Ella, three years old, has been fascinated by the scar on her grandfather’s chest, where the surgeon literally took out my heart and fixed it before putting it back in. She particularly keeps trying to understand the role of the bovine aortic valve Dr. Desai put in.

I explained that it came from a cow. That really caught her fancy. As we’ve kept talking about this, I’ve started suspecting Ella’s cow image is quite literal.

So I asked her: “Do you think there is a tiny little cow in my heart helping to keep me alive?”

“Yes, PawPaw. Your cow is always in there taking care of you.”

She paused. “But it makes me sad. Because a big cow had to be killed so your little cow could live in your heart.”

In recent years I’ve read about research suggesting that in their own ways bees think creatively; spiders dream; trees communicate. And maybe, metaphor though this may be, little cows live caringly in our broken hearts.

Ella is no longer a baby but she lives closer than I do to what William James once memorably described:  “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion. . . .”

Through Ella’s insights my bovine aortic valve links me to all of that–and reminds me that there is in nature so much glory and so much sacrifice. Ella reminds me to be grateful for great blooming of life. And for the suffering and new possibilities, so often both mixed together, we create for each other as we strive and yearn for life amid all the buzzing confusions of our thoughts and dreams and sacrifices.

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He has been a pastor and seminary dean.