Can We Please Ditch the Presidential Turkey Pardon?

Can we be done with the White House tradition of “pardoning” a turkey for Thanksgiving, as if turkeys have done something so egregious that they deserve to have their throats slit, their feathers yanked out, and their flesh roasted before being sliced into little pieces and ingested by a “superior” species — and isn’t this a fun family celebration for the president to “pardon” an undeserving bird?

No, it’s not fun. It’s repulsive.

I usually post a Thanksgiving Day semi-humorous blog about vegetarianism and may still do so. But my sense of humor about the topic has been dulled by a talk I attended this weekend with Dr. Will Tuttle, a well-known vegan who has written a best-selling book called World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony.

Although I’ve been a veg-head for forty years for spiritual and ethical reasons, I still found Dr. Tuttle’s talk eye-opening. I have always understood that eating meat makes us harden our hearts against the living beings that we murder for our recipes. That’s why we call pigs “pork” and cows “beef.” It’s not as disturbing as “the flesh of dead pigs and cows.”

Dr. Tuttle takes this understanding to a much deeper level. He contends that our whole culture has been programmed to accept this denial. “No one is consciously choosing to eat meat, “ he says. “It’s what they’ve learned. They are like robots.”

He has a point.

I just had a conversation with an eighth-grader at the school where I teach. Madelyn has been a vegetarian since she was seven. Her parents aren’t vegetarian, but accept her choice. “I just couldn’t get past thinking about what was sitting on my plate,” Madelyn says. “I couldn’t eat it.” Madelyn refuses to be a robot.

Enough about vegetarianism. You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not going to lecture you. I’ve never been into that. In fact, Dr. Tuttle implored his vegan listeners to get over being “angry vegans” and instead strive for “deep veganism,” which sees meat-eaters as wounded souls disconnected from other living beings and deserving of compassion. Veganism (like Christianity) should be about compassion, not judgement.

All I’m saying is that the idea of “pardoning” a turkey — as if the poor thing should be grateful for our graciousness — is beyond the pale.

(I’m not even going to touch the topic of the current president and pardons. That’s another blog.)

Am I Too Liberal to Live in the “Real World?”

I just returned from a holiday party at an organization for which I occasionally work. The whole experience made me uncomfortable, and I’m not entirely sure why. I felt I couldn’t be my real self there. I couldn’t connect. As a result, I had a moment of standing outside myself, perhaps seeing Melanie as others do. And it was alarming.

Have I become a caricature? Am I so out of the mainstream? Do I expect everyone to share my values? Are my expectations too high? Am I too liberal to live in “the real world?”

Tell me what you think:

Bless this Food, Jesus

First of all, the boss blessed the food in the name of Jesus and said a long Christian prayer. All the music was Christmas music, and we played a Christmas trivia game. This is a group of 30+ employees, including many African-Americans and Africans. It’s highly likely there were at least a couple of Muslims in the mix. Certainly there were no Jewish people — they would have quit after the last party. Perhaps a few agnostics or atheists.

I joked to the man next to me, “Heaven forbid a Jewish person should ever start working here.” He looked at me as if I was mad. (He probably thinks I’m anti-semitic now.)

If you know me at all, you’ll know I’m a Jesus-person. I’m a lay pastor, in fact. But this is a place of work. I just found it all so inappropriate. Is it me?

Is this 1950?

After our Christmas trivia game came lunch. There was nothing for a non-meat eater to dine upon, other than veggies and dip and cheese and crackers. Platter after platter of wings and crab balls and beef and lobster dip, etc, etc. Even the potato salad had bacon in it. I’m not grousing about that, it’s just kind of unusual to go someplace these days where there isn’t at least something for a vegetarian.

Everyone stuffed all their trash into the recycling containers, of course. I did not bother rifling through the garbage to pull out the recycling as I often do. It was all covered with meat juice.

Locker Room Talk

OK, so here’s the final kicker. There were gifts given out and one guy got some electric thing that looked to someone else like a dildo. Six or seven guys were roaring with laughter, making all kinds of crude jokes such as, “That’s a power tool right there” and pretending to use a jack hammer. During this time, they caught no women’s eyes, and they carried on as if we weren’t even there. (We were far outnumbered.) I *think* the guys thought they were being subtle or clever, as if we didn’t know what they were talking about.

