Vegetarian Friends

A Glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom Human Befriends Cheetah A rescued cheetah named Mtombi (“Little Girl”) and photographer Chris du Plessis are clearly close friends. He loves to hear her loud purr, but, says Mr. Du Plessis, he doesn’t forget that she’s a wild animal. Mtombi lives at the Marula Camp, Tshukudu Game Lodge in South Africa, where she is self-supporting; that is, she does her own hunting. He saw her lying quietly for some time, so he carefully lay down next to her and pretended to be shooting a picture. --Contributed by Marjorie Emerson Editor’s Corner Essay: Concerns and the Animal Concern There’s a light that was shining when the world began And a light that is shining in the heart of man. There’s a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew And a light that is shining, Friend, in me and in you. The most basic affirmation of the Society of Friends is that the Divine Light is present in every person. It is usually referred to as the Inner Light. Not everyone reading these lines is a Quaker, but many readers do affirm the reality the language points to, so I will not apologize for using Quakerspeak that I believe is readily understandable. Most of what follows is elementary to Friends, but because it is intended to place the Animal Concern in the context of other Quaker Concerns, it has, I hope, something to say to seasoned members of the Society as well. This Light that Sydney Carter’s song celebrates cannot really be defined. Parallel terms that Friends use are “That of God” “the Spirit of God” and “The Seed of God.” It can also be described as God Immanent, or as that which links every person to God. I think of the Light as the impersonal dimension of God, i.e., the divine Energy, whereas the Spirit refers to the divine Consciousness, that which loves, inspires and guides us to work toward bringing about on earth a state of planet-wide justice and compassion, also known as the Kingdom of God. The Peace Concern Friends’ conviction that the Light/Spirit is present in all persons is the true basis for the Quaker Testimonies, the central principles by which we live. Probably the first Testimony to be proclaimed politically, and the most foundational, was Peace or Nonviolence. The Society of Friends came into existence in England during the 1640s, the time of the civil war of Parliament against king. Having suffered persecution under the Established religion and government, Friends tended to favor the cause of Parliament, and some enlisted in the parliamentary army. But when George Fox, the mystic and prophet generally considered the founder of the Society was offered a commission in the army with flattering words, he refused it, saying that he “lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.” Many others were already of that mind, and since Fox had considerable spiritual authority among Friends, still others followed. In 1660, leading Friends sent a document to King Charles II, declaring that Friends were “harmless and innocent people” who abjured the use of all “outward weapons;” that they had no part in any violent plot to overthrow the king and government. Subsequently, Friends have developed their testimony of Peace further, to reject all war and violence by any party (though they do not reject limited police power). In this seventeenth-century situation, the Testimony and the Concern came into existence together. A Testimony is an umbrella principle; a Concern is a conviction, arising in particular Friends, that the Spirit is summoning them to speak up and take action against a cultural evil of their own times which violate that Testimony. Apparently Friends reached unity on the Peace issue within a few decades. I consider this Testimony and Concern to be a primary-level one in Quaker history: it is inconceivable that we should affirm that another bears the same divine Light and Spirit as ourselves, and then attempt to kill him or her to stop some perceived evil. The Human-Slavery Concern The next Primary-level Concern arose from the Equality Testimony. Quaker Equality has nothing to do with talents, achievements, income, education, race, or gender, but rather with inherent moral status in the the Spirit, or in the eyes of God. This Testimony arose out of the strong class system in seventeenth-century England, fostered by the fact that most first generation Friends, being from the working class, had felt the sting of being held in contempt by the upper classes. (See the editorial essay, “Nativity Narratives and Class-Busting” in the previous issue of PT.) Human slavery, fed by the Triangular Trade based in Britain, was not so visible in Britain itself, but was a conspicuous feature in its colonies. Other countries also engaged in the slave trade. Immensely profitable, it became more and more prevalent as the seventeenth century passed into the eighteenth. Considering that the inequality involved is even more vicious than that of class, it seems unbelievable that most early Friends, for several generations, apparently did not even notice a conflict with their own convictions. Perhaps it was because Friends were not the victims. Already in the second generation Friends