The Inside Must Come Out

This post, by Pierce Taylor Hibbs, is the second of a series and, like the first, is hereby offered to the public in grateful memory of Mr. Jonathan Stark, who was suddenly and sadly called home by his blessed Savior on the evening of Saturday, July 11, 2026. Jonathan was a humble, jovial, and deeply beloved longtime teacher, church elder, and friend whose salutary influence reached far beyond what he’d ever admit. He was also an original Greystone board member and zealous advocate for the importance of Greystone’s work. Jonathan also first introduced many of us to Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow. Heaven has become richer for welcoming Jonathan home, and the earthly church is poorer for having lost him. To listen to an interview with Jonathan about The Book of the Dun Cow, visit Greystone Conversations here. To listen to his series “Sweet Cement”—a memorable and rich series of talks on George Herbert whose piety and disposition Jonathan mirrored—you may do so here.

The hardest lessons are the most obvious. That’s a testament to the mule-necked rebellion of every human heart. In Walter Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow, I learned how hopeless we are if we don’t begin our spiritual walk with the cry of Mundo Cani: “Marooned!” Why? Because until we see how desperate we are—like a traveler marooned on a forsaken island—our hearts are too cluttered to hope for salvation and too weighed down to receive it. Saving hope requires a purged and weightless heart. Feathers float on the thermals of grace, not bricks. When we believe that we aren’t in real danger, when we are glad to carry glittering burdens, we are doomed. We must start by crying out to God, “Marooned!” Purged of self-sufficiency. Lightened by the love of One. Marooned . . . and magnifying one name.

Armed with that understanding and drawn to Wangerin’s narrative, I rushed headlong into the second book in The Dun Cow trilogy: Lamentations (an edited-down version of the sequel formerly called The Book of Sorrows). I was not prepared. . . . So much death. I had forgotten the sincerity of evil, its quenchless bloodlust, where tooth and claw ravage beyond reason. But more importantly, I overlooked, for the ten thousandth time, that what is inside must come out.

Chauntecleer’s War

In Lamentations, the proud rooster Chauntecleer picks up his war against Wyrm, the evil subterranean serpent of massive proportions. The hope is that Chauntecleer would have a chance to face Wyrm head-on and save Mundo Cani dog, who blinded the beast before diving into its mouth. So Chauntecleer builds a new roost in a hemlock tree, and he waits, calling on John Wesley Weasel to spread the word to the surrounding animals that food and shelter are available at the hemlock.

Meanwhile, Chauntecleer finds himself drawn towards the sea, where sweet voices deliver a deadly message (a message from the mind of Wyrm):

But you, O Lord of the Coop that was, and of the Tower that is: your glory has never been extinguished. What is a Dog to the grandeur that shall be yours? . . . You, Galle forte—you are the Chosen One. You alone can descend Wyrm’s caverns and arise again triumphant. (74)

It is the perfect message to bait his pride as a false savior. He had been jealous of Mundo Cani, the real hero, and now he had a chance to be worshiped as the Wyrm-slayer. My heart broke as I read these words. “Not again,” I said to myself. “Please, not again.”

But Chauntecleer was already swept up in himself, burning “with wild electricity” (75). The fire of hubris was already blazing. No creature could extinguish it, not even his beloved Pertelote. He is, however, prodded by the Dun Cow: “Look at me.” He refuses, his pride biting every nerve. He even complains that the Dun Cow showed him less comfort than she showed Mundo Cani, and how could a rooster be held of lower esteem than a dog? He won’t allow it. Still the Cow speaks: “You are in harm’s way, child. Lend me your fresh afflictions. Look at me” (76). He refuses, truly believing that his own glory is a good thing. Deception always greets us with self-elevating grandeur.

Chauntecleer is full of war-dreams, blind and deaf to anyone who suggests another course of action, even Pertelote, who had wisely called him to penance. The other animals simply could not understand his high and noble calling. The corruption of Wyrm had found a way inside his soul, through a door called “Hubris,” which the rooster built all on his own. His insides were full of evil by the Wyrm’s very design. And Chauntecleer did not know it.

But he would. When he travels to a coyote den in the far north, with a cavern leading down to Wyrm’s lair, he swells with egoism and the hope of glory. When he finds nothing but Mundo Cani’s skull and the remains of Wyrm, it’s clear that he has taken the serpent’s bait: hook, line, and sinker. Thinking that he’s attacking Wyrm, his talons plunge into a pulpy rot. And then his “guts spasm. Over and over again he vomits a bilious, fetid gore. Where his vomit splashes the ground, it puts out a host of the tiny amber lights” (128). These tiny amber lights are maggots—creatures that live on death and decay. The filth of Wyrm has gotten inside the rooster.

This is the moment we realize that Chauntecleer’s war was with himself, not just with Wyrm. In fact, Wyrm was a distraction from what was really broken inside the rooster, what the Dun Cow was calling him to see by asking him to look into her eyes. Pride had broken him. Pride had opened his heart to evil. And pride had become the breeding ground for growing horrors.

Now that Wyrm had found a way in, foul things would follow, for what is inside must come out.

The Evil Inside

The remainder of Lamentations is a heavy saga of loss. The maggots of Wyrm begin to get inside all those who interact with Chauntecleer or those infected by him. An army of evil is growing from the inside out. Savage bloodlust overtakes all who swell with the maggots of Wyrm, which squirm even from the eye sockets of the infected. What is inside must come out. Death and self-serving savagery live within the infected. And when such evils meet the outside world, there is heartless murder: coyotes, squirrels, helpless lambs, hens . . . slaughtered—not by Wyrm but by their fellow animals. Will nothing stop the savagery?

The mind of Wyrm offers one last delusion to Chauntecleer, which mirrors Satan’s offering to all those who follow him: a mirage of purpose that leads to self-destruction. Chauntecleer is to go to an island on the sea (but there is no island). And so, with maggots squirming from his eyes and clouds of midges drifting from his mouth, he dives into the mirage and hits the saltwater, which would be his end, were it not for the help of John Wesley Weasel, who carries him to the shore.

Baptized to Believe

The saltwater, it turns out, kills the maggots and midges of Wyrm, finally allowing Chauntecleer to see what he had become. And the truth is too much to bear. Pertelote at last looks into the eyes of her beloved. “You have come home,” she says with love. But all Chauntecleer can say is, “Oh, how your love wounds me!” (197)

Seeing the death he has dealt to the community around him, he confesses everything and finds—miraculously—forgiveness, even from those who lost family because of him. This is what opens the door for his death.

The briny baptism of Chauntecleer restored his vision and showed him what he had become. The deeper insides—his sense of goodness and truth, his service to God for others, his knowledge of what truly matters—come to the outside. Redemption is about this deeper inside coming out, the forgotten and suppressed God-born hatchling of holiness finally finding a way to the surface, purely by grace. Chauntecleer did not choose his redemption. It was a gift. And that gift enabled him to remember what true leadership and love meant: self-giving.

Conclusion

Lamentations has many lessons to teach. But one of the most potent is the most obvious: what is inside must come out. It may be the filth and fetid gore of self-love. This will always spell death for others and death for ourselves. It is the way of Wyrm. Or it may be the deeper love and purity that only God himself can implant in the soul. And that will not come out by our schemes of striving. It will not come out by our pursuits of self-glory. It will only come out by grace. And we’ll know it when we see it. For we, too, will say with joyous agony to the Son of God: “Oh, how your love wounds me!” But the only cure lies in the wounding.

If what is inside must come out, may it be the self-giving Son of God, whose love gives us our wounds, so that by his we might be healed (Isa. 53:5).