Taking on the Angry Vegans
There are three
ways the American people are polarized: The
first is in regard to the Word. (Some
believe, some do not.) The second is in
regard to spirituality. (Some are, some
are not.) The third is in regard to
being vegan. (the Vegans are angry at
all of us)
The first polarity
is ridiculous. The second is
necessary. The third is tiresome.
Just as we exist
to bridge the gap-between the non-believers and the believers, just as we exist
to bring peace between those two groups, we also exist to bridge the gap
between spiritual people and the non-believers, and to broker peace between vegans
and the carnivores. These are all
highly polarized groups.
Followers of the Word
There are those
who believe the Word and those who don’t.
Oh, did you think
I was talking about God? Don’t be
ridiculous.
I am talking about
the Word of the cannabis plant. I’m
talking about the knowledge that the cannabis plant is the secret to salvation.
Salvation of the people, and salvation of the planet. The medicinal compounds hold the secret to
healing the people, and the industrial hemp holds the secret to replacing
plastics and getting on with healing the planet. It’s THAT word. The Word that can end the hurtling journey
toward extinction. That Word.
If you still want
to talk about the Word of God, you have to realize that we see you as if you
are standing on the railroad tracks, reading your Bible, while a high-speed
train is bearing down on you. We aren’t
going to have that discussion with you, not now, not while the children of the
planet are in great jeopardy, probably – not ever. Not while sixty species go extinct per
day. Not while McDonalds and Taco Bell
are still paying thousands of people to figure out new ways for you to eat
meat.
“It’s not enough” demands Ronald McDonald, pounding the table, “It’s
not enough! The buns must become
meat! The aprons must be made of
meat! The very plates we serve the meat
on, must be made of meat!” He is a truly
diabolical task master.
If you want to talk
about your relationship with Creator Goddess, then let’s start by talking about
the one and only truly great gift she gave us, Planet Earth, and why we are
trashing that gift. Let’s talk about why
we made it cultural (and we’re exporting that culture around the world,
rapidly) to have extinction on our plate for every meal and every snack???
If I spend all the
money in the world building my children the greatest, coolest, more exotic and
exciting place to live and they spent all their time killing the plants to feed
the pets to kill the pets to eat them, I wouldn’t be happy. Yet, this is what we are doing with the
planet given us as a gift from our Creator.
The other day, as
I was coming home from the gym, I had a Christian talk show on the radio and
the minister was so compelling, that I was still sitting in the driveway
listening to him, a full twenty minutes after pulling in. He was systematically laying out the
extinction of Christianity and how it came to be. And everything he said was truth. Until the end. I thought the punch line should be, ‘So now,
with Christianity on the brink of extinction, we have, the Weed Nuns!’ Wouldn’t that be remarkable. No, his
speech ended with the conclusion that Christianity is going extinct because we
are at the eve of the rapture. Click. I turned it off and carried on with my day.
The one sentence
the Baptist preacher said that stuck with me was this one:
“We (the
Christians) are sitting making daisy chains in the dark night of the globe, while
the great masses of people are finding ways to cope without us.” Hence,
the sprouting of weed-nuns?
People have traded up arguing about invisible gods and invisible
fetuses for real talk about highly visible and effective plant-medicine. That’s an upgrade in the planet’s conversational
IQ.
Spiritual
vs. Non-Spiritual
In re-cap, the first
bi-polar group is those who believe in Cannabis’ medical powers and those who
have never tried it (the dis-believers).
The second group
is those who are spiritual and those who are not. I let them be. I think the planet needs our cynics and
disbelievers when it comes to religion. They
are quite beautiful and quite necessary.
They are here to make sure no one drinks the cool-aid and every religion
should welcome the non-believers as witnesses to the religion’s ‘do-no-harm’ ethics. (They all have that ethos, few follow it.)
We only honor the
disbelievers of spiritual and unseen things.
