stfranman Compassionate Living, Ecology/Environment, Humane Treatment of Animals

Can you eat compassionately?

Yes, you most certainly can! The food choices we make are very important, and in ways you may not have thought about.

The ways we choose to eat have big effects on our economy, the environment, our healthcare system and certainly on animals.

The effects that I’ve focused on the most lately are how my eating choices affect my own health.

I’ve told many friends over the years about how I went vegetarian for three years in the early ’90s. About how the health effects were startling. About how I lost 90 lbs. About how it made me more serene, more at peace.

Well, back in ’95, I went back to eating meat, junk food and lots and lots of pasta. Plenty of sugar, as well.

And, as you might imagine, the results were not good.

So the direct effects to our health and well-being are a big deal. I don’t want to make this post all about me but let me just say that the issue of our food choices is a big deal for me again now because back on Earth Day, I eliminated meat and sugar from my diet.

The results–just as back in 1992–have been startlingly good. For me, the strategy is just to go back to what worked. It worked very well for me a quarter-century ago, and it’s working again.

How our food choices effect all those other things I mentioned earlier in this post are extremely important, of course.

Here is a link to a brief and excellent article that covers ten of the most important reasons why eliminating meat from your diet is a good way to go.

Because acting compassionately is at the very heart of our mission here at the FSF, the ways in which our food choices affect animals is a very big deal. Here’s an article that focuses mostly on that aspect of this issue.

Yes, we most certainly can eat compassionately!

And for many of us, choosing to love and protect animals rather than eating them could be a very good place to start.

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Bible/Sacred Literature, Living Life, Spirituality/Religion

The Divine One is Faithful

Test me, Lord, and try me,
    examine my heart and my mind;
for I have always been mindful of your unfailing love
    and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness.

This passage from Psalm 26 is a favorite of mine. And it reminds us that keeping in mind God’s unfailing love and faithfulness is an outlook on life that will serve anyone well.

No one expects life to be that proverbial bowl of cherries. All of us have known moments of pain and great despair. Sadly, some of us have seen more of that side of life than most will ever know.

Nevertheless, cultivating that attitude of gratitude–as the Psalmist does in this passage–reminds us that the Divine One loves humanity. And that each of us was fashioned in the Divine Image.

Looking for and honoring that reflection of God, that Divine Spark, in the people we meet each day will point us in the direction of gratitude. Gratitude and awe.

The unfailing goodness and love of God is all around you and in everyone you meet!

Embrace it. Embrace it and be grateful!

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis

stfranman Compassionate Living

Compassion is what they do

For most people who have a career or a job, there are always opportunities to care about the people you interact with each day.

Almost everybody has opportunities to act compassionately, to be the hand or the voice of compassion.

In some professions, acting compassionately is just what they do.

I’m not sure we can ever show appropriate gratitude to those in the nursing profession. But today is “their” day and I think that’s a wonderful thing.

If you know a nurse or come in contact with one today–or any day, for that matter–tell them you appreciate their compassionate care.

They do so much for so many; the patients committed to their care know very well how much people in the medical profession channel that spirit of compassion and love as they do what they do each day. Nurses, especially.

I went through repeated hospitalizations and a serious surgery back in 2014 and I was–and still am–in awe of the care nurses provide. It was almost overwhelming at the time and the memories of my time in their care are still fresh in my mind.

Show some gratitude to someone today. Especially if you “catch them” in an act of blatant compassion!

If it is someone in that esteemed profession, all the better!

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Bible/Sacred Literature, Compassionate Living, Spirituality/Religion

Drink the Wine of Violence

There have been times in the last two years when it seemed as though people who make policy or enforce the laws in our country have inverted our cherished and long-held values and ideals.

At times it almost seems as though they value heartlessness, advocate for cruel policies and practices and encourage or condone violent acts.

Because most of us have not seen such a sad spectacle in our lifetimes, it’s hard to imagine that problems like these are–for lack of a better word–normal.

Not normal in the sense that we should accept these terrible things. But in the sense that cruel, heartless people do take hold of the reigns of power from time to time and that when they do, cruelty and heartlessness begin to manifest and metastasize.

Things were no different when the writer of Proverbs recorded this text:

14 Do not enter the path of the wicked,
   and do not walk in the way of evildoers. 
16 For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
   they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. 
17 For they eat the bread of wickedness
   and drink the wine of violence. 

from Proverbs, Chapter 4

These are dark days in our shared history. Dark, baleful days for people of faith. Especially those who will not bend the knee to Mammon nor worship a god of cruelty, rage and revenge!

But in spite of all the dark and tragic things going on around us right now, I can tell you this: countering anger and hate with more anger and hate will do nothing to change any of it!

