Cattle and Cantaloupe

“Start a blog” being one of 41 things on my 30 Before 30 list, it seems as if my first entry should be epic. A brilliantly crafted piece of prose that delves into existential questions of meaning, perhaps. Or, more personally, a thoughtful and summative reflection on the past three and a half years of full-time graduate studies. Instead, the interesting occurrence that will mark my inaugural post is a report on a recent dream:

The family was gathered on the farm in Kansas, celebrating a holiday or a homecoming or maybe just some lovely late spring weather. Grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings milled about the yard and—in particular—the orchard and garden area east of the house. Uncle Blair was in workout clothes, jogging around the barnyard to get some exercise. Some cattle also milled about, friendly and unobtrusive guests. Also a source of sustenance in unexpected ways.

It came time to prepare dinner, and I was tasked with cutting the fruit. My fruit-loving status is well-known in the family, and this duty is a favorite of mine. Little did I know the horror that was to come. Cantaloupe—a summer favorite—was on the menu, but instead of cutting into a store-bought stash of melons I picked up my knife (the one with the wooden handle that mom always uses) and began to cut off the tails of the cattle. These tails, so it seemed, were slices of melon. This was a horrific realization. Though the cattle didn’t protest, I was deeply impacted by the visceral nature of the task.

I filled a basket[1] with bite-size pieces of cow-tail cantaloupe, and the family gathered in a half-circle to pass the basket around while we blessed the food. The prayer was a beautiful song, sung in parts. The words were unfamiliar but the tune was the same as “Great God the Giver.”[2] I desperately wanted to participate in the sung blessing, but I couldn’t grasp the strange words.

In the end, after the cantaloupe had been passed and the blessing sung, I busied myself repairing a nearby fence, attempting to prop up different parts in order to reinforce the structure of this cow pen. My mind was preoccupied with a conundrum: I had been so disturbed by my earlier encounters with the cantaloupe cattle that I was working to convince myself that becoming an honest-to-goodness vegetarian was a necessity. There was only one serious problem with this proposal: would that mean I could never eat cantaloupe again?

---

[1] The basket, a play item from my childhood, was pale yellow with chipped paint and many rusty places. Maybe a half-bushel in size, it was made out of wire and had a handle for carrying. It was a totally impractical object for holding cantaloupe slices of any kind. 

[2] Great God the Giver is a song that I’ve heard and begun learning in my Chicago church community. Generally an “insider” when it comes to church music, with this sung prayer I have experienced what it is like to be the person who can’t follow while everyone around is clearly in the know.