Vegetarian Myth

I guess I'm making up for not writing much lately ...

I've been on a journey for the past half year away from veganism. Creme brulee and Nourishing Traditions were the impetus for making a change away from my eating habits of the past 11 years as I've posted about previously. Now as I'm eating cheese/eggs/yogurt/milk on a daily basis and fish weekly, I'm struggling a little as whether to make further changes.

Every time I eat any fish, I saw a brief thanks to the fish for giving its life so that my body can be healthy. One of the young nurses I work with recently went fishing and caught a 37 pound king salmon. She brought pictures to share. It was a monstrous (at least 3 feet long) and beautiful fish.

I'm just struggling with the necessity of killing these beautiful animals for nourishment. I find my body wanting to eat fish and enjoying it more than I would have ever guessed.

I've been doing some reading on line and came upon a book called The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith (she was vegan herself for 20 years) and found the following passage:

"In his book Long Life, Honey in the Heart, Martin Pretchel writes of the Mayan people and their concept of kas-limaal, which translates roughly as “mutual indebtedness, mutual insparkedness.” “The knowledge that every animal, plant, person, wind, and season is indebted to the fruit of everything else is an adult knowledge. To get out of debt means you don’t want to be part of life, and you don’t want to grow into an adult,” one of the elders explains to Pretchel.

The only way out of the vegetarian myth is through the pursuit of kas-limaal, of adult knowledge. This is a concept we need, especially those of us who are impassioned by injustice. I know I needed it. In the narrative of my life, the first bite of meat after my twenty year hiatus marks the end of my youth, the moment when I assumed the responsibilities of adulthood. It was the moment I stopped fighting the basic algebra of embodiment: for someone to live, someone else has to die. In that acceptance, with all its suffering and sorrow, is the ability to choose a different way, a better way."

I teared up on reading this. I think I need to get a copy of this book.

Perhaps the most unanswerable question

What happens when we die?

I've been contemplating this question frequently as a result of a local tragedy. I've lived in large cities for the past 11 years and felt pretty anonymous, not knowing hardly anyones outside of my small group of acquaintances. However, now my community is a whole 20,000 people and Mike's and my jobs lend themselves to get to know lots of people.

A few weeks ago, Mike was looking at the news online and found a story about a car accident that happened that day just west of town in which 2 people died and 2 others were injured, one critically. The next day the headline story in the paper identified those who had died as the 60 year old mother and 6 year old son of our real estate agent. Reading that took my breath away and made my heart drop. I can't imagine having that happen, losing 2 people so central to your life in the same instant. I mean, you hear about those sorts of accidents happening in which whole families or parts of families are killed in the same accident. But I've never known those affected by such a tragedy. The week after it happened, it felt there was this pall over the town, this overriding sadness. The family is well known - the woman who died is a counselor working with the alcohol recovery community and director of one of the local tribal counseling centers, the one who lost the mother and son is a real estate agent and is running for city counsel and her husband is a police officer. Their children come to our clinic. I would see her walking the 6 year old to school as I walked to work, see them riding their bikes in the neighborhood.

All spiritual traditions have their own take on what happens after we die - whether we are judged and sorted accordingly, whether we rejoin the collection of souls, whether we are reborn to continue our journey to enlightenment, whether the end of our living body is the end forever. I was raised Catholic but don't really follow that tradition anymore, and I don't believe in hell. Nor do I believe in the end when our body dies. Can we have contact with those that have died? Can we make some connection with the soul that lives on?

I've known plenty of people who have died, but I'm not sure why this tragedy has started me on these thoughts. Perhaps it is thoughts of this grieving mother who has lost her 6 year old son. Was this car accident meant to be the end of his life? Was there some purpose in this? Was he never meant to reach adult-hood? Perhaps there is something about having a person in your life for only 6 years, but during that time see this being develop a personality, a strong sense of compassion, to be so full of life and for that to be gone in an instant of an inexplicable accident.

At the memorial, they spoke about how the little boy is moving on to new adventures. And, somehow, I find that helpful. It is a way of framing how his life isn't over, he's just moving on to different things somewhere else. We never know when the end will come for anyone that we love, or, for that matter, when our own time will come. I hope I could say that I've internalized all of the possible lessons from this, but I find myself still human. Getting into petty squabbles, worrying about things that don't matter, spending time doing things that I don't love, not telling those important to me that I love and appreciate them as much as I should. But at least I've been more aware of these things, these thoughts. And I've allowed my heart to be open even if it is painful.

The question will remain unanswerable.

Sucumbing to antibiotics

Even though I prescribe them everyday, I don't really like to take antibiotics. The little critters at work have been pretty sick this fall so far, and so even with good hand-washing, it can be difficult to stave off any flying germies in the air. I've had 2 cold the past few weeks and thought I was getting healthy finally when my cough started. It was pretty deep but not necessarily troublesome. I've still been seeing the acupuncturist frequently to help my thyroid nodule, and she worked on my cough this week. I started to feel some fluid in my left lung when I took a deep breath in the past day or 2. Even so, I've been feeling okay. One of my colleagues listened to me last night and I agreed to have her call in some antibiotics. I'm off today but on call this weekend. She called last night offering to take my Saturday call and "suggested" (or told me point blank) to stay in bed today. And then asked if I needed her to talk to Mike to make sure this I took care of myself today. I said I could handle it, but thanks. :-) I appreciated her care-taking last night and hopefully this pneumonia will speedily heal with the help of the drugs.