Animal Writings

Dear God,

We bow our heads in reverence to Thee; You who have endowed us with sentience and awareness, with thought and emotion, with breath and life.

We have faced torment and trials that have left us bloodied and ravaged. We have known despair and suffering that has destroyed billions of us; mechanically, ritually, sadistically.

We have bled to death with our entrails strewn across a metal cage floor. We have witnessed our pups starve because a trap clenched around our paw prevented us from feeding them. We have been skinned alive because our neck was only half-broken. We have heard the jeering in one ear as a Matador sliced off the other. We have drowned because we tried to swim without fins. We have lain down in the snow, wounded from a bullet while our companions watched. Worst of all, we have died from sadness in tiny cages and the dark corners of factory farm floors.

We are boxed into enclosures that leave us no room to move; our wings never fly; our legs never race across the ground; our mouths never taste good food. Our offspring are stolen from us; we are isolated from family, flocks, partners, and herds. We are chained, starved, suffocated, whipped, beaten, and burned. Our deaths are barbaric and pitiful, not gallant or natural.

Yet our faith is not shaken. We look forward with eagerness; we await our salvation. You made a covenant with us: we shall be redeemed. We shall witness a Holy Kingdom of goodness and life, free of malice and contempt, in which estrangement is replaced by communion, prejudice by good will, where no blood is shed and every creature under Your dominion is respected.

Our bodies are fractured and spent but our spirit remains unbroken. We will one day be freed from the shackles placed upon us. We will soar and swim and run without fear. Without impediment. Your mercy will shine in every soul and harmony will reign forever. The reconciliation will be eternally joyful. That is Your promise, we shall not waver in our faith.

We are the weak and helpless, the victimized and enslaved; yet we pray for our tormentors, as you have shown mercy toward sinners.

Let them have compassion. Compassion widens the heart. It is the antidote to the numbness of hedonism.

Let them have sympathy. Sympathy generates kindness, builds fellowship, and erases loneliness.

Let them have honesty. Honesty comes from looking at our eyes and seeing our pain. Honesty is the cure for guilt that is buried under burdensome layers of self-deception. Honesty is liberating; it enables one to admit fear, rather than hide from it. Honesty creates humility, which disarms tyranny.

Let them have joy. Not greed or gluttony or avarice, which are seductive pretenders. Real joy comes from grace, from selflessness. We can help them. When we take flight across a cloudless sky; when we wash our young tenderly but are trusting enough to not flee; when we cluck, and coo, and purr, and wag our tails. We are Your emissaries of joy. Let them receive from us tenfold what they give to us through pureness of heart.

Let them have peace. We are all deserving of that. Even people who do terrible deeds may be desperately hunting for it, yet never find it.

Let us have faith, for that rekindles our spirit each day. It prevents the flame of hope from ever being extinguished.

Let us worship together, and give praise to You, our common Creator, who has given each of us immeasurable worth and infinite possibilities if we truly love one another.