Easter menu of Peace (6)

Easter vegan menu of Peace, not just among humans, but also between humans and other animals.

by Emanuela Barbero
webmaster of Vegan3000.info and author of vegan cookbooks

April 2003: this year Easter time is further burdened by the human slaughter of war, which is in addition to the customary slaughter of lambs.

The media with their pounding propaganda exacerbate our sense of impotence, however we can always avoid the blind and obtuse logic of violence starting from our small and personal daily choices.

We often underestimate our power of choice, forgetting that every civil and cultural evolution came from a small subjective gesture, from a personal choice, from a thinking head that started questioning about something. 

Never before in recent months, the concept of peace was so deeply shared by peoples and individuals. A question inevitably arises: but we, OURSELVES, we're really at peace?

That is at peace with ourselves, with our family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, with other sentient beings, with nature and the planet?

In a nutshell: we are at peace with our conscience?

We can bring peace around us if there is no peace in our heart?

We can truly live in peace if there is violence and blood in our plate?

We often (always?) delegate to others the slaughter of innocent animals that most of us eat, but this doesn't make us less guilty, or more innocent. Absolutely not.

Certainly we can actively avoid at least the violence that we are personally responsible. So why not do it?

Why at Easter the barbaric custom of sacrificing the innocent creatures, which goes back several millennia ago, remains still in use - unlike many others equally bloody and thankfully abandoned over time?

Today more than ever it is essential to celebrate Easter time with a concrete gesture of peace, saying NO to war and NO to violence.

We therefore choose an Easter Menu under the banner of Peace, not only among humans, but also between humans and other animals: peace cannot be exclusively anthropocentric.

Adopting an Easter Menu of Peace is undoubtedly a concrete gesture of incomparable value, a tangible way to say a firm and decisive NO to all forms of exploitation and violence.

Various spiritual traditions argue that eating meat contributes to cultivate within us the seeds of violence.

Let's choose to nourish ourselves with the food less steeped in violence and cruelty at our disposal and let's compassionately choose to eat with as little violence as possible.

Life is not divided in watertight compartments and all is invariably connected through multiple wires, invisible to the eyes - but not to the heart.

Whenever we choose a food without cruelty, we take a step towards a more ethical world and a more compassionate way of life.

When we choose to nourish ourselves responsibly we are part of the solution and not more of the problem, for this reason each of us can make a difference.