Rather we must recommit ourselves to the values we have learned from our loving parents, our teachers, our Rabbis, Priests, Pastors and Imams.

The values of love, of community and of compassion.

Our hope is to be found in holding fast to these values.

Channeling the rage and hate we see all around us today will only further sicken our country and our kin.

We must choose love. We must choose compassion.

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Ecology/Environment

A Step Toward Sustainability

There’s so much to like about springtime. And April just might be my favorite month.

Well, this April is really special, especially for those of us who are environmentally-conscious and are rooting for our planet while she is being brutalized by modern industry and billions of unaware and indifferent humans.

And we here at the FSF have joined our voice with the millions who are calling for getting serious about caring for the Earth, about taking the actions which must be taken if we are to stave off the day of environmental reckoning which is surely coming.

We are in the last few moments of April as I write this, but it was in this month that renewable energy–that is, hydro, biomass, wind, geothermal and especially solar–generated more power than coal.

Stop and think about that for a moment. It is quite a noteworthy event and shows clearly that in spite of all the ways that our planet has been horribly treated–especially in the last two years–we can, and we must, do everything in our power to make progress and to mitigate the damage being done to Mother Earth.

If you’d like to read a good and highly informative article about this salutary event, just follow this link.

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Ecology/Environment

Today is National Arbor Day

More trees, please!

Many folks and environmentally-focused organizations will be out planting trees today. Caring for our environment and the natural world is a huge focus here at the FSF.

It’s a very good thing that there is a day set aside for trees and the planting of trees. The Arbor Day Foundation has planted right around 250 million trees on this day in the last 43 years!

The banner photo is one of three majestic oaks that live right outside the apartment where I was living in 2015 and ’16. The view from my patio was just breathtaking.

If you’d like to know more about National Arbor Day, just follow this link.

Hug a tree today!

Brother Ben

stfranman Living Life

What’s the reading on your Happiness Meter?

Like a whole lot of people, I spent the first 30 or so years of my life acting as though my happiness depended on other people and on life’s circumstances.

I won’t be at all surprised if many–if not most–of you can relate to that.

I’m not quite sure how that began to change for me, but it was a very big deal.

It can be a revolutionary idea to know that each one of us is responsible for our happiness, for our contentment.

I am not saying that we can always keep our equilibrium and a big grin on our faces when difficulty comes around. And we all know that it does from time-to-time.

But regardless of what life brings our way, we can choose to be happy.

Having said that, choosing to ignore pressing issues in our lives, or in the larger world “out there”, is not a good strategy. That’s not what I’m saying, either.

But we can–and we should–choose happiness every time it comes to our awareness.

If we wait for others or for some splendid, wonderful event to “make us” happy, we’ll be waiting in vain.

Be happy today! You deserve it!

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Ecology/Environment

Happy Earth Day to all!

As many of you probably know, Earth Day falls on April 22nd each year. But it’s being celebrated in many communities today simply because it’s a Saturday and it’s much easier to get folks out on a weekend.

I’m in Central Florida and the Earth Day celebration at Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando is quite an event here each year.

I hope there’s a party near you!

Here’s a link to a site all about Earth Day and celebrating it. A web search about Earth Day will also bring up a bah-zillion results, some of which may actually be about events in your area!

I hope today and this weekend go wonderfully well for you, whatever you may be doing.

Brother Ben

stfranman Compassionate Living

Compassion in Action

Sometimes the language we use when speaking or writing about things is pretty abstract. It’s always good to give more life, more substance, to your story by citing examples or giving more detail.

I talk about compassion a lot here on the site, talk about how urgent it is and so on.

Because you’re reading this, no doubt you’re on-board with that idea that compassion and acting compassionately are very important.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing to come up with a really good, a really clear example of someone acting compassionately.

Here we go: last Saturday night, Hanna Pignato, a waitress at the Joe’s Crab Shack on the Daytona Beach Pier noticed that a young swimmer in the ocean beneath her restaurant was struggling in a rip current.

Most folks would have hollered for a life guard or dialed 9-1-1.

Not Hanna. She gave her apron and wallet to a colleague and jumped into the sea.

Unfortunately for this hero, she hit a sandbar and broke her foot and fractured three vertebrae.

The swimmer was pulled to safety by someone else and Hanna was barely able to swim back to shore safely.

But the overarching fact here is that she put it all on the line. She acted compassionately, to say the least, when the limit of most folks’ compassion would have been to feel intensely sad if the boy had not ultimately been saved from the rip current.

Hanna is a hero. Her ennobling act of compassion stuns and inspires me.

Needless to say, her medical expenses are considerable. And her apartment is on the third floor so this is a big deal.

If you’re able to help Hanna, I hope you will. Click on this if you’d like to know how you can help.

Brother Ben

© 2019 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.