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CVA Weekly Newsletter
January 29, 2014
- CVA Sustaining Membership, Materials
- Essays in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., part 1
- This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman
1. CVA Sustaining Membership, Materials
Sustaining CVA members are crucial to our ministry, and they receive our daily Take Heart! e-note as well as the excellent Veg News magazine. To become a sustaining member, go to freemembership.htm. For CVA books, booklets, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and other materials to assist your participation in our ministry, go to materials.htm.
2. Essays in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., part 1
Dr. King said, “We will continue to despise people, until we have recognized, loved, and accepted what is despicable in ourselves.” (Quoted by Jean Vanier in “The Wisdom of Tenderness” interview, On Being Podcast, 8/22/13.)
We all have character traits and past deeds of which we are ashamed. They make us feel unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. One way to address this problem is to find reasons why we, despite our shortcomings, are better than other individuals. King astutely recognized that our contempt of other people is largely inspired by our disregard for ourselves. I think also applies to human attitudes toward nonhumans. If we are a pinnacle of Creation, we must be worthy of God’s loving attention, and in order for humans to be the pinnacle of Creation we must be superior to nonhumans. Of course, this view presumes great limitations in God’s power to love the beings who God has created.
The first step is recognition. Many people can’t even identify what it is about themselves that they despise. This leads to a general sense of vulnerability and unease and a strong defensive reflex to lash out at anyone who seems to be uncovering the hidden shame. We often don’t want to identify those shortcomings which, if they came to light in our consciousness, would make us feel ashamed. This, I think, is a major reason that churches don’t want to discuss animal issues. If people confronted their complicity in the horrific treatment of nonhumans persons, they would likely feel ashamed. They resist the messenger, because they don’t want to hear the message.
In the next two weeks, I will explore loving and accepting what we despise in ourselves.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.
3. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman
True Christians Need to Live as Peacemakers
Your question and comments are welcome
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