impact on the world feeding a hungry person, or buying your third house? The words that I learned to live by were simple enough for a child to understand, and impactful to the most powerful people in the world.

They are the words that led me to believe that every human deserves love and respect no matter who they are or how they live. Christianity has one very simple principle, put others first. In Galatians Christians are reminded that they are called to freedom, and that freedom should be used to serve others. In Philippians it is simply stated that we should look out for others instead of ourselves. Jesus himself calls Christians to love their neighbors as they love themselves, and then doubles down that your neighbor is everyone, even the people you don’t like. Kindness to your enemy is like heaping coals on them, turn the other cheek, forgive 70 times 7 times. The gospel is all about kindness, service, humility, respect for others. What happened?

Because there has been a disconnect. My faith led me to leftist thought. It led me to wanting to see the homeless in homes. It led me to wanting to see prisons emptied instead of filled. It let me to wanting equity for all races, genders, creeds, sexualities, any way that people try too other you. The gospel told me the Good Shepherd would come out to find you, and his people would be the instruments of that endeavor. I was that person, imperfectly reaching out under the auspices of my faith to people on the fringes, and every time I made those kinds of moves, I was rebuffed by other Christians that felt uncomfortable with “those kind of people,” the people I had been taught to serve.

Christians Taught Me How to Rebel Against Christianity

I owe it all to the same Grandma and Grandpa that I was going to visits on those weekends with my dad. My grandparents came from Mexico in the 1920s. They were permanent residents, but never citizens of the United States. Their history is fraught with fear, discrimination and exploitation, and it never once showed. They knew that the world would send suffering their way, they were Catholic after all. That same Catholicism taught them something even more important, that the weak and the downtrodden are the people that the Gospel said would inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

They faced harrowing situations fearlessly, speaking up for those around them that had even less. They faced discrimination with bold rebukes, and then open arms for reconciliation (always accompanied by food). They were exploited for their labor, so they organized for better pay and healthcare because they knew that if they worked with others they could help even more people. That was always the goal, to help more people. To serve more people, to be a light in a dark world.

A Christian Atheist

The highway is different now. It is full, there are very few open spaces left in between the small towns that you pass. But those places still exist out here. I was taking my oldest kid to the airport with my youngest. Taking a back road to the airport I saw it. In the distance a barn with the glow of a sodium light. I can hear it humming in my mind, a sound so burned into my mind from long nights in dark places working hard. I don’t think of that in the moment thought. I think about my grandparents, like the farmer in my imagination, like Jesus in the bible, out looking for their lost sheep, or waiting for cows to come home. These people who taught me everything about being Christlike, who just wanted to help people.

I can’t be a Christian anymore. I refuse to accept a title that would associate me with the most virulent form of authoritarianism to rise in this world for nearly a hundred years. I also can’t buy into the notion that somehow not buying a religion hook line and sinker dooms you to eternal fire. I can’t even really buy that there is a divine entity that is in charge of the world, I don’t believe in God. But I do still believe in what I was taught by kind and loving people throughout my life that learned it from the words in the Gospel.

I will still serve others, seek the lost, speak for equity, I don’t need a god to know that I should do that. I’m here till the cows come home.