Many warm congratulations to our friend (and past interview subject) Rev. James Ishmael Ford (Zeno Myoun, Roshi), author of the wonderful blog Monkey Mind, on being elected the seventeenth senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI.
We couldn’t be happier for you and Jan, James!
The death of thoroughbred Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby yesterday exposed horse racing for what it has become: damn cruel. Sally Jenkins puts it well in her column for the Washington Post:
There is no turning away from this fact: Eight Belles killed herself finishing second. She ran with the heart of a locomotive, on champagne-glass ankles for the pleasure of the crowd, the sheiks, oilmen, entrepreneurs, old money from the thousand-acre farms, the handicappers, men in bad sport coats with crumpled sheets full of betting hieroglyphics, the julep-swillers and the ladies in hats the size of boats, and the rest of the people who make up thoroughbred racing. There was no mistaking this fact, too, as she made her stretch run, and the apologists will use it to defend the sport in the coming days: She ran to please herself.
But thoroughbred racing is in a moral crisis, and everyone now knows it. Twice since 2006, magnificent animals have suffered catastrophic injuries on live television in Triple Crown races, and there is no explaining that away. Horses are being over-bred and over-raced, until their bodies cannot support their own ambitions, or those of the humans who race them. Barbaro and Eight Belles merely are the most famous horses who have fatally injured themselves. On Friday, a colt named Chelokee, trained by Barbaro’s trainer Michael Matz, dislocated an ankle during an undercard for the Kentucky Oaks and was given a 50 percent chance of survival.
According to several estimates, there are 1.5 career-ending breakdowns for every 1,000 racing starts in the United States. That’s an average of two per day.
Why is this important? Because Gandhi was right when he said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Disrespect to animals sets the moral bar pretty low. If treating animals we supposedly love and admire like this passes without much protest, is it any wonder we’re in an ethical quagmire over things like “enhanced interrogation techniques?”
I just signed the Statement of Conscience from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (N.R.C.A.T.), and I encourage you to do the same. The statement reads:
Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now — without exceptions.
N.R.C.A.T. is a membership organization of over 130 religious groups “committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” At present, it appears that only one Buddhist organization is part of N.R.C.A.T.’s membership (as an endorsing member): the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. It would sure be nice to see more Buddhist groups involved with this project. If you’re involved with the leadership of a Buddhist group, you can find out more about N.R.C.A.T. membership here.
Why? I ask you: why?
I’ve got two videos for you this morning, but both have had their embedding disabled by request. (Presumably, this has been done just to annoy me.) So, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the bosom of this blog to see them.
First, Sarah Silverman and her personal assistant offer an irreverent and riotous little skit for the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Check it out here and then visit http://www.burmaitcantwait.org.
Second, the BBC offers this report about preparations for talks between representatives of the Chinese government and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.
UPDATE: OK, never mind. I got the embedding code for Sarah Silverman’s Burma video directly from the U.S. Campaign for Burma’s website. It’s below. (Now if we can just get YouTube and the BBC to play ball…)
