In the latest PETA magazine, Ingrid Newkirk shared this story about
author Loren Eiseley who had trapped two sparrowhawks to send to a
zoo. While he was moving them around, the male bird bit him,
which distracted him enough to allow the male’s mate to escape.
The next morning, Eiseley built a cage, but when he picked up the
hawk to put him into it, he could feel his little heart beating
very fast and saw that he was staring up into the sky. In a flash
of compassion, the author released him. Of that transformative
moment, he wrote, “He flew up into the towering emptiness of light
and crystal that was so intense that my eyes could scarcely bear
to penetrate it. There was silence. Then, from far up somewhere,
a cry. When I heard that cry my heart turned over. Coming down
straight out of the sun’s eyes, where she must have been soaring
restlessly above us for untold hours, hurtled his mate. And from
far up, ringing from peak to peak, came a cry of such unutterable
and ecstatic joy that it sounds down across the years as I write.”
--Contributed by Judy Carman
Photo of sparrowhawk mates ©️ by Mia McPherson. (It is not of the
hawks in the story.)
Editor’s Corner Pioneer Essay:
Grand Duchess Elisabeth Romanov (1864 - 1918)
Few persons have been better situated in the traditional world of
European royalty than Elisabeth of Hesse. Born the daughter of
Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse in Germany, and the intellectual,
compassionate Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert, she was moreover sister of none other than Czarina
Alexandra, controversial consort of Nicholas II, the last czar.
Not only that, Elisabeth was the wife of another Romanov, Grand
Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, son of Czar Alexander II. Well-placed
amid that ill-fated house's many plots and palaces, her life
finally took another direction, and she spent her last years a
vegetarian working tirelessly among the poor and sick of Moscow.
On her last day she was the victim of revolutionary murder by the
Bolsheviks.
Not only did Elizabeth come from English royalty and one of the
noblest dynasties in Germany, she was also stunningly beautiful.
As a young woman she had no lack of suitors, including the future
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. But in the end, like her sister,
she chose to marry into the Russian imperial house, and, also like
Alexandra, converted from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy. The
wedding, to Sergei (pictured below), younger son of Czar Alexander
II, took place in 1884. Her bridegroom at first seemed
unprepossessing, being shy and often withdrawn. But she found
herself drawn to him because of shared interests and experiences.
Both knew early sorrow--she had lost her mother to diphtheria; he --
--lost his father, whom he deeply loved, to --
--an assassin. Like her, he appreciated art --
--and literature; he knew personally such --
--Russian luminaries as Dostoevsky and --
--Tolstoy, and learned Italian in order to --
--read Dante. Both in their ways were --
--deeply religious. It didn’t hurt that he --
--was handsome, too.
Elizabeth was popular in her adopted country. "Everyone fell in
love with her from the moment she came to Russia," wrote a cousin
of Sergei. The couple settled happily in the capital,
St. Petersburg, making rewarding friendships.
Eight years later came what turned out to be a disaster of immense
proportions. Sergei's elder brother, Czar Alexander III,
appointed him Governor-General of Moscow in 1892. The couple
moved to the Kremlin. The appointment to this very high post may
have been for dynastic reasons, and because both shared
conservative, russophile political views.
Sergei and Alexander's father, the relatively liberal czar
Alexander II, who liberated the serfs and was working on
parliamentary reforms, had been assassinated in March 1881 by a
bomb that left his body terribly disfigured. Seeing the gruesome
remains of their beloved father left the two sons with an intense
hatred of the liberal revolutionaries they thought this act of
terrorism represented. They associated--or identified-- these
enemies with intellectuals, students, and Russia's many ethnic
minorities, above all Jews. Quickly reversing his father's
enlightened policies, Alexander III and his administration turned
highly repressive, including exiling Jews to the "Pale," an area
in southwest Russia.
