Canter Bridge

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously aphorized.

Though the pungency of Emerson’s observation is admirable, the biblical proverbialist beat him to the punch:

Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; But much increase is by the strength of the ox.

Some modern treatments of the text dispute the translation of the Hebrew words that stand behind the traditional English reference to a clean crib, yet this translation remains a viable construal of a difficult text. It, too, is pungent, more earthily so than Emerson’s dictum.

An obsession with neatness that is not aligned with the purpose to change or at least to sustain the world is a fine thing inside the mind of the neatnik. Outside, where real people live and die, flourish or stagnate, sing or moan, it is a useless fantasy. It is a relic of the small mind, inhabiting a tiny universe where predictability and controllable order vie for preeminence in the table of values.

By itself, it is simply odd.

When it is placed alongside the opportunity costs, it is a hellish waste. A preference for dirty oxen stalls is remarkable in a literature that makes so much of productive order and of right divisions. It is testament to the self-balancing and self-correcting nature of the biblical anthology. Over against the idolatrous tendency to absolutize this relative value or that one, this Proverb suggests that cleanliness may not be next to godliness after all. It may be the most destructive form of sloth, all gussied up in cleaning vinegars and well-filed papers. It is a clean desk when orders are pouring in, an on-time lunch when customers are battering down the doors.

We can use a bit of mess around here, the proverb seems to suggest. Oxen shit is a wonderful thing when a good harvest is being turned to bread, when this winter’s scarcity looks to be milder than the hunger we knew during the last. Bring on the oxen. Slip and slide in their muck. Celebrate the stench.

The harvest is in, the workers stink to high heaven, there is still the milling to be done, and my clothing reaks of large animals’ urine.

Let’s have a feast without even showering.