I was astounded. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a group of men like that, I had forgotten the intense discomfort. And a big part of the discomfort lies in not speaking up myself, even just to say, “How old are you?” in a joking manner.

I have a bad cold. I have next-to-no voice this week. If I’d had any voice, I’m pretty sure I would have at least said something like that.

In the age of #MeToo, perhaps somewhere in the back of their testerone-addled brains they would think, “Oh yeah, I guess heard something about sexual harassment on the news,” or maybe, just maybe, “Wow, that might make my female colleagues uncomfortable.”

I hate that I literally could not speak. There’s remarkable symbolism in that, now that I think about it.

“Why Didn’t Those Women Speak Up Before Now??”

My muteness seemed to magnify what was going on internally, all those old familiar feelings. “I don’t want to get fired. Since I’m a temp, they will just stop calling me . . . I don’t want them to think I can’t take a joke . . . I don’t want to be ostracized . . . I want to be able to get along with my co-workers.”

And yes, “I want them to like me.”

Those are the very feelings that kept me from speaking up every time I was sexually harassed and/or assaulted in the workplace: at a theater, a hardware store, the CIA, a non-profit. Pretty much everywhere I’ve ever worked.

I thought things had changed. I thought the conversation was further along. I thought . . . I guess I thought it was safer.

The real question for me now is should I talk to the H.R. director? Should I point out that their office is not friendly to people who don’t share the boss’s religion? Should I tell her about the sexual harassment I’ve often witnessed there and use the jack-hammer guy as an example? Or should I just say, “Life is too short, I only work here sporadically, it’s not my problem?”

I could file a discrimination complaint on behalf of all vegetarians, but that probably wouldn’t be too constructive. I do need the job.

So — just a rambling holiday blog, 2017-style. I’m not going to bother to edit this, so I’m sorry if it’s not up to my usual standards. I’m tired & sick and really just wanted to process these feelings and see what you thought. Well?

Thanksgiving Gremlins

I usually take a look at my blog platform’s word prompt of the day, just to see if it hurls a bolt of brilliance my way. Hence, my brilliant blog on mercy yesterday. (OK, OK, brilliance is a relative term.)

Today’s word prompt is gremlins. What? Gremlins? On Thanksgiving Day? I expected gratitude or family or feast or table or cornucopia (which Merriam-Webster says is getting a lot of look-ups this week). But no, it’s gremlins.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the tiny footsteps of fieldmice skittering behind the living room walls here in this old New England farmhouse. The gremlins have come inside for the winter.

I also think of the meltdowns at my friend’s house last night where twin boys celebrated their fifth birthday with their big brother and two little cousins — a two-year-old and a baby. All would be well and then suddenly a gremlin would pass through the room and one child or another would become possessed, thrown to the floor in paroxysms of grief and despair.

“I want another fill-in-the-blank!” or “He took my fill-in-the-blank!” or (my favorite) “I wanted all the lights off when we were dancing to the Gummy Bear song!”

It had been a long celebratory day, it was well past bedtime, post sugar rush, and we were in the final throes of an energetic dance party. 

But what excuse is there when adults, myself included, succumb to the same gremlins? “I don’t have enough fill-in-the-blank! He has something I think I might want! That didn’t turn out exactly the way I had planned it in my head! They didn’t say ‘thank you’ to me! I am a victim!”

How about we have a gremlin-free Thanksgiving today? Look for the bright side, search out the gifts, give the benefit of the doubt to those annoying family members. Everyone’s doing the best they can. Check out this link to four ways to cultivate gratitude in case you are having trouble. 

And give a thought to the real victims on Thanksgiving, the forty-six million turkeys who gave their lives to expand American waistlines today. I will spare you my traditional evangelistic-vegetarian Thanksgiving post and instead just offer a link to it, here.

The ones that got away

Happy Gremlin-free Gratitude Day!

 

Talking Turkey, Trump, and Testosterone

Talking Turkey, Trump and Testosterone

My guess is that meat sales will be on the rise for a few years. I hear that a January 20th Executive Order will require every federal employee to purchase a weekly minimum of Trump Steaks. If a state wants to receive federal assistance during anticipated monthly climate-induced floods or droughts or fires, their employees will be required to participate in the minimum steak program as well.

Trump’s new health-care plan will depend on shorter lifespans, due primarily to an increase in cardiac-related deaths from heavy meat consumption and more deaths from food poisoning due to the repeal of food safety rules.

