Just when we think we have heard all the worst atrocities human beings are perpetrating on animals, another one appears. In Defenders of Wildlife spring, 2012, magazine, there is a photo of fully alive horseshoe crabs lined up, each one clamped in a vice above a stainless steel counter, while their blood drips into bottles beneath them. This is done to over half a million crabs each year. I gasped when I saw. I didn't know. After some of their blood has been stolen, they are reportedly returned to the ocean. However, their numbers are declining, and biologists suspect this horrific treatment greatly reduces the likelihood they will survive once returned.

This sort of horror can only be conceived of and implemented by someone who has not questioned the prevailing cultural mindset of vampiric domination; the anthropocentric assumption that all others are things for certain human beings to use. This is the root of the suffering of all innocent animals and the devastation of the earth.

This is the foundation of our prayers for all beings-that the human heart awaken to reverence for all life. Once awakened, such violence will be unthinkable by all, just as it is unthinkable to us now. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: "Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God."