began to enter the middle classes, and, in the colonies, themselves bought human beings as slaves. In time a small number even became slavers. But a little handful of Friends spoke against slavery. The two biggest examples: in 1688 four Friends from the Germantown meeting near Philadelphia--immigrants from Germany and the -- --Netherlands, countries that did not -- --have slavery--wrote a Petition to their Meeting, condemning the monstrosity growing around and among them. They pointed out, with considerable sophistication, that no one committed to the Golden Rule could have anything to do with enslaving others. Claiming to find this too large an issue for the group to deal with, their Monthly Meeting passed the buck to the Quarterly Meeting, who, with the same excuse, passed it to the Yearly Meeting. Here the petition died. Another voice passionately condemning slavery in the darkness of the early eighteenth century was that of the disruptive Benjamin Lay, 1682 - 1759 (whom we featured as a Pioneer in PT 140 ). Although Lay was expelled from several Meetings and after his death was forgotten by most, a few Friends of the next generation--John Woolman, Joshua Evans, Anthony Benezet--had been listening to him and went on to spread his message widely, both in the American colonies and in Britain. More Quakers began to listen. In 1776, almost ninety years after the Germantown Petition, Friends finally agreed to end slavery in their midst. Why did it take so shamefully long? No doubt racism has a big part in explaining Friends’ failure, over three or more generations, to live up to their Equality professions; Black people evidently did not look enough like white Quakers to be bearers of the Divine Spirit! (However, native Americans, oddly, did.) Economics also figure in a major way: many Quakers were getting rich with the assistance of slave labor; and as they fell to the lures of greed, they betrayed also their commitment to the Simplicity Testimony. I am tempted to quote Upton Sinclair’s famous line again: “It is hard to make a person understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Present-day Friends like to dwell on the heroic anti-slavery labors of the saintly John Woolman, without giving too much thought to why, many decades after 1688, those labors were still needed to awaken the Society of Friends from its drugged sleep. The Animal Concern The foregoing sketch of most eighteenth century Friends’ inglorious response to the human-slavery Concern prepares the ground for our present situation, which I believe is an even more basic Primary-Level Concern, reaching into almost all Friends’ lives virtually every day, even more than human slavery did. About ninety-five percent of Westerners, and probably of Friends as well, eat animals (thus also killing them). Going vegetarian, let along vegan, is difficult; studies show that about two-thirds of those who try going vegan revert to animal-eating again. It is likely that for many meat-eaters, including Friends, to question so pervasive a feature of the culture they grew up in--to name it -- --as evil and destructive on several levels--threatens anomie, a breakdown in one’s meaningful world. -- --(See “The Sky is Falling,” PT 61 .) There seems to be no single landmark event that can be said to have launched the animal concern among Quakers, but a few events may be mentioned. In a number of journals over the centuries, Friends spoke of developing compassion and tenderness for animals. To the best of my knowledge, Friend Benjamin Lay was the first to become vegetarian as a result of the Spirit’s leading. Very few, even among Friends, followed. Friend Anna Sewell’s best-selling 1877 novel Black Beauty had a great impact on the treatment of horses and other draft animals, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. But Anna had already left the Society of Friends and thereafter moved in evangelical circles, apparently feeling more support there for her and her mother’s compassionate activism on behalf of the poor and of (human) slaves. She had been deeply concerned about horses for decades, but wrote her classic book toward the end of her life, dying five months after it was published. In 1891, a group of British Friends under the leadership of Joseph Storrs Fry launched the Friends’ Anti-Vivisection Association, now Quaker Concern for Animals. Over the years, the group broadened its original focus on vivisection to address many areas of animal abuse and exploitation; for example, lobbying internationally on behalf of animals is an important part of their work. It has had some limited successes among British Friends, though the majority continue to eat animals. Perhaps the Quaker work that had the biggest impact on European society was English Friend Ruth Harrison’s 1964 book Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry. It was not addressed to Quakers particularly, but rather to the general public. Harrison (pictured) was a lifelong vegetarian herself, though her book, dense with facts she had unearthed, was primarily welfarist--probably necessarily so if it were to have an impact in -- --1964. The book resulted in legislation abolishing -- --various extreme abuses, particularly