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Ask
Not What Animals Can Do for You
Mary
Lou Randour, Ph.D., is the author of a book
on relationships among human beings and other-than-human
animals. Animal Grace: Entering a Spiritual
Relationship with Our Fellow Creatures
packs an enormous amount of thought, anecdote,
and careful documentation into its 167 pages.
Building on such compelling and informative
books as Gary Kowalski's The Souls of
Animals , Susan McElroy's Animals
as Teachers and Healers (Susan provided
a foreword to Animal Grace ), and
other writing about animals' minds, emotions,
and spirituality and on thousands of
years of religious and philosophical traditions,
Mary Lou's book takes readers an important
step further.
Ask
What You Can Do for Animals
Authors
have previously done their best to explain
other-than-human animals' inner lives; some
have described benefits to human beings of
relationships with animals; and some have
revealed scriptural and philosophical bases
for humane rather than abusive or tyrannical
treatment of animals. Mary Lou delves
into those matters and explains them clearly
and succinctly, but her main point is how
entering into spiritual relationships with
animals can benefit animals and humans and,
ultimately, life itself. Thus, her book
is not only about awareness but action as
a necessary part of spiritual development.
Awareness
of animals as individual conscious beings
with specific biological needs, mental processes,
and souls brings responsibility for acting
so as to nurture animals as total beings a
la Homo sapiens sapiens . So acting
can involve personal practices like eating
only foods not derived from animal exploitation
or using only personal care products not tested
on animals. It can also involve publicly
opposing the killing of deer in suburbs--one
of Mary Lou's examples from her own life--or
other acts of protest. Entering into
a spiritual relationship with other-than-human
animals may or may not involve interacting
with animals directly, but for many, personal
relationships with animals open the door to
further growth.
"I
am hoping to accomplish two things with my
book," says Mary Lou, "to awaken
people who are 'spiritually inclined' but
who haven't thought much about how their actions
affect animals and to offer some source of--what?--solace
to animal rights activists who, on too regular
a basis, have to contend with all kinds of
atrocities. And they are atrocities,
for the most part, which are not only sanctioned
by society, but often paid for with our tax
dollars. I think we can get a kind of
post-traumatic stress syndrome, too, and that
it can wear out our souls. My impetus
for writing the book was to try to develop
some kind of internal resource so that I could
deal with the grief and rage I regularly feel
in this work."
Author's
Awakening
Mary
Lou's introduction to the book begins, "Until
very recently I never quite understood what
'grace' meant, though I certainly heard it
often used in the Episcopal church in which
I was raised. Grace seemed to
be the key--perhaps not the only one, but
certainly one of the most important--to entering
a spiritual life. It was a key, however,
I could not find." She explains
how learning about cruel animal testing in
the cosmetics industry, cruel animal experiments
in biomedical laboratories, and other abuses
of animals throughout our society led her
to consider animals' well-being much more
often until doing so became her habit and
her basis for many personal choices.
"As
my awareness developed, the animals taught
me that my decisions affected them."
This connection among perception, awareness,
and action forms the basis of spirituality.
"When we divide ourselves by denying,
avoiding, repressing, or disassociating, we
weaken our psychological capacity. It
takes psychic energy to not know, or to not
care, or to not act. When we allow ourselves
to know, care, and act, we release energy,
making it available for the growth and nurturance
of our psychological and spiritual selves."
Beyond
Perception and Awareness
Personal
narrative doesn't make up the entire book,
however. In chapters titled "What
Animals Can Teach Us about Spirituality"
and "Entering a Spiritual Relationship
with Animals," Mary Lou relates anecdotes
involving other people's observations of and
experiences with animals--experiences
that belie long-entrenched misconceptions
minimizing animals' emotional and spiritual
depth. We see that our society's billions
of animal victims are more than mere bodies
and nervous systems unjustifiably made to
suffer: They are complete beings, spiritual
beings. They "offer us a unique
opportunity to transcend the boundaries of
our human perspectives; they allow us to stretch
our consciousness toward understanding what
it is to be different. This stretching enables
us to grow beyond our narrow viewpoint.
It allows us, I believe, to gain a spiritual
advantage. How can we possibly appreciate
and move toward spiritual wholeness if we
cannot see beyond our own species? How can
we come to know God, or grasp the interconnectedness
of all life, if we limit ourselves to knowing
only our own kind?"