The hoped-for rise in premature deaths will be aided by another Executive Order requiring that elementary school children carry guns to school.

The New Normal is Not OK

Not everything will be accomplished by laws and regulations. Manipulation of cultural norms through the mass media has already begun — Trump met with leading media representatives in his golden palace this week to tell them what to cover and how to cover it. “A f–king firing squad,” is how one attendee characterized it. And of course there is @realDonaldTrump’s Twitter account and its sixteen million followers. Check those characters out — you’ll see the new norm.

These are days when Latino children are bullied, Muslim women are shoved off sidewalks, and African-Americans might want to stay inside for their own safety. Overweight? Disabled? Gay? Jewish? Female? Keep a low profile and pray that any trouble is only verbal.

Aggression is now admirable. Testosterone is king. Civility and gentleness are dead.

There will be no vegetarians appointed to Trump’s new Cabinet. Under the new administration, a humane diet (or even a vaguely healthy one) will become an object of scorn, along with other “politically correct” pursuits like polite conversation, fact-based news, and words with more than three syllables (examples of the upper limit include disaster, amazing, terrific, and Mexican).

No, these are not gentle days in America: November, 2016.

Happy Thanksgiving

November has never been a gentle time for turkeys. More than forty-six million of the creatures are killed every single Thanksgiving, after spending short, miserable lives crammed together in massive warehouses, usually with no ventilation and no windows.

Gobble

I generally re-post my popular Thanksgiving blog about vegetarianism each year, but I thought that this year, we needed a call to action:

Are you looking for ways to protest the new president-elect and the ugliness he has ushered in? How about engaging in radical gentleness? Our society may be in for a lot of chaos and violence in the coming years, so why not rebel by adopting a kinder lifestyle? Go vegetarian!

And in case you want to read the story of my vegetarian journey and learn about the benefits of such a lifestyle, here is a link to my traditional Thanksgiving post: Seriously? This is Your Thanksgiving Post?? 

 

Loving Beyond Humans to All Living Creatures

As I mentioned in my last post, I have joined the We Stand With Love campaign to try to counteract the hatred and bigotry running rampant in our country lately. Below is my contribution to the campaign, entitled Loving Beyond Humanity to All Living Creatures. Here, too, is the link if you want to see a cute doggie picture and read other essays on going “Beyond Love.”

♥

by Melanie Lynn Griffin

The more we practice “loving beyond ourselves,” the more we are challenged.

Heart-stretching can be a painful exercise as we confront our self-centeredness and prayerfully question the ways our societies, religious communities, and families make us insensitive to “the other.”

The reward is a gradual awakening to our true selves, and the discovery that our capacity for love and compassion is boundless: Joy! Connection! Belonging!

But wait — how far might this go? Might we move beyond ourselves to our families, and beyond our families to our neighbors, and beyond our neighbors to “the other,” and beyond “the other” to the enemy, so we include all human beings in our circle of love?

But then, might it go farther still – to include our fellow creatures?

To get there, we will have to have the courage to face some inconvenience.

How inconvenient to feel compassion for the cow that died for your steak dinner, or to learn that the pig that became your bacon was smarter than your golden retriever, or that contrary to what your father told you, the trout flapping on the end of your line most likely does feel pain.

How inconvenient that ExxonMobil’s potential Arctic oil field (which will power your SUV) also happens to be a nursery for polar bears and caribou, or that the site of the proposed Walmart (where you will buy your cow-skin shoes) is also home to an endangered gopher tortoise.

Your compassion practice may lead you to change some of your daily habits.

At the very least it will raise some tough questions: What is the cost of your lifestyle to the nonhuman creatures who share our planet?

Does a nonhuman creature have intrinsic value as God’s handiwork, or is it only valuable in service to humans? Today, practice stretching your circle of concern to include our fellow creatures on this beautiful planet that teems with precious life.

Questions for Today:

When have you witnessed obvious cruelty to an animal? How did you respond?

What would our society look like if we became more sensitive to the suffering of animals?

What happens to us if we become less sensitive to the suffering of our fellow creatures?

 

Melanie Lynn Griffin was an environmental lobbyist for many years. Now she is a freelance writer and pastor.

Seriously? This is Your Thanksgiving Post? Again?

