Photo by Skip Lawrence Donna Simon leads a monthly Spiritual Vegetarianism potluckdinner at the Unity Church in Frederick. She crafted this lasagna with lasagna noodles, tofu, onion, garlic and alternative cheeses made by Follow Your Heart.

It wasn't your typical potluck.

The Spiritual Vegetarian group, created by Unity member Donna Simon, meets monthly, forms a circle in the sanctuar, and exchanges recipes, food, prayer and thoughts about the connection between diet and spirituality.

"My vision was a support group," she said, "a place to educate and support and pray."

Roots

Vegetarianism was a founding principle of the Unity School of Christianity, created by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. But after Charles' death in 1948, his ideas regarding diet were removed from the church's statements of faith.

The Fillmores encouraged others to consider the vegetarian path, said the Rev. Toni Fish of Unity in Frederick . "Today, as then, not all Unitics are vegetarians, and I am glad that there are groups such as ours within the movement who hold this energy of Charles and Myrtle."

Simon hasn't eaten animal flesh in seven years. "I'd been looking for a faith system that would include this," she said.

It's believed Charles was actually a vegan, and that he ordered his Bible covers in vinyl, rather than leather, and refused to wear fur.

He chose and preached a vegetarian lifestyle, serving vegetarian meals at his Unity Inn for three reasons: the well-being of animals, our health (living food is better for our bodies) and the health of those whose job it is to kill animals.

Although the Bible doesn't say that humans shouldn't eat meat, most references emphasize eating plants. Regarding a passage in Genesis in which God states, "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything," some people believe God allowed Noah and his family to eat meat after the flood as a necessity for survival. The most obvious reference to vegetarianism, perhaps, is one of God's ten commandments: Thou shalt not murder.

Herbivores for peace

During the May group meeting, author William Tuttle, who coined the phrase "spiritual vegetarianism," met with the group to talk about his book "World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony." He thinks that in order to find world peace, humans must stop violating other species.

Gandhi, Einstein and several other leaders were against eating animals. Martin Luther King Jr. was a meat-eater, but after his death, his wife and son became vegetarians, seeing their choice as a logical next step in carrying on King's message of peace and justice.

Faiths besides Christianity -- Ba'hai, Buddhist, Hindu -- have scriptures that relate to vegetarianism because of its ability to bring inner peace as well as peace to the planet.

Studies have shown that people who torture and abuse animals are much more likely to "bring it home" than those who don't, Simon said.

In short, eating animals "disrupts the whole vibration of peace," she said.

We are what we eat

While eating free-range and antibiotic-free chickens may be a better option for meat-eaters, killing is still an issue -- not to mention the label "free-range" is deceiving, as graphically shown in the new film "Food, Inc."

Charles thought that because animals are frightened and fighting back when they are killed, humans ingest those modes of behavior and "vibrations" when they eat meat.

"It is proven by experiment that certain negative states of consciousness peculiar to the animal accompanies its flesh in all it journeys through the body of man," he wrote in his essay "As to Meat Eating" (1903). "Visit shipping pens, stock-trains, stock-yards and packing houses if you want evidence of the sufferings of the poor beasts of the field. And these very sufferings are through the law of sympathetic mental vibrations transferred to the flesh of these who eat the bodies of these animals. The undefined fears, the terrors of the nightmare, and the many disturbances that man endures may be in a measure traced to these unsuspected sources."

Simon thinks the work of psychopharmacologist Candace Pert proves Fillmore was right, as she discovered "molecules of emotion" attach to neuropeptide receptors throughout the body and we therefore take the animals' emotions into our own bodies.

Most of the people in the group are vegetarians for health reasons -- or at least, they started that way.

"I've seen a shift throughout the year," Simon said.

Debbie Wolfe, involved since the group's beginning a year ago, said she's still not a "complete vegetarian," but that she likes that the group is made of a spectrum of people along the vegetarian path and that she has learned a lot about the spiritual nature of a vegetarian diet.

"I think we're put here to live in harmony with animals," Wolfe said.

"We actually subdue our spirit and contact with God to be able to eat this food," Simon said.

Group members educate one another on their findings, from health, environmental and spiritual perspectives.

Breaking of bread

Sort of the Frederick embodiment of "Eat, Pray, Love," the casual Spiritual Vegetarian meetings last about two hours and are always open to the public.

"We really allow people to be who they are," Simon said. "It's inclusive. You don't have to be vegetarian. You can be there just because you're curious."

Falling off the vegetarian boat is OK too, and sometimes meetings have a bit of a therapy flavor.

"It's really a process," she said.

Based on suggestions, Simon chooses a topic for each meeting, for the sake of focus. In the past, discussions have covered how to live in a family that's not vegetarian, health issues for children raised vegetarian, how to get through a holiday, how to order food at a restaurant, the history of vegetarian values in Unity, the struggle to remain vegetarian and so on. But Simon always reels the talk back to spirituality.

"Being a vegetarian is my religion. It means that I don't kill, I don't support killing, and I don't support animals suffering," she said. "It aligns with my values of God. There's nothing blocking my closeness to the divine."