Letters to the Editors
Keep Focused on the Common-Sense Health, Ecology, and Ethics
Issues
Thanks so much for your excellent publication. It has really helped me understand
the practical reasons behind why I became a vegetarian in the first place! Some of
Vegetarian Journal's articles encouraged my wife to go vegetarian, too.
I became a vegetarian as a result of common sense and spiritual conviction due to my Christian faith. I believe that if humans are in the right relationship with God, they should deplore violence against any living being. Many environmental and animal rights groups today view Christians as enemies to their cause. I'm certain some Christians give credence to that belief, but the majority of Christians I know do care about the environment and are opposed to animal cruelty.
Vegetarians sometimes make reference to "building bridges" with other social justice movements, some of which are at odds with my beliefs. In my opinion, if you do, you will probably win a few battles, but you will lose the war.
My favor to ask of you is to keep focused on the common-sense health, ecology, and ethics issues which make your publication so good. Stay out of the religious and political arena in which many other groups seem to get stagnated. Let's just stay on that common ground where all of us can feel part of the vegetarian community regardless of our religious or political persuasion.
Thanks again for the great work you do with your publication. I especially enjoyed your article "Soy-beans and Cancer Prevention" in the May/June, 1993 issue.
Hank Jamieson
Kansas
Doctor is Convinced to Become Vegetarian Because of Diet and Nutrition
Studies He Read
I'm renewing my subscription to Vegetarian Journal after 35 years in the practice of
medicine. I retired and have been exploring better ways of living to extend my life
span. Diet and nutrition studies have convinced me to become vegetarian.
My retirement provides me with more time to pursue multifactorial interests, one of which is dabbling in poetry. The poem "Omnivore's Lament" is one creation your readers might enjoy.
THE OMNIVORE'S LAMENT
I wander along a moonlit shore
With the crunch of shells beneath my tread
Each shell a gravestone of life no more
Inexorably ground into the ocean's bed
All life's a fleeting moment in time
Like annuals flowering in seasons quest
To beautify, sow seeds, then decline
And flesh and flowers share fields in eternal rest
Animals thrive in many ways
For some predation is their lot
While others stand and feed all day
Upon some grassy hillock
In all the air and land and sea
Life's teeming masses flourish
The Grand Design seems meant to be
From each other do we nourish
Great harm we do brood
To our vulnerable constitutions
By eating animals for food
Contrary to many medical conclusions
As head honcho in the 'elan vital'*
Man has cause for compassion
To feast on animal flesh at all
Should give us moral indigestion
Humans are cast in the animal mold
And most advanced of the beasty dandy's
We're more intelligent than they we hold
"If so, why eat them," so saith Mahatma Gandhi
*Elan vital — Bergsonian philosophy, the original life force, the creative linking principle in the evolution of all organisms.
Ralph E. Graham, M.D.
California