(Bill Maher disbelieves all spirituality and we love him. That is his job.) On the other hand, we do not honor people who
disbelieve science, facts, and physical things happening right here, before our
eyes, on the physical plane. Climate
change deniers, be gone from us. Libertarians,
be gone too. We follow best
example. We want our children to have
the same quality of life they would have if they were Dutch, German or
Canadian. We don’t want them to continue
this system of being second-class-citizens of the developed nations.
Vegans
versus Not-Vegan-Enough
There’s no other
way to address this issue but to say plainly that Angry Vegans are not helping
the plant-based diet cause. We know you
are angry! We get it! Someone though it better to raise livestock
for slaughter over something less slaughter-ish, like, say, eating beans. We agree.
It was stupid. It is stupid. And
one day, we promise you that the Sisters here in Merced will get drunk enough
to break into Foster Farms and free the chickens. We will do that. We’ve heard real nuns do shit like that and
we want to emulate them. It’s on our bucket
list. Promise.
After three years
of failing at veganism, this past January, as new years’ resolutions swirled
around us, we decided to take a much more practical approach to our dietary
restrictions. And a religious approach. ‘Religious’ means ‘have fun with it for no
apparent planetary reason, just imaginary reasons’.
1.
New Moon to Full Moon – Strictly No Meat, with
exceptions: see #3, #4, #5, #6
2.
Full Moon to New Moon – Meat Is Permitted Daily,
once per day only and not to be mixed with cheese, eggs or other animal
by-product foods
3.
Holy Sacred Meat is Bacon*** is an exception to
all rules, but in moderation / as a seasoning / never more than 2 slices of
bacon in a 24-hour period
4.
All food rules are waived if you are sick or pregnant
5.
We are Activists and in Service Daily to the
People, we cannot afford to go to bed hungry.
If your stomach is growling at bed-time, you are allowed to eat meat.
6.
You are allowed to eat meat that was prepared prior
to the new moon and would be thrown away if not eaten (make no waste of sacrificial
meat)
7.
Never mix meat with the milk or dairy or
by-products from the same animal
8.
Meat is allowed at restaurants when traveling,
but only once per trip (if in moon cycle)
Why is bacon the
sacred exception? Because Sister Kate’s Chinese
astrology sign is the Pig. This is just
as reasonable as saying twenty million Catholics will eat meat on Friday. Their reason was because the Catholic church
invested in fisheries. At least my
reason has no economic motive.
We are Beguine
revivalists. Our ancient mothers had to
have eight children to see two of them turn eighteen years old. That means they buried three of four children
they gave birth do. We think that had a
lot to do with diet. We don’t think ‘no
meat’ is the way. We certainly think WAY
LESS MEAT is the way. And we think every
family and tribe should find its own path to a plant-based diet. We think the more creative that path, the
better. Here’s the thing, though. You can’t hate on people for not being vegan
purists. If you do, you lose the battle
of moving more plant-based.
What happens when you go two full weeks without meat? You can’t go back to eating meat once a day,
you’ll get sick. WE learned. So even though it is allowed, most of us stay
plant-based most of the time. But if someone gets angry and ragey, we tell
them to go eat meat. It means, go satisfy
your animal spirit needs in some other way.
We are angry
activists, because happy activists are shitty activists. There is a place for anger and for ferocious
animal energies. We think we need our
meat. We think the animal energy helps
us be the ferocious women we need to be now, in this dark night of the
globe. But we recognize that meat-eating
is ruining this planet and the trends have to go the other way. We believe our way is a helping hand in
sending the trend in a new direction. We
don’t mind that the vegans are angry with us.
They too, have their place and anyway, without angry vegans, we would
have way fewer recipes.
Corn and grain,
meat and milk, on the table before us.
Hands and hearts
come together to nourish and restore us.
Bless our food and
bless our folk and keep us in your grace,
Ensure this sacred
walk we take respects this sacred place.
(women)
In Goddess we trust.
(men)
In Goddess we trust.
