Issue 158

November-December 2019

A Glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom

Horse Heroine

A family of coyotes was present while a white-tailed doe gave birth to her fawn near the Muth family’s house in Montana in 2006. The coyotes tried to maneuver the infant away from his mother while the doe was recovering from the birth. But the Muths’ elderly horse friend, Bonnie, an extraordinarily loving being, stood over the fawn licking him as though he were her own newborn colt, until his mother recovered from her labor. The coyotes gave up and moved on, and mother and baby escaped together. --From Unlikely Friendships by Jennifer S. Holland, pp. 97-99

Editor’s Corner Essay: What if God is the Water?

The recent July-August issue of PT featured, as an Unset Gem, the well-known parable by David Foster Wallace: “There were these two young fish who met a wise old fish swimming the other way. The older fish said “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” After the young fish had swum on a bit, one turned to the other and said “What the [heck] is water?”

Reflecting on the story, I suggested that many people think of God as like an invisible Supreme Fish who spawned all us other swimmers. Others believe that there is no such Supreme Fish. But what if God (or Goddess) is the unseen and unfelt Water in which we all swim? In this essay I’d like to explore this image further.

Most of us beings, like the young fishes, aren’t aware of the divine Water, which has always been there, and without which we couldn’t breathe, move about, interact, or exist. But among the swimmers there are a few exceptions who know they’re in water because they know another world of air: e.g., marine mammals such as whales and dolphins who rise to that other world to breathe, or even exuberantly leap through it for a few seconds. Similarly, there are wise humans (not all of them old) who know about God/dess. The sea-animal image doesn’t fit exactly; humans don’t leap momentarily out of God, but perceive her “experimentally,” as George Fox put it, meaning by direct experience. Of this more later.

Another way in which the water image does not fit well--or rather is limited--is that water, as far as we know, is impersonal only. In itself this non-consciousness is not a problem. Some people, including Friends, who believe firmly that God doesn’t exist might not have any difficulty affirming the existence of an impersonal divine force or forces surrounding and influencing us, with the Light, “That of God” which opens the heart and mind to deeper truth and insight, being the primary one for Quakers. Other divine forces in which we humans participate might be healing energy, physical or psychological; blessing energy, empowering the one blessed to grow and thrive; and, supremely, love, that which draws the separated together, promoting peace and joy, inspiring one to sacrificial action in emergencies. Persons who have taken part in a powerful peace vigil or demonstration may have experienced feelings of generosity and unselfish love, even toward bystanders who scorn and ridicule them, feelings they can’t muster when by themselves.

(Some of these forces, unhappily, can be perverted into their opposites; I think it likely that all can. It is well known that many members of an angry, violence-bent crowd can join to commit atrocities such as lynchings that as individuals they wouldn’t touch--so-called mob psychology. If there is a healing force, there may be a toxic force that inhibits healing and promotes sickness; if there is blessing energy, there may be cursing energy that stunts and impoverishes others; if there is a divine Light that leads to insight and understanding, there is also a dark energy that promotes lying, confusion, and delusion. See The Powers That Be by Walter Wink.)

However, it is not wise to limit the Divine to impersonal forces. Concepts of a Greek medieval thinker little-known in the West, Gregory Palamas, can be adapted to organize our thinking here. Gregory, whose dates are 1296 - 1359, first proposed a distinction between God’s Essence and God’s Energies. What he had in mind is clearer in the original Greek: Essence in Greek is ousia, that which subsists in itself, and is dependent on nothing else; energies, energeia, derive from Essence. We cannot know God’s essence, says Gregory, or express it in words; but we are conscious of being linked to God through his energies. By analogy, we cannot experience the sun itself, but its warmth and light enable us, and all living beings and plants, to exist and thrive. I will adapt the distinction as the Conscious and the Impersonal dimensions of God.

The reason it is unwise to limit the Divine thus is that many persons have had direct experiences of God as both conscious and loving, and experience is probably the primary standard of truth, at least to Quakers, and certainly to everyone who has, as some time[s], felt union or communion with God/dess. Their narratives should not be disregarded. Some humans have ongoing intuitions of her presence, as some embryos or fetuses apparently have of their mothers (see David B. Chamberlain, Windows to the Womb); some have one or more powerful incidents of such union/communion, as did George Fox. In the course of my studies in Near-Death Experiences, I have encountered a great many such accounts from people who have been near death, and the dramatic transformation and empowerment that results in most of them is very impressive.

I have personally been deeply influenced by the mystical experience of Faith Bowman in 1974, described in “Wound Round With Mercy,” PT 49 . Briefly, while nursing her baby in the middle of the night in a state of utter exhaustion, she suddenly experienced the presence of God as an oceanic mother pouring out life and love to every living being, including herself and, through her, to her baby. It was utterly blissful. This experience was clearly shaped by her circumstances, by the enormous impact that being a new mother was having on her psyche. It is clear that cultural and individual factors influence such experiences, and that many of them, from different cultures, must be studied, compared, and contrasted with one another if we are to evaluate them justly.

