The Struggle For Food

SUN., NOV. 17, 1996, 6:40 AM
FARM, STUDY

The scene in your henhouse is a grim one… another hen killed but, strangely, not eaten as the previous one was. There is disarray and terror, as chickens can feel such emotions, yet your rooster survived and awakened you with his crowing. Some animal or animals from the wild are seeking food, and your chickens are not protected enough. “Would a good God let all of this happen?”

All forms of life must be sustained by some sort of food. The major difference between this material, earth scene and spiritual realms is in the type of “food” that is necessary. In realms of spirit the “food” is spiritual, and you have some rudimentary sense of what this is, even here in the earth – reading, praying, contemplating, savoring a happening, such as the celebration with which your student surprised you last week… In the earth, for animals, including humans, the food must be material, and can be some forms of flesh.

The Bible story, particularly the Old Testament, tells of the eating of meat and the sacrificing of animal life as part of the worship of Me. Killing the fatted calf was the culmination of one celebration. Even My last appearance, as Jesus, with My disciples featured fish being cooked on a lakeside fire. It is not absolutely necessary to eat meat, but this has not been one of My disapprovals… except in eating the meat from animals sacrificed to Me, which is not a Christian practice.

Some animals are carnivorous. Did I create them to be such? Apparently. Part of animal life, then, is surviving and not being eaten by some other animal. Humans do not eat the flesh of other humans, generally, but most of you eat the flesh of certain animals… with the commercials for fried and roasted chicken and for double burgers coming to mind. Did I create humans to eat meat? Symbolically, in the rivalry between Cain and Abel I favored Abel who brought sacrifices of animals and who was killed by his brother, Cain.

This week you have watched the parades of African refugees, struggling to survive with little food of any kind. Wouldn’t some meat be a great treat, as well as much-needed protein for continued life?

Your experience here on the Farm, with animals, tells you this must be a time when there is a proliferation of some animals, like raccoons, and they seek food. How many times have you sung the song of the Fox going off with the farmer’s duck, not minding the “quack, quack, quack, and the legs all dangling down, o.”!? He was feeding his family. Last night it appeared to be just murder… more like human behavior? Kill, but don’t eat? Hmmm.

Earlier I mentioned spiritual food, and I’ll emphasize again that this is what is most necessary in all realms, including this one. Oh, it doesn’t seem so, but consider that the desire to kill and otherwise harm others… reported daily even in your “peaceful” culture… comes from spiritual hunger… lack of proper spiritual food.

Yet complete peace can mean an accumulation and an agglomeration of humans, with potential destruction of the earth’s capacity to restore itself. So it gets back again to death as a necessary part of ongoing life. This doesn’t explain, sensibly, the death of the little hen in the corner of the house. It is an unfortunate result of the basic principle: animal life in the earth, including humans, is a struggle. The depiction of the life in a lion’s pride showed clearly that some must die in order that others might live… and the females are the killers.