crates and cages. -- --(Unhappily, Harrison’s book had little impact in the -- --US: fifty years later, most of the abuses she -- --describes still prevail. Here and there they are, only -- --recently, beginning to be outlawed. ) Quaker Concern -- --for Animals applauded the book, but, as with Anna -- --Sewell’s novel, the majority of Friends apparently were -- --not stirred to action. Most continued to eat animals. In my experience, different Meetings seem to respond quite differently to the Concern. For example, one Meeting of my acquaintance authorized a committee to consider the animal issue in about 1991. When in May of 1998 the committee made the modest proposal of an experiment of holding two vegetarian potlucks, some members reacted as though their most basic liberties were being attacked. High words ensued. The committee clerk, a gifted cook and a generous soul, had from time to time invited all Meeting members to vegan meals. Some came and continued to come. Despite the hostile response of May 1998 and several sessions thereafter, nevertheless, she persisted; and now, twenty years later, all the Meeting’s potlucks are vegetarian by common consent (though not yet vegan). In contrast to this long and difficult road, other Meetings I know of have easily found unity when the Concern was broached. Size may partly explain the difference, but there seems to be a kind of spirit of a particular group that may perpetuate itself over time. (See Walter Wink’s The Powers that Be.) It appears that for many Friends and other religiously- and spiritually-minded persons, animals simply do not look enough like themselves to be included under the Golden Rule, or to be fellow-bearers of the divine Spirit. It’s true that mice, or giraffes, or pigs don’t look much like us, but is it so hard to tell that such beings are much more than carrots or cabbages, that they don’t like to be enslaved and killed any more than humans do? If eighteenth- century Quakers already committed to Equality took so long to recognize their racism, what will become of us and of our earth? The animals are waiting, and this time we probably don’t have ninety years. But we can persist, and we can hope. --Gracia Fay Ellwood NewsNotes No More Furs in Los Angeles Los Angeles city council voted in February to ban the sale of animal furs in Los Angeles--the largest city in the US to do so. -- --The ban is to go into effect in 2021. -- --There will be a few exemptions; for -- --example, furs will still be sold in -- --second-hand stores. Very likely the -- --fur industry will bring legal -- --challenges, but we can hope they won’t -- --drag on for ten years, as with the -- --foie gras ban. See No Furs Supreme Court Upholds Foie Gras Ban In January 2019, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal by the foie gras producers and restauranteurs to void the 2012 California law banning the production of foie gras, a “delicacy” made by forcing excess food down the throats of ducks and geese through a metal pipe until their livers swell up grotesquely, a procedure which the birds experience as torture. The law banning it therefore finally goes into effect. See Ban --Contributed by IDA Iowa’s Ag-Gag Law Struck Down In a major win for animals and for human First-Amendment rights to free speech, Federal judge James Gritzner declared in January that Iowa’s ag-gag law, passed in 2012, is unconstitutional. That makes three A-G laws struck down. See Down With Ag-Gag --Contributed by MFA Unset Gems “If one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to a lot of animals . . . the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.” --Ruth Harrison, 1920 - 2000 Pioneer: Joshua Evans Joshua Evans was an 18th century U.S. American Quaker. The following is excerpted from the late Joan Gilbert's essay, "Joshua Evans: Consistent Quaker," in The Friendly Vegetarian, No. 13, Spring 1986. "Joshua Evans, . . . one of the human agencies through which the divine inspiration reached John Woolman . . . gave up the use of slave-grown products in 1761 . . . abstained from animal food, as he did also from the use of leather and the skins of slaughtered beasts . . . " These lines from Reginald Reynolds' book, The Wisdom of John Woolman, should intrigue any Friendly vegetarian and foster a desire to know more. Reynolds does not offer a lot--merely that -- --Evans was a farmer, born in 1731, -- --eleven years after Woolman and was, -- --for a decade or so, his neighbor and -- --a member of the same Mount Holly, -- --N.J. meeting . . . . For us, Evans has a special fascination because his concern for justice extended to animals. Where did such sensitivity come from in an era when Early 18th Century Log Cabin, Pennsylvania even the sight of human suffering was inescapable wherever one looked? How did anyone live in the 18th century without animal products? What did he eat and what did he wear on his feet? [It is now known that he and his friends learned their sensitivity to the sufferings of both human and animal slaves from Benjamin Lay.] Alas, there are no full answers. Reading the version of his edited journal published in 1837 is of limited help. Here he refers to his diet only occasionally, mainly with