Probably the main difficulty non-theists have with God as Infinite Consciousness pouring out Infinite Love is the problem of evil. The world doesn’t at all look like a place run by a God who is both supremely loving and all-powerful. Perhaps the problem is at least partly in the conception of power inherent in the patriarchal roots of most societies, and persisting even now. Seeing God as king seemed, and still seems to many Westerners, to be very appropriate. The monarch is supreme in his society; at times he was considered to have special spiritual power that enabled him to rule human society well. A society falling into chaos, corruption, or violence is one whose king has failed in his job. The king must sometimes use force to check and surmount the destructive elements and parties in his realm.

And God clearly doesn’t. I suspect that the king image, and all other patriarchal images, must be closely questioned, and that some, even in the scriptures of major religions, would be better discarded. Process theologians go so far as to reject the concept of divine omnipotence completely, and assert that God works by inspiring, drawing, “luring”--but never compelling--humans toward increasing creativity, love, and fulfillment. I confess that I know very little about God/dess, but I am inclined to agree.

Usually people think of God / the Divine either as personal or impersonal, but not both. A favorite analogy used by mystics to express union with God as personal is the Sacred Marriage; an image of mystical union with God as impersonal is iron or steel heating in a fire until it glows or melts. But there is a problem with the term “personal,” which suggests a person, an individual with his or her own quirks and characteristics. As the ocean image emphasizes, God is not a person with “his” characteristic traits--either possessive or generous, patient or impatient, dominating or indulgent. Unlike a person (from the Latin persona, mask), whom we will always think of as finite, consciousness can conceivably be infinite: the source, matrix, and telos of goal of all individual consciousnesses.

Infinite consciousness is in accordance with infinite love: a God/dess who shares the consciousness of all beings at all times must will their thriving, because she experiences it herself. She cannot hate or want to ultimately destroy any of them, though s/he can certainly be opposed to the destructive deeds and mindsets of many, both on a cultural and an individual level. “‘As surely as I live,’ declares the One Who Is, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from their evil ways. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die . . . ?’” (Eze. 33:11) And regarding the actions of one being to another, “when you did it to one of the least of these my [sisters and] brothers, you did it to me” (Mat. 25:40). God/dess is the matrix who joins us all. Evil often flourishes, both culturally and individually, because most incarnate beings, still unaware of the “water,” do not hear or heed, and therefore the infinite love of God/dess cannot, or does not, reach them. Their deafness is not primarily due to wrongdoing, but simply to finitude. Thus the crucial importance of the prophetic call and prophetic action. Both for the sake of those who perpetrate evil and of those who are their victims, we who do hear the call must speak up and act for life and love. The sufferings of the human victims of oppression or genocide, the sufferings of the chickens and pigs in the factory farm and the slaughterhell, are the sufferings of God/dess.

Taken in this sense, in order to answer the wise old fish’s question ”how’s the water?” we must come, more and more, to know the One Who Is. And mystics such as Faith Bowman can tell us that to fully know Her/Him is not only a heavy, sometimes painful responsibility. It is also

bliss unutterable.

--Editor

(The nursing mother in the photograph is not Faith Bowman.)

NewsNotes

EPA to End Animal Tests

The Environmental Protection Agency is phasing out testing chemicals on animals. The deadline is a long way off--2035--but the process will begin well before that. See Phasing Out

Joachin Phoenix at Pig Vigil

Actor Joachin Phoenix (pictured), who has been an animal-championing vegan since his early years, came to the weekly vigil at a Farmer John’s L.A. slaughterhell recently to film a portion of his TV show. It is heartening to see people using their celebrity status to benefit our enslaved animal cousins. See Phoenix

PACT Measure

The Prevent Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) is the self-explaining title of a bill that has been passed by both houses of Congress. (With exceptions, of course, for the torture inflicted by the meat industries and research.) A rare bipartisan measure, it helps a little both to pacify partisan hostility in Congress, and in the process, to benefit people as well as animals. See PAC

Kapporos Report from Brooklyn

Jill Carnegie, Campaign Strategist of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, reports that the Hasidic community that uses chickens in Kaporos seems to be growing more receptive to the message of compassion in the actions of the Alliance. See Kaporos

Unset Gems

“All the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field are communities like your own. . . . Before the Lord they will all be gathered.”--Qu’ran

"Animals are such agreeable friends --they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."