After
briefly summarizing how individual human beings
grow through experience, especially through
familial and other interpersonal relationships,
she explains how animals, with their innocence
and the suffering human beings inflict on
them, enter into the spiritual picture. "We
can redefine our relationship so as to end
all of the needless suffering of animals who
are used to test cosmetics or medicine, or
who become antibiotic- and hormone-ridden
food after unbearable confinement in the endless
crates of factory farms. We can say
'no' to participating in that kind of relationship.
More than saying 'no' we are declaring an
even more resounding yes !
It is a yes to life and to the incredible
wonder of creation. It is a yes
to falling in love with the world around
us--to becoming enchanted by the unity of
existence."
Having
touched on relevant aspects of major religions
in the early chapters, in "The Peaceable
Kindom " (a resonant play on
the Peaceable Kingdom ) Mary Lou
illustrates, by detailing life at animal sanctuaries,
current manifestations of spirituality extended
to animals and many species peacefully coexisting.
Poplar Springs, in Poolesville, Maryland,
receives the most copy because Mary Lou visited
that sanctuary in preparing the book. She
also mentions the legendary Farm Sanctuary
(Watkins Glen, New York, and Orland, California)
and Pigs A Sanctuary (Charles Town, West Virginia).
Ancient
Precedents
In
"The New Kashrut : The Spiritual
Depth of Vegetarianism" and " Ahimsa
: Cultivating Nonviolence Toward Animals,"
the reader finds teachings of Judaism, Christianity,
Jainism, and other religious systems exhorting
us to treat animals compassionately.
Though this message is central to Jainism,
in the Western religions it has too often
been suppressed. Dualistic thinking
of recent centuries has heaped on layers of
misinterpretation and denial. Yet reading
God's giving humans "dominion" over
the other animals, in Genesis, as license
to tyrannize and abuse them is inconsistent
with the same book's menu for humans: "every
herb, seed and green thing." The
book's engaging and succinct discussions of
scripture should enable followers of established
religions to open their hearts to animals.
If you think you should eat meat or shampoo
your hair with an animal-tested gel, it isn't
because the Bible tells you so. The
Bible says the opposite, as Mary Lou helps
us to see. Both text and endnotes should
help even skeptics to see that many theologians
and biblical scholars agree.
Animal
Grace Manifest
Two
highly original chapters of Animal Grace
are the last two before the epilogue
in which Mary Lou resumes her personal narrative,
expanding on her own experience using material
from the middle chapters to elaborate.
In "The Parallel Worlds of Human and
Nonhuman Animals," you will meet Eve
who like many of us, strives to be good and
spiritually responsible and to instill meaning
in her life. For one short day we will
observe Eve through the perspective of two
parallel worlds: the one she occupies as she
goes about her daily life, making many of
the ordinary decisions all of us make; and
the lesser known world of the animals whose
lives are affected by her decisions."
Eve is "not aware of the animal world"
when we first meet her. She is 55 years
old, has been married for 30 years, has two
grown children and some grandchildren, and
has weathered typical difficulties with her
family over the years.
Soon
we see Eve taking Premarin, the prescription
menopause drug made with urine collected in
containers irritatingly attached to thousands
of mares kept standing on concrete in tiny
stalls for months on end. Then it's
on to animal-tested toothpaste, soap, makeup,
fur trim on the hood of her parka, the flesh
of a pig for dinner, and other cruelly obtained
products that make up her day. Mary
Lou provides a description of the cruelty
involved in producing each product.
Later, Eve finds herself disturbed but cannot
yet understand why. She is beginning
to experience a spiritual awakening such as
Animal Grace suggests we all are
capable of having if we will allow ourselves
to become aware of other-than-human animals--not
just of their presence or of their cuteness
but of their beingness and the unnecessary
suffering to which our species subjects them.
Animal
Grace
Can Be Yours
Lest
we spoil your thrill of discovery, we won't
disclose, in these pages, many fascinating
and illuminating occurrences and ideas Mary
Lou describes to illustrate the principle
of animal grace and the desirability of entering
into a spiritual relationship with animals.
It becomes more than clear as one reads, however,
that the benefits accrue, not only to individuals
whose awareness, love, and compassionate action
cross long-imagined boundaries between human
and other-than-human beings, but also to animals
directly or indirectly touched, other human
beings, and an infinitely expanding universe
of beings beyond the individual's direct knowledge.
One of this book's many accomplishments is
that it makes concepts often considered abstract
and esoteric comprehensible and even palpable
to ordinary readers. Experienced animal
advocates are sure to find it informative
and uplifting, and it is bound to remove many
sets of earplugs we might have thought had
been permanently
grafted into
place.
Animal
Grace
is available at a discounted price to Society
& Animals Forum members!
To
order Animal Grace, go to our secure
online
ordering page
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