OK – I guess this is going to be my annual Thanksgiving post. Lazy? Maybe. But I want to go hang out with my friends and eat lots of carbs and drink good wine. So enjoy your day, whatever you eat. Here is some food for thought:

Writing with Spirit

Thanksgiving Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Are you still a vegetarian?” people ask me from time to time, which I find odd. As if I might respond: “No, actually, I used to think it was unethical to murder animals and eat their flesh, but now I think it’s OK.” So yes, I am still a vegetarian, and since this post was so popular last Thanksgiving (surprisingly), and I have several thousand more readers this year (will wonders never cease), I will re-share my thoughts for Thanksgiving Day 2013. I wish you gratitude, whatever you eat.

Enjoy:

The last time I ate meat was Thanksgiving of 1978. Once each year, I would forsake vegetarianism to make my mother happy. But after I told her I could no longer partake, she always made a huge bowl of special stuffing with no meat juices, and I would obligingly eat the whole thing…

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Seriously? This is Your Thanksgiving Post? Again?

Thanksgiving Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Are you still a vegetarian?” people ask me from time to time, which I find odd. As if I might respond: “No, actually, I used to think it was unethical to murder animals and eat their flesh, but now I think it’s OK.” So yes, I am still a vegetarian, and since this post was so popular last Thanksgiving (surprisingly), and I have several thousand more readers this year (will wonders never cease), I will re-share my thoughts for Thanksgiving Day 2013. I wish you gratitude, whatever you eat.

Enjoy:

The last time I ate meat was Thanksgiving of 1978. Once each year, I would forsake vegetarianism to make my mother happy. But after I told her I could no longer partake, she always made a huge bowl of special stuffing with no meat juices, and I would obligingly eat the whole thing. (For her sake, of course.)

I don’t think much about being a vegetarian, except around Thanksgiving. Although the day is supposed to be about gratitude, it’s really about eating a huge dead bird and a bunch of carbs. (Also, football and clipping coupons in anticipation of Friday, which is National Greed Day.)

I don’t miss meat, really, although I suppose if I knew I had only one day to live, I might make a big, fat turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberry sauce and lettuce and mayo.

Because Thanksgiving is all about food, it seems a good day to point out a few of the perks of being a vegetarian:

• You will lose weight, unless you eat a lot of pasta, potatoes, or cheese.
• People will serve you extra pasta and potatoes because you didn’t get “the main course.”
• People will also serve you extra cheese because “you need your protein.”
• You won’t have to eat Aunt Mildred’s gizzard gravy at Thanksgiving.
• If you find yourself in a Native Alaskan village above the Arctic Circle, you will not have to eat the Caribou Head soup. They might give you an extra slice of chocolate cake instead. (Trust me on this one.)
• Your friends will become very solicitous, especially in restaurants, where they will tell the waiter, “My friend’s a vegetarian – do you have anything she can eat?” This will be said either in a loud voice, as if they are taking command of a difficult situation, or in a lowered voice, as if they don’t want to embarrass you by sharing your condition in public.
• You will have plenty of opportunity to practice your creativity, particularly in responding to the absurd question, “But what do you EAT?” The obvious answer is “everything you eat except the meat,” but I usually say something about foraging in the backyard for dandelions and onion grass.
• You will quickly realize how mature you are compared to certain friends, the ones who, even after decades of knowing you, will impale a piece of dead cow on a fork and wave it in your face, saying, “Doesn’t that look good? Don’t you want some?” Usually, these flesh-wavers are men, and they are married to your best friends.
• You will feel holier than thou most of the time, and will nod in benevolent compassion without a trace of condescension when a complete stranger on a plane feels compelled to explain why they still eat meat, or how they used to be a vegetarian but got diarrhea, or how “I want to, but with the kids and all…”

I Don’t Care What You Eat . . . Really

I think these plane strangers go into defensive mode because they fear I’m going to preach to them. But I’m not a proselytizing vegetarian. It’s not my business. People make their own choices for their own reasons.

The first time I met a vegetarian – even though she was rail thin and had a slightly greenish hue — I knew that I was one at heart. I stopped eating meat the day I moved out of my parent’s house at nineteen. I read a book called Animal Liberation, and that was it. It was an ethical thing. Fish followed meat, and by age 25, I was clean.