--George Eliot

Letter: A.J. Morey

I am late responding to the September-October Peaceable Kingdom, but wanted to express my appreciation for the spotlight on Richard Phillips. I believe I recognized his name from a manuscript [I] reviewed for Penn State about animal advocacy (although maybe not--the time frame isn't congruent.). In any event, I was struck by how much courage and serendipity played a role in his successful advocacy. Clearly, he was a person of remarkable conscience and empathy.

Much the same is true today, although certainly being vegetarian is no longer a strange preference, having become integrated into cultural eating habits. Vegan, not so much!--A.J.M.

Pioneer: Thomas Tryon, 1634 - 1703

Thomas Tryon, born into the English working class in 1634, lived up to his surname by trying on different occupations--spinning, shepherding, hatting--as well as sampling one or two of the spiritual movements proliferating at that time.

He had taught himself to read and write, and his investigation of the powerful but obscure writings of German mystic Jacob Boehme brought about a spiritual conversion. "The blessed day-star of the Lord began to arise and shine in my heart and soul, and the [female] Voice of Wisdom . . . called upon me for separation and self-denial. . ." At first he limited his diet to water, bread, and fruit, but later he believed that his spiritual guide Wisdom allowed him to include butter and cheese as well.

His vegetarian regime was not motivated only by asceticism; when he began to write, in his middle years, he referred to it as "innocency of living," an allusion to the life of Eden:

For there is greater evil and misery attends mankind by killing, horrifying and oppressing his fellow creatures and eating their flesh . . . than is generally apprehended or imagined. Man's strong inclination after flesh and his making so light and small a matter of killing and oppressing the inferior creatures, does manifest what principle has got the dominion in him; for had man continued . . . in the power of the humane nature and followed the voice and dictates of the divine principle which he was created to live in, he would have been far from oppressing, killing or eating the flesh and blood of the beasts, which was not allowed him in the beginning. . . [M]an was created to . . . live in the power of the divine principle and therefore was put into a garden amongst innocent herbs, fruits and grains which were intended and ordained for his food . . . [I]t should be considered that flesh and fish cannot be eaten without violence and doing that which a man would not be done unto . . .

Tryon was also convinced that the vegetarian diet was optimal for health, and wrote books, including a cookbook, with this emphasis.

Now, the sorts of foods and drinks that breed the best blood and finest spirits are herbs, fruits and various kind of grains . . . so likewise oil is an excellent thing of nature, more sublime and pure than butter."

He objected to meat consumption partly because

flesh has more matter for corruption, and nothing so soon turns to putrefaction. Now, 'tis certain, such sorts of food as are subject to putrify before they are eaten, are also liable to the same afterwards.

He held that the cruelty inflicted upon animals affected those who ate them:

over-driving, abuses of cruel butchers . . . renders their flesh still more unwholesome.

He was very much aware that cultural numbing is involved in making people oblivious to the horror of a meat market.

What an ill and ungrateful sight is it to behold dead carcasses and pieces of bloody, raw flesh! It would undoubtedly appear dreadful and no man but would abhor to think of putting it in his mouth, had not Use and Custom from generation to generation familiarised it to us . . . .

Tryon did not limit his pen to the issue of vegetarianism; he wrote as well on the evils of Black enslavement, on education, economics, and simplicity of life. His advocacy of silent worship and pacifism appear to have been influences on the beginnings of the Society of Friends.—Derived from The Heretic's Feast by Colin Spencer

Reproduced from the August, 2005 PT

Book Review: We Are the Weather

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safron Foer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. 272 pages. $25.00 hardcover.

Here is the sequel we have been waiting for to Jonathan Foer's 2009 bestseller, Eating Animals. That book hit us with a devastating critique of factory farms, and admonitions on how we keep them going by the way we consume the products of the tortured, unnatural lives they impose on their victims. Now the focus moves more directly to the devastation of the planet as a whole as a result of unwholesome animal agriculture. We are shown through indisputable scientific evidence that the methane and other products of beasts bred for meat is a huge factor in global warming, with all the dire consequences it will have for human (and animal) life on this small globe.

Two major emphases emerge from this varied and colorful exposition. First, Foer penetrates the mystery of how we both know and don't know what is coming climate-wise. We humans are programmed to respond avidly and immediately to threats to ourselves and the compact groups, family and clan, to which we belong; this was what was important, no doubt, to our paleolithic ancestors. Larger and vaguer dangers, the ice age then, warming now, we may be aware of but ignore because they are big, slow, and seemingly not relevant to our lives on this precise day and hour.

As an example, Foer tells the true story of Jan Karski, a young Polish Catholic, who after many adventures managed to escape Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942, determined to tell the world what was happening in his homeland, particularly to the Jews. In 1943 Karski met with U. S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, himself a Jew and distinguished jurist, and told him of the Warsaw ghetto and the extermination camps. Frankfurter's response was, "I am unable to believe what you told me." He later explained that he did not mean that Karski was lying, only that he was unable to believe him, that is, to make this horrific reality a part of his mental structure: "My mind, my heart, they are made in such a way that I cannot accept it"---the incredible but true horrors of the Holocaust and the "Final Solution."

