you'd better run

A baptist church near my school has their message set to, 'Let God "Occupy" Your Heart!'.
Today, on the way to my favorite restaurant, I saw a stray dog tearing apart a deer carcass in the middle of a field. I feel that if I were a religious person, I would interpret this as some sort of sign from some sort of deity, but instead I was surprised, not by what I felt, but by what I didn't feel: revulsion. I was expecting to feel disgusted but somehow I was first struck by the remarkable honesty of the image- I wonder why we view other animals as savages when really, they're just being real? I thought about all this over dinner as I watched my mother eat a burger. I don't think I have any moral objections to killing and eating an animal, but there's something about the sterilized way Americans, particularly, view food and meat consumption that always alienated me. People argue that we cook animals because they're not safe to eat otherwise, which is obviously true, but it's just another step in the distance between us and the food we eat. I would argue that eating is one of the most intimate interactions- so I wonder why people don't worry about what they consume more?