The Quaker Arthur Morgan School in Celo, N. Carolina, dating back to 1962, is a peace-loving, consensus decision-making, community-minded home away from home for teenagers looking for an alternative to the traditional school system. For most of its history, it was a vegetarian school, believing in the principles of Francis Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet. Staff and students are committed to living a life as sustainably as possible.
Each year, students and staff invite their families and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, at which they serve mock meat, but also turkeys to please the meat eaters.
In 2004, the school community decided to raise its own turkeys for the annual celebration. Some three quarters of the student body and about half the staff volunteered to participate in the slaughter.
On November 24, 2010, our Friend in Brevard Meeting, North Carolina, Carol Hoke, wrote to the young people, of which this is part of her letter:
Dear Young Friends at Arthur Morgan School,
I was very sad to learn that you are raising and then killing turkeys to eat. You have good intentions, however, and I believe that you would take a different path if you knew that turkeys feel pain and terror just as you do.
In the hope of fostering a sense of compassion in your hearts, I have adopted a turkey in your name from the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York. Her name is Daphne, and at their website (http://www.farmsanctuary.org/) you can read about the wonderful work the Farm Sanctuary does. The Farm Sanctuary will soon be sending you her adoption certificate, and you will be her official sponsor.
I hope that you will turn your energy to projects filled with kindness and concern for all animals.
In Friendship,
Carol Hoke.
QCA is delighted that Carol should have thought of adopting a living turkey for the students and that this will encourage them to look at our fellow creatures with different eyes.
Here is Daphne, with thanks to Farm Sanctuary for giving us permission to show her:
Daphne
Carol, you have chosen a marvellous and creative way of demonstrating compassion to the students and staff of Arthur Morgan school. Let’s hope that Daphne can show them the beautiful nature of turkeys and help them to reconsider their actions.
Thank you, Sandra.
For interest, our member Sandra rescues animals herself, so knows at first hand the beautiful nature of turkeys.
Daphne is very lovely. I hope she will have a long and happy life. She is certainly showing the real way to treat turkeys!
God does work in mysterious ways!
Another most heart warming story about a saved life this Thanksgiving season, thanks to a kind and compassionate human soul towards an unfortunate animal.
Just let the symbolic name Daphne transport you to its actual meaning – Daphne means Laurel tree and Laurel means – Victory, Nobility, Glory and Immortality. They could not have found a better name for that beautiful turkey!
May compassion and enlightenment grow in the hearts of all those who still have not understood the meaning of Thanksgiving and Christmas when they sit down with their family and friends at the festive tables, to eat the turkeys, the cows, the chickens, the pigs, the salmons… that maybe they wake up and see the light. Just imagine how fast Peace on Earth would manifest itself!
Hannah Moorcroft
holistic action