From MSN: Oprah Winfrey goes vegan for 21 days

“How can you say you’re trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?”
– Oprah

From Farm Sanctuary Oprah Announces 21 Days Free of Animal Products

“Well, I feel like I got baptized in Vegan Land today.”
– Oprah

Read Oprah’s Blog (with some video links), Menus, Recipes and Talk with Others pages, here on her “21 Day Cleanse” page.

Veg for Life’s page on Oprah includes these quotes on the issue of spiritual progress and diet:

The Dalai Lama

“Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.”

Albert Einstein

“If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”

Mohandas Gandhi

“Spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.”

Albert Schweitzer

“While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on…while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses…we all bear guilt.”

Even though only one of them was a Christian, I think their quotes should be “food for thought”, especially (if only) during seasons like Lent, or whenever Christians give some thought to their spiritual progress. And this should fit comfortably with the Greek Orthodox view. (In my opinion, giving up all animal flesh and animal by-products during Lent should be the expected norm for anyone who observes Lent, not just one vestigial option that has been largely forgotten, ignored, not talked about in our churches, and/or that has been trumped by a vast array of other good things people choose to do instead. I really can not understand why this wasn’t mentioned as even an example, in the World Council of Church’s “Lenten Fast From Violence”, whose name strikes me as a literal call to cut out the most obvious form of violence. This is as close as I could find, which is environmentally-friendly, insofar as it benefits humankind on some level….)