I’m an ovo-lacto, meaning I still eat eggs and cheese. I try to eat only organic eggs from free ranging chickens. For full health benefits, it’s best not to eat animal fats at all, but since my motivation is mostly ethical, I’m safe in my cheese addiction.

In Case you Care

If you’re one of those people who considers vegetarianism from time to time, I’ll just include a little info below for you. You can file these facts away in the crinkly recesses of your brain, and one day, who knows? You might just make the switch to other protein sources. It’s been good for my soul and my body, is all I’ll say.

If you are an avowed meat-eater, just ignore me.

If you are one of those people who waves dead flesh under your veggie friends’ noses – please stop.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

. VEGETARIAN DIETS:

• Reduce the risk of major killers such as heart disease, stroke and cancer while cutting exposure to foodborne pathogens
• Provide a viable answer to feeding the world’s hungry through more efficient use of grains and other crops
• Save animals from suffering in factory-farm conditions and from the pain and terror of slaughter
• Conserve vital but limited freshwater, fertile topsoil and other precious resources
• Preserve irreplaceable ecosystems such as rainforests and other wildlife habitats
• Decrease greenhouse gases that are accelerating global 
  warming
• Mitigate the ever-expanding environmental pollution of 
  animal agriculture

(From the North American Vegetarian Society’s website)

And: Cutting out meat can significantly cut your risk of cancer. Cutting out other animal fats helps as well   http://www.cancerproject.org/diet_cancer/facts/meat.php

A Rant About Violent Movies

So you want a rant, do you? What? You say you’re tired of the frothing at the mouth, end of the world, I-have-all-the-answers racket that goes on 24 hours a day now?

Me, too. But this one can’t be helped.

Creating Demand for Violence

The WordPress blogmeister has this thing called Mind the Gap where you present your “side” of an issue.  I rarely participate because as I say, I’m tired of negativity and division and general pointless opining.

But this week, they asked: Does watching violent movies inspire violence in the real world?

This is something personal to me, like being a vegetarian.

Several decades ago, I chose to stop supporting violence in the movies after I heard some producer saying that the reason they made so many violent movies was because that’s what people wanted. So I thought I would vote with my dollars.

I miss an awful lot of movies, and I often can’t join in conversations with my friends who have just seen a film I skipped because of violence. I’m sure some people think I’m eccentric or stodgy or overly dramatic. I don’t care.

I feel pretty strongly about this. I do not want that crap in my head. It is bad for my psyche. I think it’s bad for your psyche, too. And I think it’s bad for a budding young terrorist’s psyche.

Does it affect society? Damn straight it does. Frankly, I do not know and I do not care what studies show. It is common sense.

I cannot believe that people are seriously asking about the Boston bombers, “How could a young man who grew up in America commit such an unspeakable act?”

Duh.

Garbage in, garbage out. Blood and gore in, blood and gore out.

I wonder if one reason so many people are on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds is that we’re all walking around with mild post-traumatic-stress-disorder from exposing ourselves to blood and guts and body parts and decapitations and stabbings and shootings and bombs.

That is not entertainment to me. It is trauma.

At best, we can brace ourselves for violence in a film, inure ourselves, numb ourselves. How is that good? Why should I pay money for that?

This is not an unpleasant reality we’re forced to face, like a Boston Marathon bombing; it is an unpleasant fake reality people choose to subject themselves to. It’s a cheap, low-blow to the gut that makes people think they have seen an effective movie.

Remember the great Alfred Hitchcock films? Those scary movies from the 40s and 50s and 60s that practically made you pee your pants?  Yet in his most celebrated films, the murders always took place off stage. Maybe the shadow of a knife.

You lost none of the drama – in fact the subtlety contributed to the terror. Until the Psycho shower scene, when Hitchcock gave in to the pull of violence, and we started our inexorable plunge down the drain to the cesspool we’re in now.

We Don’t Even Recognize Violence Anymore

The other night I went to a movie at my local theater.

“Is it violent?” I asked at the ticket window.

“Noooo,” the guy said, considering.

“You don’t sound too sure,” I said. He knows me. I ask this question every week.

“Well, two older women walked out of the last show, but it’s not that bad.”

“That’s OK,” I said. I went home and watched a Downton Abbey episode instead.

I found out later that the whole movie was about violence, but one friend explained that it really wasn’t violent because it had a redemptive ending where the guy decides not to pull the trigger (this, after several hours of carnage).

