Introduction

The Story
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A Few Personal Stories
Francis
Faith
Anne
Silva

The Adventure of a Lifetime

By Francis Battista
Francis is director of animal rescue and Best Friends Los Angeles programs.

In 1968, a friend and I headed for Mardi Gras in a beat up 1950 Chevy pickup that we kitted out with a Conestoga type canvas cover on the back and barely enough money to get us there.

I'd spent three years in college studying electronic engineering and various extracurricular activities popular around New York University in the mid '60s. Enough said. Well, after a promising start, burning the candle at both ends earned me an early exit from engineering school and a short stint at my father's mom-and-pop (literally) real estate business in suburban New York.

That's me on the left, back in the seventies, interviewing Jesse Jackson for a magazine article.

The New Orleans trip was part of a planned departure from selling houses and into whatever great spiritual adventure lay ahead. I figured I'd just take a month off during the slow, cold winter to give my dad a chance to get used to an empty desk in the office.

I walked into the French Quarter location of The Process Coffee House, in pursuit of a girl I'd met earlier that day on Decatur Street. She stood me up and I never saw her again, but the people I met that night more than made up for my disappointment. I walked into a bunch of drug free Brits with hair down to there…hip, intelligent, and very together. There were artists, musicians, and professionals, each with a strong sense of self and a charismatic bearing, far from the no-personality drones I'd encountered at other "spiritual centers."

I was raised a Roman Catholic, but consistent with the times I had orientated toward eastern mysticism and Hindu philosophy. Somehow, it all made sense to me, but The Process Church was preaching a rather unusual version of Christianity: They proposed that Christ's love was not only able to overcome Satan but redeem him as well. This gave an entirely new meaning to the idea of universal salvation!

For the next few weeks, and through Mardi Gras, I split my time between the streets of New Orleans and The Process coffee house, an increasingly high-energy center filled with a fascinating assortment of academics from nearby Tulane University, local clergy, hippies, and some of the French Quarter's more strange residents. Babe Stovall, a down-on-his luck Delta bluesman was a frequent visitor and entertainer. I was still unconvinced by their theology, but the obvious development of this extraordinary group of individuals was clearly superior to my own, and so it was hard to argue with whatever "process" The Process was using, and it had a strong appeal.

Still, I left New Orleans on schedule, resumed my duties at the office, sent a donation when I could afford one, and tried to settle back into the humdrum of real estate.

Well, that obviously didn't work!

When members of The Process touring the states doing charity work passed through New York on their way back to Europe, I jumped on the bandwagon along with a few other Americans. It was as much like joining the circus as a church. Theatrics, I was to discover, was a big part of communicating the message.

In fact, it's impossible to understand The Process if you weren't part of the Sixties, and especially if you never knew the oppressive class system of 1960's Britain: stuffy, claustrophobic, and officially disapproving of just about everything. The Process's outrageous style, in-your-face pronouncements, florid prose, and sometimes-lurid graphics were a poke in the eye of the stuffed shirt establishment. The same could be said for the Rolling Stones, Monty Python, The Who, and The Beatles. Remember the British Invasion? ... long hair, Carnaby Street clothes and micro-mini skirts. The Process was different, but it had emerged from the same English culture.

The other signature message of the organization was a categorical opposition to animal experimentation or to animal abuse of any kind. Cruelty to animals and animal vivisection was regarded as the ultimate sin. We even wrote a book with that title: The Ultimate Sin.

I spent hours each day at Columbia University's medical library reading up on the horrors of animal research - except of course for the days when the famous radical group, the SDS, led the student strike of 1968 that closed down access to the whole campus for several days. It was that sort of time. I read about endlessly repetitive and pointless experiments on animals and chamber of horror torture devices that were passed off as scientific equipment. It tore out my heart but it planted the seed that would one day bear fruit as Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

When I went to London, my first assignment was to go to Speakers Corner, a London landmark where anyone could get up on a soapbox and address the crowds about whatever. Mostly there were politicians from the far left and right, thumping books by Marx or Chairman Mao or bemoaning Britain's lost glory and the influx of foreigners. There were also a gaggle of professional hecklers...real pros who seemed to really enjoy being nasty. Well, my assignment was to speak about vivisection. I turned a milk crate over and stood on it to gain some height and held forth. What a trip! Talk about intimidating.

While our various explorations of philosophy and theology, and all the adventures that went with them, were something I wouldn't have missed for all the world, it was always clear to me that what we were really about was building a community. Spiritual philosophies are a dime a dozen, but the friendships and community we had built was a rare gift indeed.

The Process Church dissolved in 1974. But it was our shared hardship and laughter, the knowledge of each other's strengths and weaknesses, talents and deficits, that enabled the few of us who remained friends to start our dream for the animals, building Best Friends and nurturing it through some very difficult periods when, in other hands, it would surely have failed.