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Image by ThinkVegan via Flickr

If I had as much passion for onions, peppers and potatoes as some meat-eaters have for bacon, chicken and beef, and was as upset and angry about not getting carrots every day as meaties can be about the suggestion that eating meat five days a week is good for no-one and bad for the planet, I’d be worried my priorities were all wrong. Because they would be.

Food is essential, obviously, and I don’t want to get into the argument over whether killing animals is inherently wrong here, but it irks me when gobby meat evangelists spew forth accusations against all vegetarians of being ‘holier than thou’ as some do, and have today, in the comments on an article published by the Guardian advising people on how to give up meat .

I never present all meat-eaters as unthinking, selfish, addicts who turn a blind eye to factory farm cruelty just so’s they can put cheap Tesco chicken on the table ‘for the sake of the little children’. It would be wrong to do so. An increasing number of people who still wish to eat meat are actively pursuing an agenda to put an end to factory farming and encourage organic, free-range meat.

Some even raise animals themselves, conscientiously and caringly, and take personal responsibility for ending those animals’ lives humanely. They get their hands dirty with blood and feathers and skin, eyes and bumholes and claws, instead of pretending there never was any blood in the shrink-wrapped, pale pink packages offered up by supermarkets to those who want to eat meat but could never kill, preferring others to do the messy stuff for them, out of sight and mind.

I admire people who raise animals properly for their own consumption greatly, though my own, deeply personal and utterly immovable, conviction is that meat is murder. Do I present this belief as argument? Do I directly accuse friends, family, anyone, as being murderers or complicit in murder? No. I never do. I don’t extend my belief that way. It is my view that if I took life, or accepted dead animal onto my plate, I would be able to accuse myself and could not accept that which I would see as a terrible truth. I can and do feel guilt at many things, but I can say that no animals have to die so that I can have a full belly. This is never presented as argument. It simply is, for me and me alone. Yet even with all that explanatory, when I am asked and do express this emotional and ethical cornerstone of my very own, I still get meat-eaters suddenly adopting a Catherine Tate-like persona and spitting, ‘So what? You sayin’ I’m a murderer? Eh? Eh? Are you? Are you?”

No. I am not. If such people cannot grasp what I am saying, I am not responsible for their ignorance or their assumptions. What’s more, I only express my belief so baldly when pushed to do so (though this is a blog entry, and I’m freely expressing as is my right). Stating such a spiritual foundation as the primary reason why I don’t eat meat would not advance any debate over how to best feed people in the future, or ensure optimum health is achieved through diet, or cut our methane and CO2 emissions. Nor would it do anything to help the heavily medicated billions of animals living half-lives in their own filth.

The arguments should not be personal, they should not be capable of being interpreted as abusive by anyone on any side, they should be about two things: first and foremost, animal welfare, whether the animals are to be eaten or not, and secondly, what facts exist to make any case so that we can make our minds up individually and collectively. Some people make decisions based on emotional responses, others make the exact same decisions based on practical considerations. And there will always be those, meaties and veggies, who just bawl, insult, and accuse. These people will not be at the vanguard of change; they will forever be shouting from the sidelines.

The headline of the Guardian article is ‘Giving up meat is easy’. I can assure you, for most people, it is not. I was a meat-eater myself once upon a time. I stopped eating animals in 1991, but still recall getting cravings for months afterwards. I went through three weeks of greasy skin and hair, spots and irritability. I have no doubt whatsoever that I was an addict, that meat is addictive, and that I did the right thing. But easy? No. It became second nature, and while I never chastise friends or family who are preparing and cooking meat while I’m around, it is true to say that I no longer see it as food, and the smell—cooked or raw—makes me want to throw up. I work hard to hide my gag reflex when someone’s taking pride in preparing a roast.

Still, for around three years, the smell of bacon continued to tantalise me. You can commit to vegetarianism in the span of a heart-beat, sure, but truly becoming a vegetarian takes some years of not having consumed meat at all. Perhaps it is the dedication involved in making the change that offends some people who wilfully misinterpret such devotion to personal change as extremist, but it is no more so than stopping smoking, no longer chewing your fingernails, deciding to walk a new spiritual path, or deciding to grow your hair long.

I would rather prioritise my battles than lay into everything at the same time. Raising animals naturally and with all due care, putting an end to intensive factory farming, and encouraging less consumption of meat, are more pressingly urgent campaign topics than chastising the world’s meat-eaters for not forsaking the consumption of flesh altogether. But yes, it is undeniable that overconsumption of meat is unsustainable and damaging to the planet. Meat intake must be reduced. Just let’s not get sidelined into epic battles over the morality of eating meat that neither side could possibly win.

