Greening my thanksgiving (aka pet peeves, traditions, and gobble gobble)

well... its a really good question...

and honestly its a very long answer but the short of it is that yes, i loved my turkey. i cried as i prepared to go kill him. and a few years ago i would have never thought i could do such a thing. BUT.. this gets dangerously preachy... but you asked.. :) and im honest

I started looking at life in a much more holistic view.. i had babies, and a misscariage, i nursed my grandmother during her death.. and i found that i was a very spiritual person.. i found "god" in the life energy that pulses through us all and i realized that we truly were all one.. every plant, every animal, and my own body.. full of the same "god" energy. Life force i call it... but it is what others call god.

and my god does have rules... every individual life will end, but life never will.. it is infinite. it is an un-breakable circle...

and those thoughts let me release the sadness of lives ending.. it became ok because life would never end... i lost much sentimental gook that was cloggin my thoughts.

and at the same time i was reading about blood typing and found out that myself and most of my kids were O+ and what i had suspected about most grains being unhealthy for me was true. I was biologically programed to eat meat and veggies.

I am very very much against factory farming and the mass consumption of meat.. but as the mother of 5, i care a lot about my family's health. we dont have health insurance... i believe in health is created from within, not given to me by someone else... so diet is huge in creating health. I did a lot of reading on health and nutrition and found a book by a woman named sally fallon (sp?) called Nourishing Traditions, and that along with my Eat Right For Your Blood Type book, and the Omnivores Dilemma, led me to the belief that eating some meat was important for my families long term vibrant health.

so.. with all my new knowledge... and a shot of whiskey for courage... I cried... and then i killed my turkey. and honestly, it was really hard, and thats what made it valid...thats what made me so proud. i did what i felt was right, i faced my fear, i made my choice, and i raised my bird with love, fresh grass, and compassion. and i killed it in the same way... with love.

this has been a heavy thing for me, one that has been a long time coming... my father is a vegan, i own a vegan and vegetarian restaurant in asheville, nc.. i have upset a lot of loved ones with this change... but i do it with my eyes and heart wide open..

before i was a vegetarian who still ate milk and eggs.. without taking responsibility for what happened to those hens who were too old to lay or the baby male calves... i was not looking at the whole picture...

having my own flock of poultry, i know what happens to the males.. and how they live.. and how they die.. and what they eat... i buy beef from my college friends who raise it on the land that has been in thier family for years and years, and they raise their beef like i do my chickens.. on grass, with fresh air, sun, companionship.. they live well, and yes they die... but that is still done with love and compassion.

i know all the statistics about how meat is ruining the planet... but not my meat. I am a student of permaculture and sustainable living and i know that if people raised food instead of lawns there would be no need for the factory farms.. which are as close to evil as i can imagine...

so thats how it happened... yep... true story... :)

Good on you. Not everyone is physically able to be a vegetarian, even less vegan. I think it is as personnal a decision as one's spiritual path. Each should be respected, but informed, healthy choices should alseo be commended.

uhhh Just for the record... I do not believe in heaven or hell or the bible... I am not at all a christian! I did use the word god.... but i tried to explain what i ment by it...

sorry, but i really am NOT christian... not at all....

so being a non christian, or any religion for that matter, i will have to step out of the word moral as well...

but not the question as i understand it..

so why am i ok with killing an animal that i love, to eat it?

and why not kill willy nilly?

ok... again.. im delving deep here but its fun to actually type what i think... not something i talk much about.....so preachy i go again....

because "god", as i understand it to be, is life energy, or life force. and when i seek wisdom and i have really hard questions i look at nature (cuz thats the only place i see pure "god") and in nature i see everybody eating everybody.

kind o messy and sometimes really gory (a pride of lions), and sometimes really passive and easy (grazers) but i see everybody eating everybody.. and i see life energy (aka "god" in my mind) even in grasses and fruit and fungi...so killing is killing... animals/plants/fungi/bacteria/virus=god cuz life =god so gods rules would be natural law and seasons rhythms and such.. maybe a better way to say it is not gods laws but gods ways are the ways of nature...

