I got several messages this morning saying that the Ban Jon Katz From Writing About Animals Page on Facebook had, in fact, itself been banned by Facebook.  It seems it is no longer available. I don’t know how this happened, I suspect some righteous angels went to work. I am sure it will happen again, as it has happened before. Hatred is a virus, there is no vaccine.

I was not inclined to write about it again, I admit to having some fun with it, but hate is not a fun thing, not a joke, really. It is a sad thing.  I need to say goodbye to the page to ban me. It did not do me any harm, really, but it said some especially cruel and false things about me – that I starved my animals, shot them for no reason, used them for target practice. It is always strange to be the object of that.

Shakespeare wrote that we often end up hating what we fear, and Martin Luther King warned us to never let anyone pull us down so low as to hate him or her.

It is not a good thing to be hated, you can blow it off but still, hatred does not show us human beings at their best.  I know of no problem or argument or issue that hate ever solved, and I learned right away when I started writing online  that I had to be very careful not to dwell long in that world, or I would become the very thing that I hated.

It is very easy to hurt people, it is much harder to treat them with dignity.

If disagreement is common, even healthy, hatred is always irrational, never healthy. I feel anger and hurt sometimes, but sooner or later, I end up feeling sad for the people who feel such rage and spread it. Because it is sad, more than anything else.  In our world, it is very easy to say hurtful things about people, we are very rarely held accountable for the words we use. But we are accountable, sooner or later, in one way or another. My faith is this: truth will always out, will always triumph over lies.

I believe the New York Carriage Horses are proving this in their own powerful way.

When I began writing about animals, I think I forgot hatred and cruelty for awhile, I thought I had left it behind. And then I made some hard decisions about my animals and shared them, and I knew that this new world, for all of it’s wonders, was a breeding ground for hatred and cruelty, as well as love and compassion and community.

A good friend taught me to pray for the people who hate me, the Quakers taught me to hold them in the light and wish them peace and compassion. And this episode, like many others, reminds me that there are good and brave people who do care about the truth and will always speak up for it. I think of them as the First  Responders of the Internet, I am touched by them. There are so many good people in the world, eager to do good, given the chance.

That is one of the great lessons of existence for me, I think, life is a double-edged sword, and the gift of spirituality is grace,  to learn to accept everything as a lesson and an opportunity to grow. I am not a praying man, but I do believe in mercy and compassion, and I think Dr. King was wise to understand that strength came from never allowing himself to be pulled as low as the people who hated  him.

I am no Dr. King, but I have learned the same lesson that he did.  There are no winners or losers when it comes to hating people and banning them.  When I decided to write about the carriage horses, and the future of animals in our world, and the farmers being harassed and bloodied, and the circus elephants, I knew I was returning to the galaxy of rage and fury. I can’t say I didn’t expect it. It is now, I think, a permanent part of my world. It will be as small or large and I permit it to be.  I pledge myself to not be drawn so low.

My heart bleeds a bit for the person who put up this page, and for the rage and hurt in her every word. I understand she is a good person in many ways, a lover of animals, a passionate person, and has only come to rage recently. I am no angel, I am no stranger to anger, my path is littered with mistakes and wrongdoing. But I wish a meaningful life for her, a better life, a life in which saying hurtful things about people is not her work or her amusement or her idea of honor.

And goodbye to the Ban Jon Katz From Writing About Animals Page. Mark Twain said a writer is absolutely worthless unless someone is trying to shut him or her up. Recognition at long last.