Spiritual growth is perhaps best described as developing our sense of
compassion and our awareness of the connections which unite us to one
another and to the universe. Our capacity to love and our capacity to
act ethically are founded on our compassion-literally the capacity to
"suffer with." Compassion leads us to feel the pain of another. This is
the great moral teaching of the Christian tradition.

Our awareness of our connections to one another, to all of life, and to
the universe is the other great pillar of spiritual maturity. When we
see that the divisions we create are false and lead to suffering, we
have reached a higher awareness. We are one with all humanity and with
all creation. This spirituality of the awareness of our connections is a
great gift of the Buddhist tradition.

The realization that how we treat animals is an ethical issue grows out
of this spirituality of compassion and awareness of connection. There is
no reason compassion should stop at human beings. Our sense of
connection must go beyond the human as well.

Of course we should be concerned with the treatment of animals. This is
a spiritual and religious issue.

In my family's life we try to put compassion and awareness into
practice. We shop for local foods. We seek out dairy products, eggs, and
meat that has been raised ethically. The corporate food industry is the
great violator of animal rights in Ameria. (I realize that ethical
treatment of animals goes beyond food to issues like the treatment of
laboratory animals.) One of the advantages of the issue of ethical
treatment of animals is that each person, each family and each church
can take effective action by making ethically informed choices every
day.

More importantly, this is an issue I have supported in the life of the
congregation I serve. We have half a dozen official social
responsibility task forces. One of them is our "Eating Ethically" task
force. I have preached on the larger issue of the social and ethical
dimensions of how we eat (see my sermon "Breaking Bread" on the
Jefferson Unitarian Church website). We also have an active vegetarian
group that shares meals together at church.

As president I would want to encourage compassion and awareness of
interconnectedness in every aspect of our lives. When we truly learn to
suffer with other creatures and accept our intimate connection with all
beings we will begin to end exploitation, violence, war, racism, hatred,
and oppression. The ethical treatment of animals is a natural and
inevitable part of acting from a place of compassion.