One Voice for Nonviolence – Plus One, Plus One, Plus…

I know it seems silly. One person’s choice to boycott gratuitous violence in movies won’t make a difference in what Hollywood does. True. One person might not make a difference. But if one person doesn’t start, it is guaranteed nothing will change.

It’s like being a vegetarian. Back in the early seventies when I quit eating meat, only one percent of Americans were vegetarians. I didn’t know one. Now – depending on whose polls you look at – it’s 5% to 13%. And that doesn’t include the 1/3 of the population that regularly eats vegetarian meals. This weekend I went to a local vegan festival and hundreds of people showed up. Here are two of them — perfectly normal folks.

Vegans are Sprouting up Everywhere

Eating meat is not good for me. Watching violent scenes is not good for me. I don’t think either of those things is good for you either, but I’m not going to get in your business. You make your own choices. But at least think about it, OK?

And a last word from the Bible, because I like the Bible:

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. “

Thanks to Publicdomainpictures.net

Connecting to “The Other” — A Daily Prompt

“The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is,” according to the father of modern horticulture. I have to share that with you, because I was told to do so.

The WordPress Daily Prompt asks:  “Do you have a favorite quote that you return to again and again? What is it, and why does it move you?”

Daily Prompt: Quote Me | The Daily Post.

DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO

I have mixed feelings about the WordPress Daily Prompts:

• I don’t need new ideas to write about — my problem is that everything in the universe prompts me to write, and I have to pull myself away from the computer. I have enough I’d like to share without some amorphous power in the cloud-sky giving me suggestions.
• This makes clear another issue I have with the Daily Prompts : I am not a fan of authority figures, and YOU CAN”T TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT! I know this is my baggage, but there you have it.
• I also don’t like following a crowd; I fancy myself a one-of-a-kind blogger, which is, of course, ridiculous. Not only that, but I also have a great need to belong that is diametrically opposed to what I just said about not being part of a crowd of Daily Prompt writers.

Anyway, enough of my stuff spilling out onto the page. I do love that quote from Liberty Hyde Bailey, so I thought I’d share.

Liberty Hyde Bailey
Photo: Wikipedia

PLANTS, HUMANS AND OTHER ANIMALS

“The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is.”

I believe this to be absolutely true. Although the deep feeling and sympathy can sometimes lead to grief, I do not believe that this conflicts with happiness. Because grief and compassion make us more fully human, I think that it ultimately results in a deeper, more genuine happiness — joy.

It’s fabulous that a horticulturalist said this. I imagine he was talking, at least in part, about plants. Still, his sentiments have caused me to murder more plants because they drove my decision to become a vegetarian. I want to walk gently on the earth, and cause as little pain and suffering as I possibly can, beginning with sentient beings. (Sorry, zucchini.)

I once believed that I had “too many” friends because I was too busy. But God kept putting new people in my life that I found fascinating, beautiful, comforting, or fun. I once went on a retreat with a bunch of other people in their 30s and 40s, and one woman said to me, “Let’s pretend we’re Buddhist nuns, OK?” I mean, how could you NOT want to be friends with that person?

Buddhist Nun
Photo: Creative Commons

I now realize that my particular personality is created to have a great number of points of contact. It is how I connect with the many aspects of the Divine. What a wonderful, diverse world we live in! I have had the incredible joy of swimming with dolphins and sea turtles, harvesting spring asparagus and peas, debating spiritual truths in my book group, and being deeply in love with a musician, a historian, and a woodworker. Seriously – I am uber-blessed and intend to keep experiencing as much of life as God cares to show me. I just pray that my eyes and my heart will remain open.

MAKING PEACE

Because I have signed on to be a Blogger for Peace, I will warn you that these points of contact complicate life immensely. Not only could you find yourself eschewing veal or factory-bred chicken, you might have to start paying attention to what your government is doing. For instance:

• How do we choose between killing Palestinian children and Israeli children? Do we just adopt policies and produce weapons that will kill both, to even things out?
• U.S. drones are murdering countless innocent children without Americans risking as much as the finger that pressed the launch button. How un-connected can one be? What percentage of your tax money goes towards building drones?
• Abortion: wherever you are, has it occurred to you that the people on “the other side” care deeply about the life and well-being of others? Could you imagine really listening to them, instead of judging and condemning them?

