Today is Easter Sunday. Jane is in Arkansas visiting the family. (First time seeing our grandson Kieran.) I am home alone. Not quite. Two foster kids and two pugs. I have spent the day in quietness and reading, sitting on the deck enjoying a beautiful spring day. I am thankful for life and the signs of new life all around. The pugs and I took a slow walk around the yard. Lots of life breaking out, where there was deep snow only a couple of weeks ago.
I finished a Jonathan Saffron Foer’s recently published Eating Animals. It’s a book we are reading in my class “Animals and Ethics.” I did not learn much new information (I have been teaching animal rights for ten years), but I was profoundly moved again. Moved to tears, I have to admit. Foer’s book is less philosophical and more journalistic than the other books we read in my class. For that reason, it will have a much wider general readership. It deserves to be read. By everyone.
The enormity of animal cruelty and suffering at the hands of human beings is extravagant. Most of it is related to the food we eat and the way we produce it. Our culture sees our animal cousins as mere products to be consumed, and not as companions to share God’s good earth.
The Easter story is a retelling of the story that suffering, cruelty and death are not the final words. Life—beautiful, vibrant, fresh—springs forth from the hopelessness of devastation.
Easter reminds us to side with life. The way we eat sides with life or death. Choose life!
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox ... They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says God
- the prophet Isaiah