No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara ever turned light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, (Overcoming addiction quote)
I hesitated to blog this quote because it can be interpreted two different ways. An animal rights activist may find Fosdick’s assumption that horses should be harnessed offensive. A rancher who needs horses to herd cattle on the range may wholeheartedly agree.
But I blogged it anyway, because Fosdick is teaching a point that transcends how earth’s resources should be used. He’s talking about arresting the wild and undirected inclinations and selfish desires of mortal mind that turn potentially productive people into aimless, empty, self-absorbed mortals that have little or nothing to show in the long run for all their time and effort. It’s about the self-discipline, moderation, hard work and focus necessary to reach worthy goals.
Jesus Christ was the most focused man ever. His thoughts and desires were Spirit-based, strictly focused on listening to God’s direction, faithfully following through, and reaping the benefit. He did not let his desires deviate one step from the straight and narrow way. And he was grandly rewarded for his faithfulness—eternal life! And we will too.
It can’t get any better than that.
I really needed to read this. Thank you so much.
Ha! I don’t blame you for hesitating … but I’m glad you proceeded.
I am grateful to be reminded of the need to focus on the goals God has given me to accomplish.
My focus for the past decade has been on elevating not only my own but also the world’s concept of God’s creatures.
Just because they have been regarded for centuries as “resources” and “used” for work, for clothing, for food, is that really the highest sense we should CONTINUE to have of nonhuman species? Are those conventional practices allowing God’s animals to express their true spiritual individuality?
Aren’t animals actually our fellow inhabitants of earth, who each depend upon their Father-Mother for their home, sustenance, joy, intelligence — even their moral and spiritual development — in the same way humans do?
Isn’t an aspect of our own spiritual progress a willingness to allow our neighbors, our animal friends, to spiritually evolve, too?
If they were merely physical “resources” (commodities, production units, machines, property, slaves), then why would our Leader have written so definitively, “Christian Science gives neither moral right nor might to harm either man or beast” (Message for 1901, p. 20)? She didn’t include the vegetable or mineral kingdom in that statement. She included ONLY sentient beings, and for good reason.
Harm certainly includes killing, doesn’t it? We can’t logically say that killing harms humans but not nonhumans, can we? Why do we capriciously have different definitions of harm depending upon the species of animal in question? Why is it okay to kill cows but not cats? Does God segregate His love for His ideas based on species?
Why do we conveniently forget that Genesis 1 records land animals (including the cattle and horses to which this blog refers) as appearing spiritually on the SAME day, the sixth, that man (the full manifestation, the culmination of Mind) appears? And why do we ignore verses 29 and 30 of the creation account, as if they are to be applied in a more spiritually advanced era? When will that be?
Today, in the 21st century, except in very rare “survival” cases, there is no necessity for “using” animals as food or even as manure, not even in developing countries. In fact, “using” animals promotes poverty instead of alleviating it.
As we can see, there is much harm being done to the environment from our insistence upon clinging to that worn-out convention. Our land, deforested by millions of acres for feed crops (which require vast amounts of water to irrigate) and grazing animals (who require vast amounts of water to live), is showing us the barren, polluted, wasteful results of depending upon God’s gentle animals as “resources.”
It’s time we think and act intelligently, time we become merciful and meek in how we approach this subject. We can each ask ourselves honestly whether we are addicted to our traditions and tastes and even to timidity (a refusal to come out from the world of material conservatism and to separate ourselves from self-justification).
We each have our own God-led path to focus on, for sure, and because you have provided the perfect opportunity to share mine, I hope you don’t mind that I put this opportunity to good “use.”
Please, this is not a personal indictment of anyone. It’s an impersonal call to us all to go higher, to widen our affections. When we liberate others, we ourselves are the most liberated. And blessed.