When I first became vegan, it occurred to me that I was adopting a practicing set of beliefs and joining a community of others with similar morals and values. With a wary look over my shoulder, I realized that I was essentially adopting a religion **hands shooting up in front of me to protect my face from getting slapped**.
You know, I can't really say that I've ever had a loving relationship with The Concept of Religion.
Both of my parents grew up in Catholic households. My dad ended up being Satan incarnate, and my mom never really attached herself to any religion other than Hippie-ism, so my siblings and I were left to fend for ourselves on the religious front.
I'll never forget when I was in the third grade and my best friend at the time was washing her hands with me in the bathroom. She told me very matter-of-fact-ly that her family was from some specific branch of Christianity that sounded like "librarian" to me, and she asked me what my family's religion was. I blushed beet-red with insecurity and started mumbling about how "oh gosh, what was it? Must've slipped my mind today..." so she very helpfully started offering suggestions. I listened to the foreign words rolling off her tongue until one of them sounded even vaguely human. "Wait stop! That one! Yeah the 'M' one!"
She smiled knowingly at me and nodded her head. "Mormon? Yeah. You're mormon. I knew it."
I smiled back, glad to pretend to belong to something, even if I had no idea what the hell it was. It would take me many years to realize that that was actually the standard mode of operation for so many people claiming to belong to organized religion.
When I was about nine, my parents decided to take us all to a friend's church in Paso Robles. It was my first time in a House of God, and it ended up being my fault that our attendance there only lasted a few Sundays. I don't remember much of our few visits there. I recall the pastor Steve with the pierced ear preaching to us about the heaviness of adultery, and I remember scanning the pews for possible sinners sneaking out together to ravage each other in the bushes. As he quoted some choice verses from the Bible about the sanctity of marriage, I gazed out the eery stained glass windows, lost in my daydreams of forbidden romance with a creepy smile on my nine-year-old mouth. I'd seen more than my share of
Days of Our Lives, and it was only too easy to imagine the seemingly chaste and pure pastor gently putting his white man's hands on the nape of the neck of the pastel-clad matron in front of me.
While everyone read aloud from the Book of... uh... Genesis or something (yeah I don't know SHIT about the Bible, okay? I'll admit it) I smirked knowingly as the lady's pink shoulders leaned away from her husband, and I followed the thread of riveting energy from her fluttering bosom straight to the pointed finger of God's Words that Steve shook powerfully at us. Why, oh why is it that men of the cloth are so appealing on such a primitive level? It's like bringing home a blank white canvas: you just can't resist dipping your biggest brush in that can of glossy red paint and dragging it roughly and expertly across the immaculate surface, feeling the force of your fingers behind each muddying stroke. ... ... Anyone? Any takers? No? Okay, well the important thing is that I was obviously getting a lot out of my introduction to Christianity. Now I'll get to the part about how I'm pretty sure it was my fault my family stopped attending the church after only a couple months tops. After one of Steve's sermons (correct term?) I was deciding if he had any body piercings other than his ear, when he called for the usual Moment of Silent Prayer. I bowed my head along with all the other church cattle, and only half-noticed that a tiny bubble of gas was parading down my Holy intestines and out my Born-again bottom. In fact, I wouldn't have paid it any attention at all if it weren't for the remarkable acoustic reverberations that resounded resolutely throughout the silent hall like the little drummer boy's beat that heralded the Birth of Christ Our Saviour.
PPBBBBBBBTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!
One hundred anuses clenched simultaneously as the mouths of their owners fought to stifle their laughter, and the face of one nine-year-old girl flushed red as the nipples of the Virgin Mary. I did what any one would do when backed against a wall facing a shooting brigade of humiliation: I searched for a scapegoat to be my little bitch. I turned around to size up an ancient man behind me, and raised my eyebrows at him in feigned disgust, looking him up and down as if trying to decipher the outline of possible Depends under his pants. Luckily for me, my older sister was known at the time for being in a dire constant need for Bean-o, so I didn't even have to open my mouth to toss the blame in another direction. Everyone automatically assumed she'd been the culprit, and all I had to do was keep my sinner mouth shut for about ten years before the heat of embarrassment had died down enough to repent for my flatulence. I don't think we took a vote on the subject, but somehow none of us seemed to want to attend another Sunday service in a place where we would be forever dubbed The Family of the Farter, so our stint as Christians faded out as quickly as my unfortunate burst of air.
I grew up in a little white Christian town that could have easily passed for any midwestern Bible-thumping farming community. My neighbor was a cow. Like, an actual cow. Her name was Mandy, and we used to get our kicks by shocking ourselves on her electric fence when there weren't any appealing shows on our one TV station. Mandy was really cool, actually, but toward the end of her life she started looking a little haggard. She lost an eye, and no one bothered to put an eye patch on her so instead of rocking the pirate look she was doomed to live out her final days with an empty eye socket shrouded by sagging wet pink skin. In the true human spirit of ignoring any-and-every-thing that makes us uncomfortable and uneasy, we stopped visiting her and her thrilling fence. Poor, poor Mandy.
