The other morning, Kate and I watched a roadrunner getting his breakfast – a good-sized lizard. The whole process was filled with intensity, and, as it seemed to us, violence. The big bird repeatedly beat the lizard against a rock. The lizard repeatedly tried to run away, but was invariably caught by the roadrunner and brought back to the killing ground, until he was (finally!) dead, and could be eaten.

Then I thought, “…is ‘violence’ really the correct word/thought here?” The roadrunner was simply fulfilling his role in the divine design, which seems filled with predators and prey. He was just “doing his job” – and doing it well. All creatures need to eat.

Kate and I have had many discussions about predation and, and the fact that I am a carniv ...

I talk a lot in my workshop about how to live a conscious, mindful life, and a lot of that “teaching what I’m learning” involves how to live on this planet with less impact on the environment. The more closely I look at “walking my talk” in this area, however, the more I realize how far we are from how we would ideally like to live.

A friend of mine runs a non-profit educational group called the Post Carbon Institute, based in Vancouver. When we visited him last year, I hadn’t seen him for several years. We met at a restaurant. He and his wife and baby son arrived on bicycles. It turned out they are now vegetarians, not for ethical reasons, as many are, but more for environmental/energy conservation reasons.