Sergei was supposed to enforce the policy in Moscow, which was
outside the Pale, but the role was one for which czar's younger
brother was very unsuited. Like not a few other shy, introverted
persons placed in positions of power unnatural to them, he
overreacted and gave rein to a brutal, even sadistic side to his
character. The first and worst of his actions was the expulsion
of 20,000 Jews from Moscow upon his arrival; although the atrocity
originated in the Ministry of the Interior, Sergei carried it out
assiduously, causing much suffering. Elisabeth, appalled,
declared that "God will punish us severely."
The intimate though childless marriage deteriorated from then on,
Sergei treating his consort in a more and more overbearing manner,
rarely even wanting to be alone with her. Bound to a seemingly
different husband from the man she loved, and separated from the
good friends of St. Petersburg, instead compelled by tedious
official and social obligations, Elizabeth's life felt lonely and
empty.
To deal with this loss she began to seek outlets in works of
compassion and philanthropy. She sponsored events to raise money
for charity, and in the context of putting it to use, she became
aware of the misery, crime, and disease of the city's slums. She
met the inevitable cripples and beggars on the streets, and
confronted the appalling conditions of hospitals and prisons.
Becoming increasingly religious amid this work, she said she
wished to bring God "my feeble gratitude by serving Him and His
suffering children." (Mager 140)
Her prediction of divine judgment was apparently fulfilled when
thirteen years later, on February 18, 1905, Sergei was
assassinated by a revolutionary, Ivan Kalyayev. To the
astonishment of the public, Elizabeth went to the prison the very
next day to meet her husband's killer personally. She asked him
why he did it, and calling upon her Christian faith, offered him
her forgiveness, saying that if he repented she would work for
commutation of his undoubted sentence of death. But Kalyayev
refused her entreaties, saying he had killed Sergei because the
Governor-General was an instrument of tyranny, and that the
killer's death on the gallows would do more good for the
revolutionary cause than repentance. She wanted this visit kept
secret, but the word got out, in various versions, some very
distorted.
Elisabeth probably felt there was truth in Kalyayev’s accusation:
the man she loved had become cold, a stranger. She spent many
days after Sergei's death and funeral in prayer without ceasing.
She gained a conviction of what she was called to do: her
charitable work would now become, not merely part of her life, but
its whole. She became a vegetarian, sold her valuable collection
of jewelry and other tokens of aristocratic privilege, lived
simply, and in 1909 opened a convent (pictured above) named for
Saints Martha and Mary (representing service and contemplation) of
the Sisters of Mercy in Moscow, becoming its abbess. (Of the
vegetarianism, her biographer Hugo Mager says "She could never
again eat meat, for it brought the memory of the bloody fragments
of Sergei’s corpse." (214) But it was also part of a pattern of
serious asceticism in her life from this time onward. Fasting,
including periodic vegetarianism and veganism, are important parts
of the devoted practice of Orthodoxy.) During her later
captivity, she and her companions were fed horsemeat stew, and she
tried fruitlessly to explain to her captors that eating flesh was
anathema to her.
Unlike most Eastern Orthodox monasteries and convents, which were
dedicated to prayer and contemplation, the convent of Saints
Martha and Mary practiced a life of active Christian service among
the poor and sick of Russia's-then-second-largest city; Elisabeth
and her nuns visited its worst slums to alleviate what suffering
they could. Her niece, Grand Duchess Marie, author of a
remarkable memoir of her (Marie’s) life entitled Education of a
Princess in those tumultuous years in Russia, writes that
Elisabeth "came now into contact with a greater number and variety
of people. This had broadened her outlook, made her softer, more
human. Not only did she come face to face with phases of life of
which previously she had known nothing, but she had now to take
into account opinions and viewpoints entirely at variance with her
own." (p. 197)
Needless to say, the establishment of a convent differing so much
from the Orthodox tradition as this one, devoted to service as
well as contemplation, caused controversy in the ecclesiastical
world. But to his credit Czar Nicholas II resolved it in favor of
the Grand Duchess by issuing her new convent a charter.
