Take Comfort in Rituals

I saw this sign at the Target yesterday and was struck by it. I was kind of amazed, I gues,s by how blatant and straightforward the message was. I think I've seen variations of this ad hundreds of times, yet not so blunt. All of these ads play on our love of ritual and our need for comforting. I felt grudging admiration for whoever created this and their decision to just cut to the chase, as well as sadness at what a poor excuse for a ritual they were offering. And despite that sadness, I totally could feel it working on me. Luckily for my blood glucose levels, it was like 9:30pm and the Starbucks in the Target was closed.

When I started this blog I said that I wanted to talk about my efforts to lead a life that was both more environmentally friendly and more compassionate. I haven't talked so far about the compassionate part. But I'm beginning to think it's the most important part.

Rituals are pretty important to me, particularly spiritual ones. During the weeks leading up to the start of this blog, I'd been doing a lot of reading in a little book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Present Moment Wonderful Moment. It's a book of gathas, which are "short verses we can recite during our daily activities to help us return to the present moment and dwell in mindfulness". Thich Nhat Hanh talks a lot about rituals as a way to support the practice of mindfulness and compassion. A lot of the gathas in this book refer to the interconnectedness of the universe and compassion for the suffering of other human beings. For example:

5. Turning On The Water

Water flows from high in the mountains.

Water runs deep in the Earth.

Miraculously, water comes to us,

and sustains all life.

A short homily follows:

"Even if we know the source of our water, we still take its appearance for granted. But it is thanks to water that life is possible. Our bodies are more than seventy percent water. Our food can be grown and raised because of water. Water is a good friend, a bodhisattva, which nourishes the many thousands of species on Earth. Its benefits are numberless.

Reciting this gatha before turning on the faucet or drinking a glass of water enables us to see the stream of fresh water in our own hearts so that we feel completely refreshed. To celebrate the gift of water is to cultivate awareness and help sustain our life and the lives of others."

Doesn't reading that give a whole new perspective to water conservation? I never was able to get into the habit of actually reciting the verses at the appropriate times of the day, but just reading a few things out of this little book each day had, I think, a bigger impact on me during those weeks than I knew.

I feel much more motivated to take care of the earth and make an effort when I spend time each day contemplating on how I am in some way connected with everything on it and in it, and feeling gratitude. I guess it makes sense; it's just a way of bringing the environment into my monkeysphere.

Lately I have not been reading my gathas. I also have had a lack of energy and been feeling less enthusiastic about my efforts. I am going to start back up again now that I've begun to suspect that those little verses started all of this in the first place.

Back on the Horse

I'm new to this blog writing thing and obviously have not yet mastered the art of keeping to a regular writing schedule even when "life" interferes. Work got very busy, I got out of the habit of writing, and since then it's just been one excuse or another. Part of the problem is writer's block.

So today I'm just going to take a stab at something, which was advice from a friend. I'm going to write about eating for the environment. This is a big topic that will probably serve as fodder for many blog posts (ba dum bum).

Around the time that I decided to start this blog, I decided to try really hard to avoid eating meat unless I felt as sure as I could that the animal had been given a good life before it became my meal. It has not been easy at all, which is probably why I have gone so long before attempting this, despite knowing about the horrors of conventional meat for at least 8 years.

Let me start out by saying I'm not really what you'd call an animal person. As with children, I will make a small effort to get to know them, and if they don't respond enthusiastically, I tend to get bored and go find someone else to talk to. (Mike is one of those wonderful people who can intuit just how to draw any animal or child out of its shell and befriend it, and I love to watch him at work, but I doubt I will ever be patient enough to do it myself.)

I don't think that I know what's going on in animals' heads. I have no idea, and that rather freaks me out. The reality of the existence of populations of large wild mammals in the world, living out their lives so differently than me, despite all that we have in common biologically, is one of those thoughts that can kind of blow my mind when I sit and contemplate it at length. To sit and think about how much of life on Earth is non-human has the power to momentarily jar me out of my human-centric worldview, and that is an odd and unsettling experience. I found a website today that said "animals fascinate and horrify us", and that is certainly true for me. I have no doubt our movies and books humanize animals so much in part to make them seem less scary and unknowable to us.