In the same way, Foer argues, we may know about a coming climate catastrophe, but are unable to believe it; it is just too big and too over-the-horizon. So we choose not to make that looming threat a part of our daily lives, preferring living with challenges and opportunities closer to hand as we always have. But what of our children and grandchildren, or the next generation generally? Foer relates that his own Jewish grandmother also managed to flee occupied Poland, alone as a teenage girl, and to this heroic act he owes his own life, as she did hers, and that of his children. How long, and in the face of how many forewarnings, can we refuse to believe, in Frankfurter's sense of the word?

Even if we do believe, what can we do? Foer says, "Conversations about meat, dairy, and eggs make people defensive. They make people annoyed. No one who isn't a vegan is eager to go there, and the eagerness of vegans can be a further turnoff" (p. 64). But, coming to his central message, he reiterates that "we cannot save the planet unless we significantly reduce our consumption of animal products." (ibid.)

That is the main point of this book, and a good one it is. But a couple of caveats: the meat industry of course insists that the global warming impact of animal agriculture, especially as it is done in the U.S., is relatively minor compared to that of fossil fuel, and should not be so singled out. I doubt that self-serving claim, and in any case I oppose meat for other reasons as well. But we need to be aware and be sure we have the facts straight.

Second, Foer comes across as more of a reductionist than a straight vegan, even affirming the policy of some middle-of-the-roaders, "no animal products before dinner." (Hence the subtitle, "Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast," and, presumably, at lunch, but perhaps not necessarily dinner.) This will irritate those of us who believe firmly in a vegan diet, but of course it must be acknowledged that fewer animal products is certainly better than no reductionism at all, and may well do more good for the planet if practiced by many rather than only by the small number--all there is so far--the of pure vegans. This willing-to-reduce multitude is the crowd for whom Foer is writing; the vegans are already convinced.

I have to say that We Are the Weather is rather rambling in style, jumping from one story to another, with more digressions and apparent disorganization than I personally would prefer. But that's like our thinking on this difficult topic as well So often weacknowledge it, then think about something else. Somehow the book comes together in the end as an unforgettable encounter with realitieswe would rather forgetbut are there nonetheless. Whatever you now believe, in Justice Frankfurter’s sense, you need Foer's work as part of your creed. A good book, too, to offer friends who are almost ready to believe and begin to do something about it.

--Robert Ellwood

Recipe: Sugar-Free Apple Cake

1 ½ C. whole-wheat flour

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. soda

⅓ C. oil (or water)

1 C. frozen apple juice concentrate

1 T. lemon juice

1 tsp. vanilla

1 large apple, grated

½ C. raisins

½ C. chopped walnuts

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately at first, then combine to moisten evenly. Pour into 8 x 8-inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

This cake won first prize at the Alaska State Fair.

--Nancy Renk

From The Peaceable Kitchen: A Vegetarian Cookbook produced by Sandpoint (Idaho) Friends

Reprinted with Permission

Songs: Anonymous, Samuel Trevor Francis, Faith Bowman

We All Come From the Goddess (Chant)

We all come from the Goddess

And to her we shall return

Like a drop--of--rain,

Flowing to the ocean

(See We All Come )

I have not been able to find the author or composer of this chant.

O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,

Flowing like a mighty ocean

In its fullness over me

Underneath me, all around me,

Past the reach of mind or sight

Drawing out to One eternal

Is the tidal flow of Light.

. . . .

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Folds all loves into a Whole;

‘Tis the source of all things living

‘Tis my longing spirit’s goal.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,

‘Tis the heaven of heavens to me;

And it drowns me deep in glory

And it lifts me up to thee.

--S.T.F., F.L.B.

(See O the Deep Love )

The Peaceable Table is a project of Quaker Animal Kinship, a non-profit organization also known as the Animal Kinship Committee of Orange Grove Friends Meeting, Pasadena, California. It is intended to resume the witness of that excellent vehicle of the Friends Vegetarian Society of North America, The Friendly Vegetarian, which appeared quarterly between 1982 and 1995.

The journal is intended to be interactive; contributions, including illustrations, are invited for the next issue. Deadline for submissions for the Jan-Feb 2020 issue will be Dec. 26. Send to graciafay@gmail.com or 14 Krotona Hill, Ojai, CA 93023. Donations to offset the cost of supplies, printing, and postage are welcome. Send checks to Robert Ellwood, Treasurer, 14 Krotona Hill, Ojai, CA 93023. You can also use PayPal.

Editor: Gracia Fay Ellwood

Reviewer: Robert S. Ellwood

Technical Architect: Richard Scott Lancelot Ellwood