Marie has a similar experience of seeing the real world outside
the palaces during the First World War, when leaving behind life
at court, she worked tirelessly as a nurse in a military
hospital. Both aunt and niece learned that an intense life given
to the struggles and joys of service meant far more than one of
empty comfort. (Marie in fact stated that if the Revolution had
not intervened she might have ended up as abbess of the Martha and
Mary convent after her aunt.) They also heard a lot about the
unpopularity of the staretz (spiritual counselor) Grigori Rasputin
and his influence on the Empress Alexandra thanks to his ability
to alleviate her son's painful hemophiliac attacks. Elisabeth
reportedly had a long conversation with her sister in late 1916
about the problem and the threat it posed to the dynasty. But
Alexandra, who had an authoritarian cast of mind and lacked
Elisabeth's breadth of mind and innate wisdom and compassion--and --
--was deeply worried about her only
son--refused to respond until the staretz was murdered on December --
--30 of that year.
The following year, 1917, brought revolution and the czar's
abdication, a short-lived democratic regime under Alexander
Kerensky, and the fateful Bolshevik October Revolution.
Determined to get rid of the Romanovs, Vladimir Lenin ordered the
arrest of Elisabeth along with many other Romanovs, including the
imperial family, in 1918. When Elisabeth was seized from her
convent, her nuns were traumatized, and two of them insisted on
going with her. Several months and hundreds of miles later, the
captives were clubbed and thrown into a sixty-six foot deep mine
pit, followed by hand grenades and fire, on July 17 or 18, 1918.
It may have been on the same day as the murders of the czar,
czarina, their four daughters and son, several servants, and even
their dog, not far away. But it is said that Elisabeth and most
of the others did not die immediately, but were heard singing
Orthodox hymns in the pit afterwards, until injuries and
starvation did their deadly job.
Her remains were recovered later by White (anti-communist) troops;
her body was said to be incorrupt. It was moved to a Russian
Orthodox chapel in Beijing, China, and finally to a chapel in the
Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, in accordance with a wish of
Elisabeth’s expressed much earlier. In 1992 she was canonized as
a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. She is known as
St. Elisabeth the New Martyr. Her order of nuns, which had been
disbanded in the 1920s, was reinstated in the 1990s and continues
today. A statue of her in her nun’s habit appears among the ten
twentieth-century martyrs represented above the west entrance to
Westminster Abbey in London. (Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero
are two others.)
Lenin welcomed Elisabeth's death, reportedly saying, "Virtue with
the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a
hundred tyrant Czars"--that is, an aristocratic saint is a greater --
--threat to revolution than any number of --
--oppressors. What Lenin had in mind was --
--that the compassionate aristocrat gives the --
--lie to the myth upon which violent --
--revolution and war depend, that the enemies --
--are all evil, barely human, and so can --
--legitimately be destroyed.
Remarkably, it apparently didn’t occur to him that the story would
probably get out, and that murdering a virtuous aristocrat would
do far more harm to the revolutionary cause than sparing her to
continue her good work could possibly have done. It is clear that
Lenin was seriously lacking in ethical imagination, and apparently
didn’t read Shakespeare to help him develop it:
“ . . . . [her] virtues
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of [her] taking-off;
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast, and heaven’s cherubim horsed
Upon the [unseen] couriers of the air
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye
That tears shall drown the wind.”
Far different--and more difficult--is the non-violent revolution,
the Lamb's War, like that of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King,
and Cesar Chavez, which instead seeks
to speak truth, love, and transformation to the other side. To
this approach Elisabeth would certainly have responded.
--Robert Ellwood with Gracia Fay Ellwood
Sources: Hugo Mager, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Russia: A
Biography. New York, 1998. Marie, Grand Duchess of Russia,
Education of a Princess: A Memoir. New York, 1931.
Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7
NewsNotes
Vietnamese Movement to Close Bile Bear Farms
The Vietnamese government is supporting the movement, by Animals
Asia and other groups, to close all its cruel bear bile farms.