satisfaction about how it simplified life, especially when traveling, since he could get along well on only bread and milk or water. At least once he remarked that his stamina matched or exceeded that of fellow travelers who dined more richly and plentifully. . . . Evans' journal does contain discussion of why "I did believe it was God's requiring of me, for causes best known to himself, that I should be cautious in taking life, or eating anything in which life had been." Evans quoted Genesis I: 26, 29 and 30 which many a vegetarian has taken as mandate, God's supposed words to Adam about fruit [and other plant products]: "to you it shall be for meat [food]." He also quoted what all animal lovers love in Isaiah about the coming time when "none will hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain." And he said, "I thought I saw, and had to believe, that life was intended to be at the disposal of him who gave it . . . that as all creatures, even the smallest insects, have generally a sense of danger, therefore, as we cannot give life, let us be very cautious of taking it away . . . . those who refuse to take life or partake of animal food can hardly be thought offensive to God and ought not to be censured or condemned by men. . . . my mind was enlarged in love of God and to my brethren, my neighbors and fellow creatures throughout the world . . . I considered that life was sweet in all living creatures . . ." If Evans was much upset by animal sufferings seen in his travels, these comments were almost entirely edited out. One time there is mention of passing by a bull-baiting, "a shameful sight . . . those looking on, no doubt professed christianity" . . . Once, when commenting on the despoiling greed for land, he noted that it caused suffering and death among the Negroes and Indians "and even the poor beast of the field and the birds of the air." He preached against westward expansion, because of the suffering it was causing. [Evans traveled extensively, visiting] "all the Friends' meetings I know of in North America, except for the four smallest. . . ." . . . . [W]herever he went, Evans was acutely sensitive to all suffering. He would visit any Indian village near his route, relaying the needs he found there to whatever Meeting he was visiting, suggesting members take action, which they usually did. He often preached "something is yet due the Indians for land wrongfully taken," and he liked to compare the blood of Abel, calling out for revenge, to the blood of slaves and Indians . . . . Evans' actions against slavery, at home or traveling, included visiting Quaker slave owners and "laboring with them" over the issue and the practicalities of extrication. . . Menominee Village, Mid-18th Century Joshua Evans also took his stand against war early in life; at twenty-five he declined military service and gave everyone great pause by also refusing to pay substitutes to kill for him. . . .His concern for peace is easily lost to us, interwoven as it was with [his refusal of] use of slave-labor products. . . . These stands, and his singular diet, naturally often brought him into conflict with others, even, he said, his parents and some of his best friends. He acknowledged that he often had to struggle to live out his convictions, especially at first. But for each time we see "I felt a scruple," we usually see "Great was my peace in having attended to my tender scruples." Nothing could dampen his zeal for consistency. A little more data about Evans exists in some papers done by Donald Brooks Kelley, chairperson of the history department at Villanova University. He has been interested in Evans as a part of a small group whose reform within the larger 18th-century reform almost put Quakerism on a route that could have made it a sort of Green Party among religions. These men, all of whom Kelley says were vegetarians in adulthood, included Woolman, Evans, Anthony Benezet, George Churchman and others. They seemed to share a conviction that consistency requires extending the same respect and compassion to all the oppressed. Benezet was especially concerned about ravages on the natural world; Woolman, as we know, referred often in his journal to the sufferings of animals and longed for the day when they and their owners would be less burdened. . . . . . . . [W]hy is it that Evans, a farmer, became ultra-sensitive to animals when farming seems to have just the opposite effect on most people? Why is it that in brutal times some people are made more callous and some are made more tender? Perhaps during our lives we will see completion of the reform Evans and his friends almost effected. Perhaps not. But even if we never know what he did for shoes, Joshua Evans is one of those far-ahead-of-his-time Quakers we can take pride in and revere as a role model. He showed us exactly how to live the enlightened, disciplined and--above all else--the consistent life. —Joan Gilbert Reprinted from The Friendly Vegetarian and the January, 2005 PT Review: How To Be a Good Creature How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals. By Sy Montgomery. Illustrated by Rebecca Green. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. 