Her Highness the Cow

*A retelling based on **Portals to Freedom** by Howard Colby Ives. Words in quotation marks are quoted from that book.*

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Howard Colby Ives was a minister. He wrote that years of "scientific, philosophical and theological study and reading" had left his thinking confused, and that he used to fill odd hours reading the latest modern philosophy in order to pass it on to his congregation "with appropriate annotations." By his own account he was desperately unhappy.

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Some months before 'Abdu'l-Bahá came to America, Ives had organized what he called the Brotherhood Church in Jersey City. It had no connection with his regular denominational work, and no salary was attached to it. Its meetings were held on Sunday evenings in a large Masonic hall, and it tried to be what its name said: "a group of brothers of the spirit aiming to express their highest ideals in service to struggling humanity." On 19 May 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke there. "Because this is called the Church of Brotherhood," He began, "I wish to speak upon the Brotherhood of Mankind."

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That summer Ives travelled through the Eastern States with a small satchel holding only the books and Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and, he wrote, he read nothing else, not even newspapers. It seemed to him that the focal centre of his life had suddenly shifted.

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When his church work resumed in the autumn, he could not raise the money to keep the Brotherhood Church going. He wrote to 'Abdu'l-Bahá about this, and about his growing interest in the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh. The reply was evidently written while 'Abdu'l-Bahá was travelling from Washington to New York, and it was translated in New York on 14 November 1912.

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"O thou spiritual friend! Thy letter was received. I was made very sad on account of the event of the closing of the Church of Brotherhood." 'Abdu'l-Bahá reminded Ives that He had told him not to place his confidence in certain souls: "They say many things but do not fulfill them."

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Then the Tablet turned to something Ives had written. "You stated that my first assistant is a philosopher." Philosophy in this age, 'Abdu'l-Bahá wrote, consists in the fact that man is out of touch with God, with the Kingdom of God, with spiritual susceptibilities, with the Holy Spirit and with the ideal verities: "he may be an agnostic and a captive of the tangibilities."

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"In reality her highness the Cow enjoys this attribute and quality. The Cow is naturally a denier of God, a denier of the Kingdom, a denier of spiritualities and a denier of the heavenly verities. She has attained to these virtues without labor. Therefore she is the philosopher emeritus. Our philosophers of this age after twenty years of study and reflection in the universities attain to the station of the Cow. They know only the senses as the verities."

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The Cow, the Tablet went on, was the great philosopher, for she had been one "from the beginning of her life and not after the hard mental labor of twenty years."

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"In brief: be thou not unhappy," 'Abdu'l-Bahá went on. The closing of the church had happened so that Ives might be freed from all other occupations, call the people to the Kingdom day and night, spread the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh, and "be sanctified and purified from all save God." "Crown thy head with this diadem of the Kingdom whose brilliant jewels have such illumining power that they shall shine upon centuries and cycles. Ere long I shall reach New York and meet again my beloved friend."

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Ives wrote that the Tablet left him with two contrasting impressions. The first was its wit. It was his first personal encounter with 'Abdu'l-Bahá's "wisely humorous attitude towards the accidents of life." When they met again after the summer, almost the Master's first words were to ask whether her highness the Cow was not a noble philosopher, with a smile and hearty laughter.

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The second impression came from the Tablet's closing words, with their command of severance and their promise of results "through centuries and cycles." Those words, Ives wrote, gave him his first glimmer of what 'Abdu'l-Bahá had meant earlier when, pausing three times on the steps of a house, He had told him that this was a day for "very great things."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **Portals to Freedom** by Howard Colby Ives.*

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