The five hundred bears will be sent to sanctuary. More details
later
.--Contributed by Nancy Campeau
What if Our Meat Was Human?
A major newspaper, none other than the New York Times, has
reviewed a novel that depicts cannibalism in order to awaken
readers to the horror of factory farming. It is Tender is the
Flesh, by Argentinian writer Agustina Bazterrica (pictured),
translated by Sarah Moses from the Spanish Cadaver Exquiśito.
See Unpalatable Message
Victory! Anti-Horse Nomination Withdrawn
The present administration’s nomination of William Perry Pendley
to head the Bureau of Land Management, a man whose history shows
him to be an enemy of wild horses and burros, has been withdrawn
thanks to pressure from members of In Defense of Animals and
others. See My Home This Is
Unset Gems
“The present chaos is not the end of the world, but the labor
pains of a new earth and a new humanity coming into form.” Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 - 1955 cited in Homo Ahimsa
“God’s original plan was to hang out in a garden with a couple of
naked vegans.”
(Does anyone know the wag who wrote this?--Do share.)
Book Review: Homo Ahimsa:
Who we really are an how we’re going to save the world
Judy McCoy Carman, Homo Ahimsa: Who We Really Are and How We're
Going to Save the World. Foreword by Will Tuttle. Lawrence, KS:
Circle of Compassion Publishing, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 122. $14.95
softcover.
What would your ideal world, your personal utopia, be like? For
most readers of The Peaceable Table, a major factor in it would
undoubtedly be animals and humans living together in
harmony. Loving looks between one and the other, not violence,
would define the partnership. We would be humans whose courage
lies in harmlessness rather than deeds of killing; they would be
brothers and sisters who look at us with gratitude that we, like
their elder brothers, have finally become what they have waited
for in us for so long.
Here, in Homo Ahimsa, we have Judy Carman's vision and impassioned
rationale for that utopia. The title, combining Latin and
Sanskrit terms, means something like "Harmless Humanity," the
stage toward which all of us who share her vision are striving, or
should be. Carman, a tireless activist for animal, peace, and
environmental concerns, has certainly earned the right to present
her vision and for it to be seen and heard.
This is the book's essential message. We are in a period of
crises: of extinctions, pandemics, corruption, and violence. And
these crises were caused by none other than ourselves, homo
sapiens. We therefore must solve them and, Carman assures us,
"yes, there is still time. Governments and corporations won't stop
the madness. But we can." To do so, we must change ourselves into
Homo Ahimsa. "While the world's life support systems are in
free-fall, we are ascending in consciousness."
The crises themselves, putting everything seemingly in change and
chaos, provides "our window of opportunity to create the peaceful,
liberated world of peace and partnership with all life." (Back
cover)
Homo Ahimsa describes the present world of violence and
destruction against animals, nature, indigenous peoples, and
anyone or anything less powerful than those in power, in
uncompromising terms. We must not underestimate what we are up
against. But the wonderful thing about Judy Carman's writing is
that it is also hopeful, and brilliantly, warmly so. She does not
doubt that we can reverse the destructiveness we have unleashed,
and that we can do it now. Why? Because we already have all the
tools we need here at hand, for they are within us. We are not
only homo sapiens, we also, each of us, have hidden deep within us
Homo Ahimsa, waiting to be called out now and given our planet to
be made into his/her likeness. This change will also involve "the
divine mother in us all ris[ing] from the ashes" to defeat
"misogyny and mass shootings," and these two inwardnesses, Homo
Ahimsa and the Divine Mother, support one another as they emerge,
for "killing animals kills our own sacred feminine."