and when i look at what people... like ALL people... (i know there are exception but in mass humans and primates and even many many other mammals eat other) do and did, and eat and ate, ALL of mankind as far back as we know, other animals are on the menu.

and why not kill willy nilly....

well i have seen a cat play with another animals life for fun but what i understand is that, that type of play is educational, or training... but mostly... killing willy nilly seems to go along closer with greed, power, religion, money, etc... than nature.. except natural disaster... so even killing willy nilly does happen, just not so much from one animal to another...

and cannibalism, ewh...

well that is something in nature that really doesn't happen in mammal circles except in times of serious stress (like rats that will eat their own young if there is not enough food, but otherwise will fight to protect them)... i got no problem with not engaging in cannibalism... its part of my nonreligious "god" based view of the world.... following natural laws... and my heart, i can feel a tension if i am really doing something wrong.... mammals rarely cannibalize and when they do its cuz shit is seriously f**kd up!....

so now after writing all that... 1) i must be a friking hippy and thats embarrassing
and 2) i know why i usually just lurk on here... if you made it this far down i thank you for entertaining my brain! peace, r star

btw- i totally agree that we are force fed the idea that we are supposed to eat way to much meat because of greed... but to go from one extreme to the other inst my way....

i just seek wisdom and do my darnedest to feel confident in my choices... and it was having kids that developed that in me.. that serious questioning.. they were asking questions and i wanted to tell them the truth.. so i had to figure it out and be able to tell them.. so i did.

First of all animals are just as valid and important as any human life.. remember we are animals too :D
-and feeding kids cholesterol and poop and chemical ridden carcasses is not necessarily helping them... I'll happily feed them veggies though!!

When you say animals are just as valid and as important as any human life, are you referring to all animals? Mammals, insects, reptiles, fish etc.?

I would also ask then, if you were to chose between feeding your child and feeding an animal, which would you choose? I would hope your child. Therefore they are not equal and thus you do not value their lives the same...

I agree that humans need to re-organize their dietary habits away from consuming the amount of animals in our diet as we do, for numerous reasons.

Part of the solution is educating people on how to eat a more balanced diet and then indoctrinating children with healthy (tasty) food from an early age in our school systems. In order to do that, we need to re-prioritize how our tax dollars our spent.

Health classes in school should teach kids to cook healthy meals, while educating them about why they need to eat healthy. Additionally, providing access to community based farming in poor urban areas would do wonders to help solve the education/access problem. The reality is there needs to be a major chain pushing healthy affordable options to really make the push, and the key is they have to be able to make affordable delicious ($5 and under) meals. However, these are piecemeal solutions.

However, until these things develop on a large scale, current reality is that animal products are the cheapest, nutrient rich and most readily available for a hunger problem in our country that is currently directly effecting the development of the next generation.

Moving away from concentrated feeding operations is a good long term goal, but one should be mindful of the heaviness of existing reality when jumping to the aid of animals produced for food before the aid of humans who are going hungry.

In some cases, yes animal products are cheaper, in some cases not (compare the calories/cost of a burger from McDonalds dollar menu to similar calories/cost of a vegan meal). If you have studies or data to the contrary, I would be interested to look at them.

The reality is a lot of people in this country do not have easy access to fresh vegetables and protein supplements to replace the cheap animal protein that is a product of mass produced food.

In an ideal world, I agree that it would be nice if we were all vegan and could afford the time and money necessary for such a lifestyle. But one must work within the constraints of current reality.

I believe that some of the things I mentioned in my last post are intermediary steps towards those ends. But thank you for the post and thoughtful replies, although I rarely eat red meat, this line of debate is making me think that maybe I should see if I can do more to cut down the chicken in my diet and maintain the same caloric/protein intake.... although I will add that humans are evolutionarily designed to eat meat as well, and the type of protein from meats are something that cannot be completely replaced by a veg/vegan diet.

As long as the vegetables you eat are not fossil fuel feed you are in the cycle of life

And they aren't. ;-)

Yikes! Thanks for the feedback! I'll take that to heart.

That is so awesome! I love it.

x2