Weekly Newsletter from Christian Vegetarian Association CVA - September 27, 2018
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

  1. Original Sin, part 46: Toward the “Beloved Community”
  2. The September-October Issue of “The Peaceable Table” Is Now Online
  3. All-Creatures.org Ministry

1. Original Sin, part 46: Forgiveness and Accountability

There is often conflict between our desires experience pleasure and avoid pain, and our desires to gain the safety and human companionship that come from belonging in communities. The first desires are self-centered, and the second desires are other-centered, generally requiring compassion and sacrifices.

Religions have generally focused most attention on community, perhaps because religions by their very nature involve communal relationships and rituals. As discussed in prior essays, humans have generally developed and maintained community by scapegoating individuals and groups. This “Original Sin” engenders group cohesiveness, but it is incompatible with justice and love in a broad sense.

Jesus envisioned a community held together not by scapegoating but by love for each other. He welcomed those who were marginalized by society, for example, those who were poor, widowed, infirmed; and he welcomed those were despised because of their roles in society or their ethnicity, such as tax-collectors and Samaritans.

We must emulate Jesus if we want to generate the “beloved community” in which there is no violence and there are no outsiders. Understandably, some might argue that, given human nature, this isn’t realistic. I will consider that objection next.

Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.

2. The September-October Issue of “The Peaceable Table” Is Now Online

Contents include:
  • The Glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom shows that there need be no division between sheep and goats; in fact, there can be love of the warmest sort.
  • "Adventure into the Heart," the Editor's Corner Review-Essay of Christopher Robin, comments on the animal symbolism in the current film starring Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Christopher, and the voice of Jim Cummings as Pooh. It traces a half-playful pattern of the main stages of the Hero's Adventure from Joseph Campbell's well-known book.
  • The Unset Gem is an inimitable one-liner from 18th century vegetarian Quaker Anthony Benezet when a relative invited him to a chicken dinner.
  • Fifty hens, breeders in a cockfighting business, have been rescued in a bust in Virginia Beach and are now in a sanctuary, according to a NewsNote.
  • The September-October Pioneer is Anthony Benezet, who not only made pedagogical history by opening schools in Philadelphia for Black children (enslaved and free) and for girls, but was a strong early champion among Friends of abolition of human slavery. He and his wife Joyce not only rejected the virtually unquestioned practice of eating animals, he fed the rats and mice in his yard.
  • If you've been looking for a really good recipe for vegan ranch dressing, your search is ended with our "BetterThan Ranch" Recipe by Tanny. A beautiful scene of three playful mares silhouetted against a red sunset is featured in our Poetry column.

To read, go to http://www.vegetarianfriends.net/issue150.html.

Toward the Peaceable Kingdom,

Gracia Fay Ellwood, Editor

3. From All-Creatures.org Ministry

Newsletter Archives 2006-2018