My morality, my ethics, are mine alone and no-one else’s. If yours are similar, great, but it’s no indicator as to whether we’d actually get along. Of course if you eat meat and don’t care where it came from, whether the animal lived freely or in a prison camp, and don’t give a shit about others or the environment, that is an indicator—of the fact that I would be unlikely to get along with a person apparently so selfish, so immovable, so inflexible. But people can, and do, change during calm debate and discussion. They don’t change when attacked. Vegetarians, vegans and omnivores would all do well to recognise that, beneath our convictions and beyond our plates, we share the same human spirit, the same biology, the same basic needs. We must find ways forward. Screaming and hurling abuse at each other will never achieve anything other than to ensure it’s business as usual, with no changes at all—and therefore bad for me, bad for you, bad for the animals, and bad for the planet.

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2008 was the year I predicted, somewhat casually at some point in the previous 12 months, that the proverbial shit would hit the fan with regard to the world economy, climate change, and fossil fuels. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to have been right, but the end of rampant, unfettered consumerism—or at least its death throes—affords us new opportunities to learn how to work with, instead of against, the natural world. We spend less, we cut back on usage, we make less waste, we recycle more. That’s the hope, and it makes sense financially now as well as environmentally.

We started off this year in a new home surrounded by boxes and chaos, but we quickly settled in and almost immediately set out to begin realising our vision of a back garden filled with chickens, bees, fruit and vegetables. I contacted the Battery Hen Welfare Trust and four ex-bat ladies were retired to us in February, near-featherless, weak-legged, often motionless, and traumatised for the first few weeks until healing of little minds and bodies began. They discovered the joys of being handled gently and compassionately, and seemed to marvel at the wonder of worms, bugs, slugs, grass, sky, earth and (mostly wet) weather.

Watching them go about their fussy business, free to follow their natures and occasionally wreck parts of the garden was, and continues to be, a total pleasure. Kindness is its own reward, but then we get eggs as well that are the best we’ve ever eaten. The girls are often curious as to why we take these items they seem to see as useless every morning.

We, for our part, learned first-hand all about the twisted consequences for sentient creatures forced to endure half-lives as intensively farmed ‘products’. Our girls along with over 100,000 others have so far been saved from their miserable lives being terminated after just 12 months, and their bodies ending up as fertiliser and pet food. Of course, over 800 million more such birds each year in the UK alone aren’t so lucky, and won’t stand a chance of betterment until cheap chicken and eggs become socially unacceptable purchases. But chickens are a prevailing cultural meme right now, so there’s hope. There’s always hope.

As we found ourselves becoming hooked on chickens, quickly adding to our flock with a variety of so-called purebreeds (in reality, hybrids whose lineages go back mostly to the 1920s, some to the 19th Century), my beloved completed his beekeeping course and for his birthday in June found himself with a nucleus of bees from some dear friends, and a hive bought by my parents and his to house the honey-makers in. Hyacinth, one of our ex-bats, passed away peacefully in her sleep in August. We were sad about that, but we had been warned that ex-bats can last years or just a day after release from the torture camps. But at least she got to experience the real world beyond the nightmare matrix into which she was hatched. Hers was certainly the least difficult family pet death to come to terms with to date, for that reason. A life saved, a life made better, a life lived to the full, is one prompting happy memories when it’s over.

Our flock suffered at least as much as we did when the rain washed away all hope of a sunny summer. The weather, being unrelentingly grim, has been matched by news stories day after day telling us how miserable the world is thanks to the banks and big businesses making less money this year than previously. We saw the hand of fate or divine intervention when we realised we’d bought our house at the last possible opportunity to do so, the chance denied to people afterwards as mortgage products were withdrawn and the house market began to stall, then decline. Now we’re in a position to sit tight, and wait out the storm—assuming there’s an end to it, and if there is, it isn’t yet in sight. I’m talking both weather and global economy here.

This was the year that, with a house of our own and sufficient garden space, the marriage of pagan spirituality and environmental awareness came to fruition—quite literally after the building of raised vegetable beds, and the planting of fruit trees. I am now firmly of the belief that anyone calling him or herself pagan, regardless of tradition, must get to grips with issues of intensive farming, meat and methane, GM food, food miles, the carbon footprint, peak oil, so-called eco-towns–and there’s another article about those, here–and more. We don’t all have to start turning our green lawns into mini-farms, but we must open our eyes and do whatever we can, when we can. The campaigning aspect has become more and more important in my blogging as this year has progressed, but hopefully without alienating people and with gentle encouragement rather than chastisement.

