Fate and I went to see Dr. Suzanne Fariello at the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Clinic. She and Nicole gave Fate two more shots – one more round to go – and also inserted a microchip into her back. Fate did not seem to notice the shots or the chip, she was loving Dr. Fariello, who was loving her back.
Fate is a very social dog, she loves people, and enjoyed every second of her visit. Like Red, she h as a gift of making friends in the world. Karen Thompson manages to come up with amazing dogs, they are a remarkable and unusual combination of love and work. Fate is beginning to chew a bit less, race around a bit less, jump on people a bit less (we are working on all of these). She has a great love of life and work, Freud would love her. Back for her final round of shots in two weeks.
I love living with an artist, my life is filled not only with love, but color and light and imagination. What else could one want? On our walk yesterday, Maria picked some wildflowers along the road. Actually, I sat on some while photographing some others. She couldn’t bear to leave them there, so she picked them for me, they are in my office.
The summer meadow is giving rebirth to itself, without the help of humans, their seeds, machines, or technology. I have learned to understand the meadow, to get close to it, to see it in a different way. It is the world’s garden, really, full of glory, color, and light.
We have only one heart, Pope Francis writes in his encyclical, “Laudato Si,” and the same wretchedness which sometimes leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is contrary to human dignity, says Francis.
I have found Laudato Si to be powerful reading, and timely reading. The Pope has touched on the cancer eating a way at the movement to save animals, to promote their well being and define their rights and welfare. We have only one heart, and one cannot love animals and be wretched to people. The lists of acts of cruelty towards the people who live and work in the carriage trade is a long and sorrowful one.
This love of animals cuts both ways. The dearth of spirit that causes us to mistreat human beings will show up in our relationships with animals. the wretchedness which causes us to harm animals will also show itself in our relationships with people. This, then, is part of the great moral confusion hanging over the New York Carriage Horse controversy and so many other animal conflicts.
Cruelty and wretchedness breed more cruelty and wretchedness. If you can mistreat animals, you will almost surely mistreat people. If you mistreat people, you will almost certainly mistreat animals.
And if it is characterized by nothing else, the years-long assault against the people in the carriage trade is marked by extreme cruelty anger, and the stripping of human beings of their dignity. Every night, the mothers and fathers of the carriage trade sit at their kitchen tables and worry about their future, the education of their children, their mortgages and their peace of mind. Some cry, some drink, some have suffered strokes and heart disease.
They wonder how the ancient work their fathers and grandfathers did could so suddenly become a hated thing, the target of rich and powerful men and women, the focal point of so much hatred and rage.
We and the animals are children of Mother Earth. We are bound to treat each other, to treat both people and animals, with understanding and respect. This is one of the tragedies that loom over the struggle to keep the horses in New York City. It has not resulted in a better life for animals or people. It has not brought about a dialogue about the future of animals in our world. It has spawned cruelty and abuse and division and waste towards and among people.
The mayor of New York City and the people who say they support the rights of animals have forgotten the point of loving animals. They show us how to love, not hate one another. By treating them well, they teach us to be more human. By treating people poorly, we learn to be less human. We don’t have two hearts. We can’t love animals and show no compassion for people.
We cannot save the animals without understanding and respecting the people who live with them and know them best.
The spiritual people and prophets have many different beliefs, but all seem to understand that we are all connected, that we and the horses are not different things, but one thing. “Everything is related,” writes the Pope in his encyclical, “and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.”
In New York City, the animal rights movement has separated political leaders from people, people from animals, people from one another. It threatens to separate the horses from the people they have lived with and served for thousands of years.
The mistreatment of the people in the carriage trade – every insult, every taunt, every accusation, every intimidation, every lie is contrary to human dignity – will not save a single animal. If we judge our own morality and humanity by how well we treat the animals, then what does it say about us when we treat humans so poorly, when we dehumanize them, take away their livelihood, their way of life, their dignity, accused them of foul crimes, of abuse and cruelty.
I would ask the people taunting and harassing the New York Carriage Drivers, the ones who shout at them, accuse their customers of supporting murder, who spy on them, follow them, videotape them and insult them if they believe it is acceptable to treat people with cruelty and contempt and still claim know how to love animals. And they will say, have said to me, of course, we are the ones who love, we are the righteous, we are the good. This, says Francis, is the hubris that is devouring the world and it’s children.
I have one heart, and I don’t believe it is big enough to love animals and hate people. If I want to do the one, I must come to terms with the latter.
The carriage horses call out to us to join them once more on their wonderful pilgrimage with us, to unite us, not divide us, in a loving affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.
