Cows and Destiny

From my Indian kitchen I hear a huge sigh. Peering out, I see it is a cow passing mournful sighs
.
My grandparents’ back field fence kept the neighbor’s cows on the other side. As a girl, I stood staring up close, hearing their noisy chewing and smelling their coats, eying the shaggy ridge between their ear spoons.
In spiritual training I learned that destiny, karma, and the will of God have the same meaning. My younger son-in-law adds “mojo,” which I discovered means a magic charm or personal magnetism, expanding my view God has personal magnetism for me.
Not until my fifties did I discover my life had a plan, sometimes referred to as being born with beads on a string. Having said I would never live in Florida or go to India, I was doing both, obviously not in full control of my life.
On my first pilgrimage to Meherabad, I heard free will described as “a cow on a fifty-foot tether” or “a man told to stand on one leg then by his free will lift the other.” The Meher Baba quote given to his sister, Mani, that gave comfort finally is “We are on a train we can’t get off, but we can change cars.”
Cows need fields, and although I’ve enjoyed being in cities of the east and west coasts, I’ve discovered I prefer living with the textured grasses of fields—even with cows.
My realization is, “A backward memory, seeing repetition, may find a forward view with new insight.”