Around the time that Mandy was losing parts, I was having the standard identity crisis that everyone goes through in high school. I'd gotten over the fear of being unique that junior high had instilled in me, but I hadn't quite reached the conclusion that I was a sailor-mouthed artist with a horrendous sense of accidental fashion and a passion for vegetables (that realization didn't happen 'til five seconds ago, so I still had about ten years of cluelessness ahead of me). The circle of friends I was falling into was loosely formed from all the "smart" kids who for the most part were also socially adept. We were the ones who had GPA's above 4.0 and didn't drink or do DRUGS! but knew enough not to play with make-believe ponies across the parking lot and to keep our Magic cards safely hidden in our dresser drawers at home. Many of my friends attended church every Sunday as well as weekly Youth Group sessions together. The combination of my curiosity and their thirst to "save" souls led to my second attempt at becoming a Christian. (I swore off beans and any other gas-inducing foods during this period.)
I became a weekly fixture at my friends' youth group meetings. As we were lectured on the importance of abstinence, I glanced around at my peers. Half of the ones I recognized were complete whores. Oh okay, I know that's rude. Tramps. Ho-bags. I'm just saying. I may not have grown up knowing that Christ died for my sins, but I was born with THEE most rigid self-imposed morals of anyone I'd ever met. Granted, my moral cellular walls started breaking down at the ripe age of seventeen, but hey, at that point I was only about fifteen or sixteen, so I didn't know that was going to happen yet. No no no, at this point I was still the biggest prude in the room. I wondered if it bothered any of the fakers around me that they were pretending to lap up the shit their youth pastor was dishing out about saving sex for marriage while they were discreetly "sext"-ing their boyfriends behind their Bible covers. Did they feel any remorse for betraying the beliefs they claimed to uphold? I personally beat my head against a wall out of guilt any time I jay-walked or littered, and those weren't even things Brad Pitt cared about in the movie
Seven. These kids around me, though... it was almost as if they were exempt to their own religion's moral code. They fingered the cross necklaces that hung at their throats against a backdrop of purple splotchy hickie marks from last night's bonfire escapades. They wore Spice-Girl-sized sunglasses to hide their puffy eyes in first period after a weekend of heavy drinking and sleep deprivation. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat in Youth Group whenever we played trivia games about fun Bible facts! and such. I was an outsider, a weakling fetus in the world of established Christians around me. I knew nothing about which quote was from which book of the Bible, or even what the hell they MEANT by "book." Isn't the Bible all one big book?!! What the fuck?!! I remember trembling with anxiety whenever a question was directed my way. Couldn't the youth pastor sense my desperation and take some pity on me?? Couldn't he just accept my sweaty face and stuttered gibberish responses and chalk it up to autism or something?? Fuck, man, I swear they loved to highlight my ignorance and then call on the girl with genital herpes next to me to swoop in in all her holiness to supply the answer I'd lacked. I got really frustrated with the injustice of it all. No, I didn't own a Bible, but the first time I let a boy put his hand under my shirt and unhook my bra, I repented the FUCK out of my sins. I went home that night, prayed for four hours, cried at my immorality, and dragged my sobbing frame to my brother's room to rasp one terrifying line of confession in his direction as he played guitar.
"
You don't know what I've done!!!" I rattled shakily, weak with regret. "I've done something so bad... so bad...." I turned away and drudged heavily back down the hallway to my room, the weight of sorrow turning my feet to lead. It occurs to me now that my brother could only have assumed I'd murdered someone. Huh. I find it interesting that he didn't seem too concerned about it and merely shrugged, going back to strumming a Weezer-ish melody.
The first time I drank, it resulted in the same manner of mourning for my lost innocence. I was spending the night at a friend's house, and she was repeatedly harassing me and peer-pressuring me (it works, folks!) until I finally agreed to break into her parents' liquor cabinet with her just to shut her the fuck up. I gagged on Bacardi and grape juice, whispering liquory apologies to my conscience whenever my friend went to relieve her liquory bladder. I never forgave her for stealing my virtue, or myself for not having big enough balls to stand up for what I believed in.
Now, ten years later, I've traded in my strict moral code for the more reasonable rule of Hey, Just Try to Be a Good Person, Okay? Although one of my favorite hobbies is vigorous shit-talking, I find comfort in the fact that inside I have a heart of solid gold. I may be an alcoholic (hey I'm over two weeks sober, guys!) but I am full of compassion for others and love for my family and friends. It was that love and compassion that led me to veganism.