208 pages. $20.00 hardcover. This is the latest in the series of animal books by best-selling author Sy Montgomery, whose works include The Good Good Pig, previously reviewed in The Peaceable Table, The Soul of an Octopus, Walking with the Great Apes, and Spell of the Tiger. In all these publications Montgomery presents good scientific and care-giving information in a highly readable, unpretentious style. But her great gift is to make her relation to each animal, even Octavia the octopus, come across above all as a friendship, a very loving friendship, not as something extraordinary but as if the most natural thing in the world were for a human and a fellow-being of another species to be good buddies. In the present book we have the great friendships all at once rather than scattered through a sequence of volumes: here, along with a quasi-autobiography of her earlier life, no less than thirteen companions of land and sea are presented concisely in thirteen chapter. Sy Montgomery was the only child of a decorated Army general and a socially ambitious mother, raised in a world of money, servants, elegant parties, and highly traditional values. Her parents hoped she would meet and marry a promising young officer and enter the same kind of life as theirsnning she was something else -- never a -- -- "normal child," her mother said. Sy -- -- seems to have been born for another -- -- world, at least from that in which -- -- she found herself at birth. To -- -- start with, animals were virtually -- -- the only big thing in her life, -- -- starting with her toddling into the -- -- hippo pen in a zoo at the age of -- -- two, and she lived with and for her -- -- beloved dogs throughout the growing -- -- years. But she took no interest in -- -- her family's social culture, much -- -- less in the young officers. Later -- -- she became a vegetarian, married a -- -- man of considerably different -- -- attitudes, religion, and lifestyle -- -- from her parents', and settled with -- -- him in a modest farmhouse in New -- -- Hampshire, the place always -- -- abounding in animals. By then major -- -- estrangement from home was -- -- unavoidable, though she managed to -- -- be with both her father and mother -- -- at their deaths. In New Hampshire she and Howard, her husband, raised Christopher Hogwood, the hero of The Good Good Pig, from a tiny runt to a seven hundred pounder. Of that “operatic eater” she writes, "He taught us how to love. How to love what life gives you, even when life gives you slops." But "Chris" was hardly her only animal. She not only had several dogs and chickens on the acreage, described in loving detail, but also took long expeditions of several months each to various exotic places to study and write about exceptional animal friends: emus in Australia, a giant tarantula named Clarabelle (Sy realized early on that friendship means using real names, and says, "People aren't born with a fear of spiders") in French Guiana, cheetahs in Namibia, tree kangaroos in Papua New Guinea, pink dolphins in the Amazon, and of course her octopus friends in the Boston aquarium. They all starred in subsequent articles and books, some for children and some for adults, and Sy's writing became increasingly famous. Perhaps the most remarkable friendship was that with Octavia the octopus, detailed in the bestselling The Soul of an Octopus. Some might feel that this animal, living in water rather than land, without bones but with virtual brains in each of her eight legs, tasting through her skin rather than a mouth, separated by half a billion years of evolution, might be as remote as an alien on another planet. Yet the highly intelligent marine respondent clearly looked forward to Sy's visits, showing emotion by changing color as her species does: red for excitement, white for contentment. As the author wrote, "Being friends with an octopus -- whatever that friendship meant to her -- has shown me that our world. . . is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom." The point of this pilgrimage for Sy was, as the book title indicates, to learn to be a good creature herself -- that is, a -- -- companion, no better and no worse, -- -- than all the other creatures that -- -- throng the pathways of life. She -- -- acknowledges that she has not yet -- -- graduated from this school, -- -- writing, "I soon saw that I still -- -- had more lessons to learn on my -- -- journey of trying to be a good -- -- creature." But for those of us who -- -- also feel ourselves making this -- -- journey, and wish to equip -- -- ourselves for its demands, no -- -- better sustenance could be found -- -- than Sy Montgomery's book. Highly -- -- recommended, both for oneself and -- -- as a gift for all the right -- -- fellow-travelers. --Robert Ellwood Review: The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics. London: Routledge, 2019. xix + 389 pages. $220.00 hardcover. (Cheaper on Amazon or as ebook or Kindle) This volume, edited by the Director and Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in England, is comprised, in Part I, of essays by distinguished representatives of some fifteen spiritual traditions, from African Religions and Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism and Sikhism, on