Moreover, Judy Carman believes there are signs now of a spiritual
awakening in these directions, even if they are not usually
apparent in the daily headlines. I agree; one can see the quiet
first gestures of the new world in sites from supermarket shelves
to our children or grandchildren on the playground. I myself, as a
historian of religion, have a sense that we are on the brink of a
new Axial Age, comparable to that immense spiritual-historical
change some twenty-five hundred years ago which opened up the age
of the great religious founders, from the Buddha to the Christ to
the Prophet Muhammad. These mighty figures originated the faiths
followed, at least nominally, by most of the world's peoples
today.
But some new change in our world so different from theirs seems
now to be just over the horizon, and I don't doubt a major part of
it will be the emergence, from Main Street to Wall Street, of
Carman's Homo Ahimsa. The new world will not necessarily abolish
the traditional faiths of today, but it will take the best
elements of them as it transcends and transforms them, and gives
us a path for the new cosmos of the space age, and the new world
of Homo Ahimsa. If you want to know how we get there, read this
short but packed volume.
Homo Ahimsa can hardly be recommended too highly. It is a book for
everyone, for every reader and every library. Give it a try, and
see if you don't share in Judy Carman's concerns, and also in her
tremendous vision of the new Ahimsa world emerging like a gorgeous
butterfly from its long- dormant chrysalis. The butterfly is
there, ready to be seen by those whose eyes are opening.
--Robert Ellwood
Further Reflections Sparked by Homo Ahimsa
Some religiously-inspired activists, greatly distressed by
realizing the extent of violence against our animal cousins in the
Western tradition in which they grew up, and finding sympathy
toward them in another religion, go into reaction and no longer
seem to see any lifegiving promise for the animals in their own
tradition. Though Carman finds inspiration in Jainism and
Buddhism, she does not make this mistake: in Chapter Seven she
refers to the crucially important Biblical theme of Paradise, both
the myth of the original garden, and Paradise as a dream, a
longing, in most people’s hearts. Carman also cites Christian
thinkers such as the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, and
nineteenth-century English priest John Henry Newman, who spoke up
for animals as bearers of God, and Christlike in their innocent
suffering.
A Biblical theme she does not deal with much that has great
(though largely undeveloped) promise and power for the future of
animals is that of Exodus, as carried further in the work of the
writing prophets. This is arguably the founding theme of Judaism
and the other Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam, because
the core of its message is that God is compassionate, hears the
cries of the oppressed and enslaved, and calls human beings to
act to liberate them. Speaking out of the burning bush, God says
to Moses, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh [and you shall say]
’Let my people go. . . ‘” (Ex. 3:10, 5:1) One of the great
themes of Exodus is that God seeks, not only the transformation of
individuals, but of societies at the same time, and calls us to
work for both.
The original story is no help to animals; the Israelites’ lambs
are killed and their blood spread on the doorposts of their
houses, so that the death angel who comes to kill the firstborn of
every Egyptian family will pass over that household. Furthermore,
the horses of the Egyptians are drowned in the Red Sea with their
riders. But the core conception of Exodus--God’s championing of --
--the cause of the oppressed of --
--society against the powerful--is
later carried forward by the prophets, beginning with Amos. The
prophets not only thunder a coming judgment against the
neighboring countries who have done violence to Israel, but
against the powerful of Israel itself, who have been corrupted
into becoming a new Pharaoh, exploiting and oppressing the poor
and defenseless of their own country. This conception of a deity
whose love for justice and compassion is so strong that he
(admittedly, mostly he) passes judgment on the rulers of his own
people is one of the greatest gifts of Judaism to the world. (In
contrast, in the ancient world, and in many countries today,
established religion is in the service of those in power.)
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus saw his own ministry as
part of the prophetic tradition, and employed language from the
Exodus theme. Quoting Isaiah 61, he says
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
Because he has anointed me to preach good news to the
poor;
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim release to the captives . . .