Vegans share so many qualities with religious fanatics. Every vegan wants everyone to be vegan, because according to us, the world would be saved. There are aggressive vegans out there on the streets picketing with heavy signs of MEAT IS MURDER! right next to the angry Christian dudes with their CHRIST IS LORD! messages. The most helpful lesson I learned from my brief stint as a Christian was the need to be informed of the facts surrounding your beliefs if you want to have any credibility in the face of adversity. I remember sitting in my US History class and eavesdropping on a conversation between two students in front of me. One was challenging the other's faith with the oh-so-classic battle of homosexuality being a product of nature vs. nurture. The nonbeliever was questioning his opponent's belief that gay men and women choose their sexual orientation and that in order to be "saved" it is necessary for them to reverse their preferences and adopt a heterosexual lifestyle. The believer was quaking in his boots, quoting various blurbs of Scripture outlawing one man laying with another man and other unhelpful bits of information. Here's the thing. I am one hundred percent a supporter of gay rights. (About every six months, I actually decide that I am a lesbian.) I can't wrap my head around the concept that so many people would ever want to deny other people the basic right to love a person of their choice. However, despite how messed-up it may be, there are shit loads of articles and studies and lectures and books available to the public in support of the idea that being gay is a choice, and a wrong one at that. As I sat there watching the kid try to sweat his way unwittingly out of a conversation that challenged his religious code, I started getting really upset that he could sit there and support the bashing of an entire lifestyle without at least bothering to check out the resources available on the subject and have some sort of ammunition to back up his protesting ideology.
When I became vegan, I had no idea that being bombarded at any moment by anti-vegan aggressors would be a part of my new path.
The first time it happened, I felt just like that ignorant fool in History class, unprepared and unable to articulate the breadth of realities that had bolstered my decision to ditch my omnivore self. Since then, you bet I've beefed up my artillery bag with one thousand easy-to-reference reasons to boycott the meat and dairy industries so I wouldn't be caught off-guard by a surprise attack from another veganism-skeptic on my next first date or at happy hour on a Monday afternoon. Someone once said something offhanded to me in an email and accidentally changed my whole life. I was relaying the difficulties I'd had over the holiday season with introducing my veganism to my family. My family is the most accepting family ever, and they don't give a fuck if I'm vegan or a gypsy or a pirate or whatever. What was upsetting me was that I felt so RUDE having to reject all the nonvegan foods that everyone was going through so much trouble to make and was lovingly presenting to me. I hated the snobbish feeling I felt I was exuding by not partaking in the BBQ'd meats or the reindeer cupcakes, and everytime someone pointed out that "Oh, you can't have that, huh" I was filling with a Grinch-y rage and shouting "
I CAN HAVE WHATEVER I WANT-- AND I WANT TO SAVE THE ANIMALS!!!" I was complaining in my email to this acquaintance that the stress of seeming ungrateful and not maybe being understood was causing me a lot of unhappiness, and his response tilted the world on its axis to let in a blinding ray of pure white light that struck me straight in the heart:
The whole idea behind veganism is compassion. Have compassion for your family and yourself as you both adjust to your new lifestyle, just as you have a compassion for animals that has led you to become vegan in the first place.
Duh.
So simple, yet so profound. And with that bit of advice, everything came easier to me. Instead of feeling like I was fighting an uphill battle anymore, it all became love. I am going to do my part, because I believe in it, and I will show you how happy I am because of it, but you don't have to agree with me or feel the same way. You're going to eat that vegan cupcake I made and you're going to love it, but I'm not going to flaunt it in your face. I will make tiny little fist pumps when you're not looking and rejoice over the fact that by not putting butter or eggs in my pastries I'm doing my little part to protest the havoc we've wreaked on our environment and economy world-wide. It makes the salsa on my mushroom, rice, and spinach wrap taste that much sweeter when I know that by eating it I'm ultimately supporting the end of both world hunger and of the destruction of our natural resources. Let me tell ya, that sense of purpose is a pret-tay pret-tay tasty seasoning.
To sum it all up, I guess to each his own. Live and let live? Right? I mean, as much as I don't see how someone can argue against the personal and global benefits of a plant-based diet, I also know that the majority of people don't support my beliefs. Just as I don't believe that I will get shat upon for an eternity in the fiery halls of Hell if I have premarital sex or spew eleven curse words before I've even opened my eyes in the morning. All we can really do is support our own beliefs in our daily lives and do our best to coexist in peace and harmony with all the other beliefs floating around out there. I promise I won't paint MEAT IS MURDER! on your fur coat if you promise not to Sharpie TOFU IS FOR PUSSIES! on the vegan food cart that I am for sure going to be having sometime in the near future. Look at us coexisting so nonjudgementally. Jesus would be so proud.
Amen.
