Praying with the animals

In a true syncretistic fashion, Dora and I have decided to go vegan for Lent, after she was encouraged to do so in her Buddhist (Community of Interbeing) group.

Having more or less avoided animal products for a few weeks now, it's time to take stock. It appears to be a multiple win-win so far. Not only are (we hope) the planet and the animals we would otherwise have caused to be slaughtered benefiting, but we are enjoying the diet and feeling good. It's been no sacrifice at all. I have discovered I really like soya milk and soya yoghurt, and houmus serves as a good cheese substitute. It may be the smell of bacon that does for me in the end, but up to now it hasn't bothered me.

There is an interesting article here about the psychological tangle that carnivorous humans have been in ever since we evolved the capacity to emphathize. (Actually the article's about a lot of other things too, but you can find the passage I'm referring to by searching for the word "elaborate"). We are keenly aware that animals don't want to be killed and have adopted all sorts of mental ploys to enable ourselves to feel OK when doing so. The author of the article assumes that we're stuck with the conundrum -- that "we need to kill". If veganism is as viable as it seems to be, then he's wrong on that specific point, but I sense that he's right about the psychology -- that this dilemma is very ancient and runs very deep, so much so that it may had a major influence on our whole conception of how it feels to be human.

What I am wondering is whether our almost universal feeling of wrongness, of separation from God or from the spiritual heart of things, however you want to phrase it, is in large part caused by eating animals and by otherwise exploiting them. And if so, whether stopping doing those things could be of fairly direct psychospiritual benefit. Or in other words, following a vegan diet may help us to pray.

It says in 1 Peter 3:7 that husbands should be considerate to their wives and respect them, otherwise they will "find it impossible to pray properly" (Phillips translation). It is not too much of a stretch to claim that the same applies to all our relationships, not just marriage. But perhaps it extends even further, to members of other animal species besides our own. If it does, we should not be surprised if we experience the same negative side-effects when we don't treat animals with respect or consideration, and the corresponding benefits when we do.