To set at liberty those who are oppressed. . .” (Luke
4:18)
This theme is not applied to animals in the Gospels; for them it
had to wait until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
There are examples of other late-ripening fruit from this seed,
instances that can strengthen our faith and hope on the animals’
behalf. The original Exodus story, and even the prophets, have
nothing to say about the liberation of women--in fact, some of the --
--prophets make matters worse for --
--women th their repeated use of the --
--image of an adulterous woman for --
--errant Israel. But, as with the --
--animals, Exodus has a seed of good --
--news for women too. Feminist --
--theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether --
--calls it the Exodus Principle. --
--Though it has been theologically --
--underdeveloped for centuries among --
--Christians, while violence against --
--oppressed groups, animal and human, --
--has been rampant in Christian --
--countries, it has nonetheless --
--influenced the history of organized --
--liberation movements, most of which --
--began, significantly, in the West: --
--the Underground Railroad (remember --
--songs like“Let my people go” and --
--Harriet Tubman’s code name Moses?); --
--the movement in England, led by --
--devout Evangelical William --
--Wilberforce (pictured), to abolish --
--the human-slave trade; the 1848 --
--Seneca Falls Convention on women’s --
--rights, and the many decades of --
--activism for women that followed; --
--the (Royal) Society for the --
--Prevention of Cruelty to Animals --
--(whose 1824 founders included three --
--Christian clergymen, Wilberforce, --
--and vegan Jew Lewis Gompertz; the --
--Society for the the Prevention of --
--Cruelty to Children, the Civil --
--Rights Movement, and the Liberation --
--Theology movement in Latin America, --
--to name a few prominent ones. --
--Mohandas Gandhi’s time spent in --
--England, in which he was much --
--influenced by the Sermon on the --
--Mount, resulted in a wonderful --
--cross-fertilization of Hinduism and --
--Christianity that resulted in the --
--first mass political application of --
--the Exodus principle since the --
--original biblical event (assuming it --
--has a historical core).
The culmination of Exodus is entrance into the Promised Land of
the Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 11:6-9) in which the wolf lies down
with the lamb, a little child leads, and no one hurts or destroys
any longer. It is the renewal of Paradise for which, deep down,
nearly every heart is longing, as Judy Carman assures us.
Considering the fruits that the Exodus principle is bearing for
other oppressed groups in the last two hundred-plus years, it is
encouraging to contemplate its potential for our animal cousins.
We hope to see future editions of Homo Ahimsa, in which the author
will perhaps dwell on the promise for animals of this powerful
principle.
--Gracia Fay Ellwood
Recipe: Red & Black Bean and Corn Salad
1 ½ cups kidney beans, cooked
1 ½ cups black beans, cooked
1 ½ cups fresh or frozen yellow corn kernels,
at room temperature
½ red bell pepper, diced
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
1 T. seasoned rice vine
sea salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup quinoa, rinsed very well
2 ½ cups water
½ tsp. sea salt
In a medium -to-large serving bowl combine beans, corn and red
bell pepper. Toss with olive oil and seasoned rice vinegar. Adjust
seasoning with sea salt and pepper. Set aside to allow flavors to
meld In the meantime, bring 2 ½ cups water to a boil; add ½
teas. salt and quinoa. Cook on medium – low heat until water has
absorbed. Fluff with a fork. Pour into a serving dish, and allow
to cool to room temperature.
Serve bean, corn and red pepper mixture over beds of
quinoa. Drizzle with additional olive oil and rice vinegar as
desired.
This is a delicious way to enjoy the whole grain quinoa. To save
time canned beans may be used. The salad is colorful and
delightful. Serves 4.
--- Angela Suarez
Poetry: Kabir, Fifteenth Century (exact dates uncertain)
Untitled
Tell me, O Swan, your ancient tale.
From what land do you come, O Swan? To what shore will you fly?
Where would you take your rest, O Swan, and wt do you seek?
Even this morning, O Swan, awake, arise, follow me!
There is a land where no doubt nor sorrow have rule:
Where the terror of Death is no more.
There the woods of spring are a-bloom,
And the ‘He is I” is borne on the wind:
There the bee of the heart is immersed,
And desires no other joy.
--Tr. By Rabindranath Tagore