the attitudes of their faiths toward animals. The plural of "attitudes" is significant, since as many of the writers recognize, most historic religions have had, and still offer, a wide variety of positions on animals. These representative authors were clerally sympathetic approach to "animal ethics," but they cannot claim that all is well in their spiritual households. Most historic religions contain persons ranging from carnivores who say that eating is what God gave us animals for, to compassionate vegetarians. The Roman Catholic article, by Kurt Remele, is significantly subtitled, "A Strange Kind of Kindness. . . On Catholicism's Moral Ambiguity toward Animals." Thus the distinguished Eastern Orthodox professor and bishop Kallistos Ware, in writing on behalf of that faith, presents much that is ennobling from his church's prayers for animals, the extensive Orthodox fasts from meat, and examples from saints and littérateurs, including the wonderful words that Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov puts in the mouth of the Starets (spiritual teacher) Father Zosima, "[D]o not exalt yourself above the animals; they are sinless, and you, you with all your grandeur, defile the earth through your appearance upon it." Yet Ware must go on to admit that in predominantly Orthodox countries there is often "a sad gap between theory and practice," and that "We Orthodox need to kneel down before the animals and ask their forgiveness for the evils that we inflict upon them." (This humbling admonition could certainly be no less directed toward Catholic and Protestant nations.) No doubt the disharmony is because, as Lucy Gardner, writing from the perspective of Anglican Christianity, states, in effect we ask questions about Christian doctrine of other humans, and so "often exhibit a tendency to become human-centered, despite their usual stated intention to be fully God-centered." This bias animals "would want to ask about," querying whether a truly God-centered theology would be so much more interested in humans than in animals. She then goes on to talk about creation, human/animal nature, redemption, and incarnation from their point of view as well as ours. The latter part of the book contains collections of papers on "Human Interaction with Animals," "Killing and Exploitation," "Religious and Secular Law," "Evil and Theodicy," and "Souls and Afterlife." A number of these studies should certainly attract the browser. In the second category, for example, we have "Eden's Diet: Christianity and Vegetarianism" by Samantha Jane Calvert, a sometime researcher with the U.K. Vegan Society; and "Religion, Ethics, and Vegetarianism: The Case of McDonald's in India" by Kay Peggs of Kingston University, London. The third group contains "Catholic Law on Bullfighting" by Margarita Carretero-González, a piece which makes as vivid as a bullfighter's cape the "moral ambiguity toward animals" of that tradition expressed earlier, though the ambiguity is certainly no more Catholic than that in other major religious traditions. Finally, under "Evil and Theodicy" Max Elder's "Gratuitous Animal Suffering and the Evidential Problem of Evil" can be recommended as a well-informed analysis of this important philosophical (and personal) problem. In sum, The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics can be strongly recommended to all intellectually concerned with these issues. Despite the price, it belong in all major libraries public or private in which research on them is done. It will likely long be the "go to" place for checking views on animal ethics in the world's religions, and in thinking creatively about them. As for so much in the past, we owe a new debt to the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics for this new contribution. --Robert Ellwood Recipe: Soy Meat Stir-Fry Ingredients : 4 oz. of vegan soy slices 3 Tbsp.” Better Than Bouillon” veggie chicken bouillon 4 Tbsp. Toasted sesame seed oil 1 Tbsp. Garlic powder 1 c. Chopped mango 1 1/2 c. broccoli florets, cut small 8 oz. whole wheat noodles 1/3 c. Sesame seeds Condiments: Braggs Liquid Aminos, toasted sesame seed oil Preparation: Rinse vegan soy slices well, put in a bowl, then cover with water for 40 minutes until completely soft. Drain well and squeeze out excess water. Put veggie chicken bouillon and garlic powder into 3 c. water soy meat slices, lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain the soy meat in a sieve and set aside; save the bouillon broth, pouring it into a pot for cooking the noodles. Add 4 c. water to the boullion, bring to a boil, add 8 oz. whole wheat noodles, reduce heat and cook until tender, approximately 6 to 8 minutes. While they are cooking, put the sesame oil in your wok over medium heat, add the sesame seeds, soy meat, mangoes, and broccoli and stir until lightly browned. Drain the noodles, drizzle a little sesame oil over them and toss lightly. Serve with the stir fry ingredients and use Braggs Liquid Aminos, instead of soy sauce, as a condiment if you wish. This recipe serves four people. --Karen Borch Poem: Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886 “Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. Photo by Ian Fulton