I feel the need to start out with a small prayer, ”Lord give me wisdom in my actions and words and love for the beautiful people of the world you created and brought to life.  Lord I know that you love and value all people in the same way you love and value me – with a love so vast I can not truly understand it.  Lord let me hold that love in my heart, and on my tongue.  Lord help me to express that love so that those around me may see it, feel it, and experience it and in doing so experience you Lord.  Amen”

Friends, you are different from me.  In fact, we are all a little bit different from one another.  God made each of us this way.  We are not the same for a reason.  God revels in our differences, to him they are beautiful because our differences each express a different facet of the beautiful and brilliant pure diamond-like beauty of his nature.   

The devil hates this.  So in his subtle and devious ways he has used innocent and often righteous situations to his advantage.  Turning us against one another.  Making us hate because we don’t all agree on everything.  Making sure we don’t agree and making it impossible to respect those who don’t see it our way.  Instead of admiring the beauty of the diamond’s facets we are cut upon it’s brilliantly sharp edges scattering and diving us. 

Democrat or Republican, back or white, vegan or not.  It seems we must hate (put down, insult, twisting the truth to fit our perspective) those who are not what we are.  Why?  One of the beautiful things about living in a free democracy was supposed to be freedom of speech.  This freedom is often used to spout hatred in the disguise of opinion, news stories, and religion. 

I say all of this to lead up to “Meat Out Day” March 20.  Let’s explore a bit of background regarding this movement.  It started in 1985 with the Farm Animal Rights Movement or FARM (farmusa.org).  From their meatout.org website we read, “MeatOut was designed to remind us of animal agriculture’s devastating impact to the animals, our health, and the environment.”   FARM Animal Rights Movement (FARM) is the world’s first and longest-operating organization dedicated to advocacy for animals raised, abused, and killed for food. Co-founded by chemist, environmental consultant, social justice organizer, and Holocaust survivor  Dr. Alex Hershaft, FARM’s roots date back to 1976.  The mission of Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) is to end the use of animals for food through traditional media, social media, and video outreach. (quote from website farmusa.org).

Ok, I’m going to stop right there for a minute.  When we as agriculturalists hear phrases like, “agriculture’s devastating impact to the animals, our health, and the environment,” and, “animals raised, abused, and killed for food.” Our hair stands on end a bit.  No one wants to be a part of abusing animals, killing people through abusing their health, and making the world a worse place to live through environmental degredation.  But here’s the beautiful thing, a secret it seems that we all don’t seem to recognize. This is important, so please don’t miss it. We ALL want the SAME things.  None of us like animal abuse, very few of us are search for ways to destroy our health and bodies, and the beauty and resources of this world are precious to us all.  Vegan or meat eater, black or white, democrat or republican; we all want the same things ultimately.  We just have different ways and perspectives about accomplishing the same goals.  We are different so we can provide the checks and balances for each other.  Making the world a better place and each other better people.

Example and hard truth time.  The organization FARM is in existence for a reason.  It was created because people saw a need to protect animals being produced for food.  They felt that the industrial agricultural industry needed some checks and balances.  It did! The quest for wealth and the industrialization process often comes at the expense of ethics, values and trampling on the weak and defenseless.  It is history.  It happens over and over again.  Many animals were, and very possibly still are, abused.   Has the revelation of many of these atrocities made a difference?  Yes.  Our world is a place that needs checks and balances.  We need different perspectives, different political parties, different cultures and yes, even different opinions. To be honest, I applaud FARM for desiring to protect the ethical treatment of animals. We should all want to protect and care for animals. God asked us to do so. They should not be abused or treated in unethical ways. I don’t agree with everything they stand for and I will discuss that a bit this next week but for now…

This Week’s Food For Thought

Instead of ranting, bashing, yelling, and name calling can we try to understand why others feel like they do.  There is probably some wisdom to be gleaned from trying to see the other side.  You don’t have to agree with everything, but you might be surprised to find you agree with more than you might think.

To Be Continued…