For the Love of Animals

June 30, 2024

Upwellings

© Linda Ankrah-Dove

As if in unchanging tidal currents solitude brings me me quiet soothings in my peaceful home. My body floats, my mind calms, spacious with the lulling cycles of the once-steady seasons.

I think of our mammal cousins—whales slow-swinging easy with the ceaseless ocean rhythms, rising to breathe the essential air, blowing rainbow spouts across the sloping waves.

But in these frenetic times, the climate calendar's constant clangings trigger me. And I feel just how our mammal cousins startle when oil-rigs and mining drills roil their waters and sonar blasts bruise their brains.

I have choice. In my peaceful home, I choose to stay away from clamor. But the whales? The vast tankers of the world crowd them out, contaminate their only home—China’s chicken, oil from the Gulf, Thai shrimp, Brazilian steel, fashion jeans from Bangladesh.

Our own rigs and tankers ply polluting particulates and poisons from port to port. The whales choke on metal caps, starve on krill stuffed with microscopic specks of glass and plastic, suffocate in a soupy mercurial and nitrogenic air.

It’s as if the oceans’ hidden hollows are hoarding for the apocalypse— Plastic cups, plastic knives and forks, cigarettes, beer bottles, baked-bean cans, burger wrappers, fishing nets, and, for the end of days, aspirins, antacids, stool softeners and anesthetizing opioids.

For my peaceful home, for my spacious days, for the lulling of my mind as if on gentle ocean waves—for all that grace—I am grateful. But I so weep for our big, imperiled cousins and I so struggle how to do to them no more harm in my living ways.

HUU Message by Lee Anna Farrall

Most of us have had the opportunity to get to know many animals, on at least a superficial level. Some of us enjoy watching birds in our yard, seeing deer while on a hike in the woods, or we get excited if we notice dolphins on a trip to the beach.

If you’ve had the opportunity to know animals on a deeper, more personal level, I think you will agree they have unique personalities. And most of us have felt the unconditional love of an animal, the kind of bond that seems to go deeper than even some of our human connections. They love us, we love them, and we feel grief when their life comes to an end.

As many of you may already know, my favorite animals are cats. I recall a photograph of me at the age of two, trying my best to hug a family cat that was nearly as big a me. I attribute my fondness for cats to first, when I was very young my dad gave me the nickname of “kitten” and second, at least one cat has been a member of my family nearly all the years of my life.

For as long as I can remember, I have felt a deep connection to a wide variety of animals. When my family lived in South Carolina, I recall having a fascination with the small color-changing lizards (called anoles) that would crawl across our screen windows. A few years later, in Key West, I marveled at the abundance of sea creatures we saw whenever we went snorkeling in the ocean. During summer vacations, visiting my grandparents in Southern Virginia, I became friends with the cows, geese, box terrapin turtles, salamanders, crawdads, grandaddy long leg spiders, and even the occasional garter snake. My goal was to be their caretaker, trying to keep them from getting injured and watching them live in a safe and peaceful environment, showing them respect and compassion.

In middle school, I enjoyed reading books by Jack London like Call of the Wild and White Fang. In high school, reading books like All Creatures Great and Small had me dreaming about becoming a veterinarian. I was inspired by James Herriot’s philosophy that “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”

Humans aren't the only animals to experience emotion. I believe all animals are sentient beings. They are capable of sensing or feeling, experiencing happiness, loneliness, sadness, fear and pain. Even if I can’t get animals to understand me, I have always made every effort to understand them.

It’s been shown that when animals feel for others, they're capable of acting on their empathy. There are countless stories and recorded incidents of animals coming to the rescue of others, including humans.

Although I wanted to be a veterinarian, when I found out how competitive admission to veterinary school is, I chose instead to be a nurse and care for human animals. Working for many years as an operating room nurse, I saw firsthand, from the inside out, how unhealthy habits could damage the human body, leading to preventable chronic disease and premature death. This led to an insatiable desire to learn about ways to improve health, first through exercise and later through food choices, and to then share that knowledge with others. In my early adult years, I focused more on exercise than on food. I was able to eat most anything I wanted and could maintain or even lose weight if I exercised enough.

Growing up on the typical standard American diet (interestingly sometimes referred to as SAD), I based my food choices on the pyramid model that said we needed milk, meat and eggs as well as fruits, grains and vegetables to have a balanced diet. Nearly every meal I prepared for my family included beef, pork or chicken. And we always ate the recommended daily servings of dairy products – milk, yogurt and cheese, lots of cheese. Whole grains, fruits and vegetables were eaten as an afterthought in those days.

Fortunately, the advancement of scientific research and enlightenment through self-education expanded my viewpoint on the definition of healthy eating over the past decade. Gradually, I switched to eating more chicken and less pork and beef and increased the amounts of whole grains, fruits and vegetables that I consumed. Coincidentally, these changes probably occurred when health experts replaced the pyramid model with the healthy plate model.

Fast forward to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, we all had reason to focus on ways to keep or improve our health. Knowing that heart disease is the leading cause of death in America and has been the cause of diminished health and even death in my family, I decided during the pandemic to become more proactive about my personal health.

During a discussion with my son about ways to improve my eating habits, he mentioned an event known as Veganuary. Veganuary is an annual challenge run by a UK nonprofit organization that promotes and educates about veganism by encouraging people to follow a vegan lifestyle for the entire month of January. I spent a lot of December 2020 researching what is involved with eating vegan and watched plant-based eating documentaries like “What the Health” and “Forks Over Knifes.” On January 4th, 2021, I switched to eating as a vegan and I don’t plan to ever stop.