~I wish you joy, peace, and connection in 2013~

Seriously? This is Your Thanksgiving Post?

Thanksgiving Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last time I ate meat was Thanksgiving of 1978. Once each year, I would forsake vegetarianism to make my mother happy. But after I told her I could no longer partake, she always made a huge bowl of special stuffing with no meat juices, and I would obligingly eat the whole thing. (For her sake, of course.)

I don’t think much about being a vegetarian, except around Thanksgiving. Although the day is supposed to be about gratitude, it’s really about eating a huge dead bird and a bunch of carbs. (Also, football and clipping coupons in anticipation of Friday, which is National Greed Day.)

I don’t miss meat, really, although I suppose if I knew I had only one day to live, I might make a big, fat turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberry sauce and lettuce and mayo.

Because Thanksgiving is all about food, it seems a good day to point out a few of the perks of being a vegetarian:

• You will lose weight, unless you eat a lot of pasta, potatoes, or cheese.
• People will serve you extra pasta and potatoes because you didn’t get “the main course.”
• People will also serve you extra cheese because “you need your protein.”
• You won’t have to eat Aunt Mildred’s gizzard gravy at Thanksgiving.
• If you find yourself in a Native Alaskan village above the Arctic Circle, you will not have to eat the Caribou Head soup. They might give you an extra slice of chocolate cake instead. (Trust me on this one.)
• Your friends will become very solicitous, especially in restaurants, where they will tell the waiter, “My friend’s a vegetarian – do you have anything she can eat?” This will be said either in a loud voice, as if they are taking command of a difficult situation, or in a lowered voice, as if they don’t want to embarrass you by sharing your condition in public.
• You will have plenty of opportunity to practice your creativity, particularly in responding to the absurd question, “But what do you EAT?” The obvious answer is “everything you eat except the meat,” but I usually say something about foraging in the backyard for dandelions and onion grass.
• You will quickly realize how mature you are compared to certain friends, the ones who, even after decades of knowing you, will impale a piece of dead cow on a fork and wave it in your face, saying, “Doesn’t that look good? Don’t you want some?” Usually, these flesh-wavers are men, and they are married to your best friends.
• You will feel holier than thou most of the time, and will nod in benevolent compassion without a trace of condescension when a complete stranger on a plane feels compelled to explain why they still eat meat, or how they used to be a vegetarian but got diarrhea, or how “I want to, but with the kids and all…”

I Don’t Care What You Eat …. Really

I think these plane strangers go into defensive mode because they fear I’m going to preach to them. But I’m not a proselytizing vegetarian. It’s not my business. People make their own choices for their own reasons.

The first time I met a vegetarian – even though she was rail thin and had a slightly greenish hue — I knew that I was one at heart. I stopped eating meat the day I moved out of my parent’s house at nineteen. I read a book called Animal Liberation, and that was it. It was an ethical thing. Fish followed meat, and by age 25, I was clean.

I’m an ovo-lacto, meaning I still eat eggs and cheese. I try to eat only organic eggs from free ranging chickens. For full health benefits, it’s best not to eat animal fats at all, but since my motivation is mostly ethical, I’m safe in my cheese addiction.

In Case you Care

If you’re one of those people who considers vegetarianism from time to time, I’ll just include a little info below for you. You can file these facts away in the crinkly recesses of your brain, and one day, who knows? You might just make the switch to other protein sources. It’s been good for my soul and my body, is all I’ll say.

If you are an avowed meat-eater, just ignore me.

If you are one of those people who waves dead flesh under your veggie friends’ noses – please stop.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

. VEGETARIAN DIETS:

• Reduce the risk of major killers such as heart disease, stroke and cancer while cutting exposure to foodborne pathogens
• Provide a viable answer to feeding the world’s hungry through more efficient use of grains and other crops
• Save animals from suffering in factory-farm conditions and from the pain and terror of slaughter
• Conserve vital but limited freshwater, fertile topsoil and other precious resources
• Preserve irreplaceable ecosystems such as rainforests and other wildlife habitats
• Decrease greenhouse gases that are accelerating global 
  warming
• Mitigate the ever-expanding environmental pollution of 
  animal agriculture

(From the North American Vegetarian Society’s website)

And: Cutting out meat can significantly cut your risk of cancer. Cutting out other animal fats helps as well   http://www.cancerproject.org/diet_cancer/facts/meat.php