We’ve enjoyed the taste of fresh eggs and vegetables like never before, because supermarket food doesn’t even come close. Neither does anything resulting from a Delia Smith chav-friendly recipe. We’re also hoping our fuel bills will remain more or less the same as prices rise, owing to increased energy efficiency and usage monitoring.

I’ve not only had a focus on growing your own, and giving a home to ex-battery hens, of course. Increasingly we are all discovering just how the technological net is tightening around us, our rights and privacy being eroded. The hypocrisy of our government and ISPs tackling music piracy while doing nothing of similar substance and cost to address the far greater evil of child pornography has been discussed on the blog, along with the treatment of minorities as being unworthy of care, less than human, in Italy, where gypsies are increasingly being scapegoated and abused.

Supermarket giant Tesco has been a favourite target of mine this year, not only because its shareholders and executives are money-driven and uncaring but also because of its contribution to the erosion of the nation’s taste buds and increasing of its waistlines. The insane bureaucracy and power abuse of local authorities has also been spotlighted from time to time, with the Labour government at the core of things also nailed for playing rough and nasty with our civil liberties (and they just don’t want to track us humans, they’re out to get the chickens as well—no doubt so they can blame smallholders and home farmers for any bird flu outbreak, and come to kill our birds, while ignoring the disease-friendly intensive systems run by the likes of Bernard Matthews).

Although 2008 is shaping up to be the year of the grim and gloomy, I’ve turned my hand to outrageously humorous posts from time to time, such as that in which I explored what the British government did to curry support from Northern Irish politicians, and the one where BT was the focus of my smiling ire for ripping off its customers.

The blog entry I most want to highlight for this year, though, even though the year has four months left to run, is the one I wrote about celebrating ten years of being in love. We tied the knot in a handfasting ceremony back in 2007, and plan to finally have our civil partnership ceremony in 2009. When times are tough, it’s good to be reminded of that which costs no money but is to be cherished as much as any jewel when found, namely love. I know I am blessed to have the love of a wonderful man, fantastic parents, and fabulous friends. More money would be nice, but I wouldn’t swap any of what I already have for a bigger bank balance.

This year, more than any previous blogging year, has seen massive changes in my thinking and my actions as I, in common with more and more people every day, get to grips with the changing economy and the pressing need to act to save our world. Change is constant, but I like to feel I’ve not only reacted it but made it happen as well. Spiritually I’m about to launch in a new direction, exploring Druidism, while closing the door on a previous spiritual endeavour which has served its purpose and run its course. As they say, one door closes, another opens. But sometimes you have to open and close those doors yourself.

Now, with September almost here, my beloved and I have instigated a household budget, tightly run and monitored, for the first time ever. It’s a challenge, but we’re up to it. We’re looking forward to a Yuletide proper this year, having had no decorations up, and no party, last year owing to being surrounded by moving boxes. I get the results of my biopsy soon, and will deal with whatever that brings up as best I can.

All told, blogging since August 2004 to the present day has provided me with a means to access my own history very easily, and to examine my changing motivations and priorities, to see how I’ve evolved in words and, occasionally, pictures as well. I’ve enjoyed maintaining The Spicy Cauldron, and hope you’ve enjoyed dropping by from time to time. This isn’t the end, of course. It’s only the beginning. We’re always at the beginning of something.

And so, what do I predict for the site in the future, if anything? Well, I think 2009 may well see more up-front spiritual posts as I explore Druidism. I had a lot of preconceptions, many not complimentary, and already most have been shown through early-stage investigation to be mistakenly held. I think it might be nice to share some of the insights that come up along the way. I think the environmental stuff will continue to be a big theme, in fact I know it will, and as for anything else, well… We’ll see.

‘Broomstick culture’ is a fresh-sounding and fun phrase I coined a while back that more than adequately incorporates both contemporary pagan spirituality and environmentalism, and the daily experiences of a witch—a soon-to-be Druidic witch—living in the 21st Century. If you, too, are an eco-aware pagan wanting to show your individuality and how pagan thoughts and belief have relevance today, feel free to appropriate ‘broomstick culture’ in your own writings when discussing not only gods and goddesses, but the mundane as well as spiritual reality of your lives: dodgy plumbing and sunburn, iPods and last night’s TV, pop music and fashion…. It’s important to show we live real lives, in the same world as everyone else, as well as what makes us tick in terms of our belief in something bigger than us.

Together, maybe we can start a pagan revolution: bloodless, fulfilling, exciting and rewarding. Thank you for being here, whoever you are and whatever you do. You really are appreciated. This is the end of the Spicy retrospective, for now. The four-year anniversary’s been and gone. Normal service will now resume… Er, what exactly is normal? I’ve never understood the term myself…