Being vegan has been not only a journey, but also an adventure. I have discovered so many different types of foods and ways to cook that I never knew existed before. I love to cook and find it exciting to share new to me foods and recipes with others. The internet and Instagram have provided me with connection to many other people who have found pleasure in cooking vegan style. I am also happy to report that my health was significantly improved by making the switch to vegan. My blood pressure, A1C, cholesterol and weight were much better within the first six months.

People often ask me if it’s difficult to be vegan. It is challenging, sometimes, to find certain food items that are needed for vegan cooking, especially in a community the size of ours. Finding local restaurants that offer vegan options is even harder. The biggest struggle for me is repeatedly having to explain why I choose to eat only plant-based foods, especially to some members of my immediate family. I am very grateful for members of my chosen family, the Unitarian Universalist community, for supporting me on my vegan journey and being inquisitive about it rather than shaming.

As I continued to explore veganism, I watched more documentaries, like “Dominion”, “Seaspiracy” and “Cowspiracy”, to learn about issues related specifically to animal exploitation. These are difficult videos to watch, but they show the reality of how brutal and inhumane factory farming is. “Dominion” also includes information about the exploitation of animals for entertainment like in circuses and racing, as well as breeding animals through puppy mills and slaughtering animals for clothing.

We live in an area where we are surrounded by large scale dairy and poultry farms and hundreds of acres of land are dedicated to growing corn and soy that will be used to feed the animals on those farms. I think about how the land could be put to better use growing food for people instead of for livestock and the potential to reduce the pollution to local water sources and the suffering of thousands of non-human animals. After watching those films, I cannot in good conscience eat meat, knowing that animals suffered to produce that meat. I choose instead to show compassion and reverence to all animals by being vegan. Hinduism describes a kinship among all forms of life and calls humans to accept moral responsibility for that relationship. Hindu texts describe all creation as sacred and warn adherents to avoid cruelty to any being. Both Hindu and Buddhist traditions promote ahimsa, the avoidance of violence toward any sentient life form. Buddhists have known for millennia that animals are conscious, sentient beings, capable of suffering pain.

In a 1789 paper, renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that humans have an obligation to treat animals with respect because animals are sentient beings with the capacity to suffer.

Speciesism (term introduced in 1970) is the practice of treating one species as morally more important than members of another species. Society sees dogs as beloved companion animals, while it condemns cows, pigs, and chickens to a lifetime of suffering in our food system.

Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer condemns speciesism as a “prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of one’s own species and against those members of other species.”

When we define animals as “food” or “clothing” or “entertainment, " we assign a value to sentient creatures that's measured only in terms of their usefulness to us as products or commodities. In restaurants and grocery stores, for example, we refer to “chicken” in the singular, as if that individual doesn't represent one of 66 billion sentient beings abused and killed around the world each year. Our language obscures the reality of countless other animals suffering in our food system—like cows, pigs, goats, and sheep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” Naturalist writer Henry Beston wrote in his 1928 book, The Outermost House: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they moved finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with us in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

Universalist Unitarian Animal Ministries (UUAM) is a group of concerned Unitarian Universalists and UU friends who want to grow and express their faith as compassion towards all beings. They serve as a central source of nonhuman animal awareness and education for UUs by relating the religious and spiritual aspects of our tradition to justice and ethical issues. They provide a community to support one another. I discovered this group in the past year, as I was looking for ways to further blend my veganism with UU values and find support in a community wider than HUU.

Theologian, philosopher, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Albert Schweitzer wrote, “By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into spiritual relationship with the universe. By practicing reverence for life, we become good, deep and alive.”

I have a great interest in the UUAM Reverence for Life Program. Based on Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life Ethic, it helps Unitarian Universalists interested in understanding human relationships with other species. The program aims to deepen awareness that all life is interconnected and interdependent (UU 7th Principle) and all beings have inherent worth and dignity (UU 1st Principle). It supports congregations in beginning, growing, and revitalizing their animal ministries. Congregations may also seek certification as a Reverence for Life Congregation. Furthermore, individuals may become certified as “Reverencers”. I challenge everyone listening to this message to adopt at least one of the guiding principles of the UUAM.

• Extending the 1st and 7th UU principles to include non-human animalsbecause they have intrinsic value.

• Becoming more informed about non-human animal suffering.

• Seeking and promoting ecological justice, inspiring respect and reverencefor the earth and all its living creatures.

• Living in harmony with the natural world, which includes a deep respectand commitment to human as well as non-human animals.

• Embracing the inherent worth of every creature of all species and comecloser to creating a truly just world.

The Rev. Peter Morales, past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has called awareness of our connection to all life and the universe a “pillar of spiritual maturity.” Describing humane treatment of animals as an issue of faith, he makes this connection: “As president I would want to encourage compassion and awareness of interconnectedness in every aspect of our lives. When we truly learn to suffer with other creatures and accept our intimate connection with all beings we will begin to end exploitation, violence, war, racism, hatred, and oppression. The ethical treatment of animals is a natural and inevitable part of acting from a place of compassion.”

In closing, I further challenge you to consider practicing veganism, even if only for a week or a month. When we make vegan choices, we stand up for the meekest among us, those who rely entirely on our ability to show compassion. We can feel a different kind of connectedness to the universe by loving every animal, those we call our pets, wild animals and those who suffer on farms and in factory farms. If you have a true love for animals, start making vegan choices to align with that love. Expand your circle of compassion and the love will come back to you a thousand times. Thank you for listening.