And yet despite the mystery that animals are to me, I do feel pretty confident that animals can feel pain, suffer, feel frustrated, and have other emotions, even if they likely experience these things differently than I do. I believe we all evolved together, and it seems obvious to me that if you do something to an animal that would cause pain and suffering to a human (castration or cutting off a tail or beak without anesthetic), and the animal responds with a scream, they are in pain or at least suffering in some way. I'm pretty sure those aren't screams of happiness. I read and see videos about the day to day conditions of factory raised animals and find it impossible to believe that an animal could live out their life that way and not suffer horribly. I also am bothered by the suffering of people who work in these operations. (For details read Fast Food Nation.)

I may not be an animal person, but I have a very low tolerance for suffering. Especially the sights and sounds of suffering. When I started this blog I had long tried to buy "better" meat when I could, but then one day I stumbled upon a website run by mercy for pigs, and saw some pretty awful video that I would not have sought out. That's probably why they have the video start immediately when you go to the site rather than requiring you to click on it or something. Shaking and crying, I resolved to stop eating conventionally raised pork and beef altogether.

The next day I had a sneaking suspicion and google confirmed my fears- I couldn't just eat organic meat or meat from Whole Foods and avoid the horrors of confined animal feeding operations. There is such a thing as an organic foodlot. It seemed the only way I could really be sure I was not supporting CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) was by checking out sources one by one.

I also soon realized that I would need to not just eat different meat and animal products, but less of them, because when you raise these products without all the horrifying practices, it is more expensive. A pig given a pasture to graze in and good food is more expensive to keep than keeping 20 pigs in that same space, confining them so they can't do anything but grow fat and muscle, and feeding them the cheapest crap you can find. It also requires more space, and more labor. I doubt we could transition all of the meat and animal products America consumes to humane operations because there probably wouldn't be enough good pasture land. Also, it bothers me that the rate at which we consume animal products means it's a lot of people's jobs to slaughter animals all day, day in and day out, which doesn't seem like a healthy job for anybody to have to do.

Since then, I've been fighting a losing battle of avoiding conventionally raised meat, dairy products and eggs. But I am trying. It is not easy for me and it makes me depressed, because I love to eat, I love animal products, I love to eat in restaurants, I love barbecue in the summer and have found that this never seems to be made with humane products. (Why?? The most commonly found humanely raised product on a Madison restaurant menu is a pasture-raised burger. That's great, but a burger is SO not barbecued ribs or pulled pork. Also, I can make a pasture raised burger at home really easily, unlike barbecued pork or chicken.)

OK, enough whining. The good parts so far.

1) I work at a place that, thankfully, makes a lot of good vegetarian food. They make a lot more good food that contains meat, and I really get sad when I can't have some of it (especially pork), but when I begrudgingly get the vegetarian option instead, I usually find that it's delicious and that I'm happy to eat it. Unfortunately many of these options still have conventional dairy and eggs. This bothers me because egg-laying hens have, reportedly, an even worse life than chickens raised for meat. The other problem is that these meals are more likely to lack protein and make me feel full of carbs and fat and still hungry than a meaty meal. Maybe I should start bringing in sides of bean salad to work. I really like beans and they help with this feeling.

2) I would like to say that eating less meat is making me appreciate it more when I eat it. I don't know if that's really happened yet, I think because when I do get to eat meat it is often not what I really want- I want barbecued pork but the only humane option easily available is a burger, for instance. Or I really wanted the meat prepared super well in the restaurant, but instead I'm eating my closest approximation at home, that is not even close to what a skilled chef on restaurant quality equipment can achieve. So I eat the meal but still feel dissatisfied (instead of grateful) because I really want something else. Friends, send me your suggestions about this problem. What a shame to eat anything and not feel grateful when having enough to eat at all is such a blessing. But at least I'm not chowing down on meat all day without a thought anymore. I like the idea that meat should be a special occasion, in keeping with what a gift it is. I'm saving up for a humanely raised turkey for Thanksgiving. They are very expensive. I think the meal will feel more special when the main dish really is a luxury, like in the days before such readily available cheap meat.

3) I'm sure eventually I will learn how to cook well if it's the only way I can get the meat I feel comfortable eating. It will come. And that will be a useful skill to have.

It's still hard. I really like eating meat and it's hard to cut back. I think it's time to watch that horrifying pig video again. The beauty of video and sound is that it has the ability to jolt me to reality in a way that written descriptions do not.

Time to end this post as I will be late to church. More another day. But how do your eating habits reflect your values? How have you overcome challenges related to eating? I would love to hear some inspiring stories.