Hello, shalom, namaste! 

My birth name is George, my nickname is Geo, and my spiritual name is geoagape. When people ask

me where I grew up, I tell them, "I tried to grow up in PA, but my two ex-wives would tell you I didn't."​

I had a great childhood with a loving family. See The Good Shepherd painting above in the middle? That's a paint by number painting my beloved Mother did. It was at the end of the hallway and I saw it every night I went to bed. I inherited it after mom "birthed back into Spirit" and now it has prominence above my home altar. Read the 23rd Psalm again. The Good Shepherd is loving, caring, feeding, protecting, anointing, and living with us. No mention of being fed for the slaughter of sacrifice!

   My mom and dad fed us meat every meal. Every Sunday after going to church and Sunday School was fried chicken day. For Sunday supper we ate ice cream, pretzels, and drank soda so mom could have a little Sabbath rest. I killed a few rabbits, squirrels, and pheasants as a teenager. Played high school sports and thought about being a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. Went to college and changed dramatically. I knew what I wanted to do with my life in my first Philosophy class - teach Philosophy and Religion in a college setting. Went to the Viet Nam Moratorium against the war in 1969, got gassed on Friday night, meditated by a Buddhist monk on Saturday who was transforming malevolent energy surging at him from the Pentagon during a witness, and on Sunday sang "All we are saying is give Peace a chance" with the Fifth Dimension at the Washington Monument. With a low draft lottery number  I made the decision to file as a Conscientious Objector, received it, and served two years of Alternative Service as an Orderly in a teaching hospital. Even though I wouldn't kill human beings, I still ate a lot of meat that was killed for me. At 21 I caught a 12 inch rainbow trout and put it in my creel, but its flapping around  struggling for life got to me and I quickly put it back. Last time I fished. Many years later one of my students came up to me and said, "Dr. Mummert, my parents are coming to visit me from India. They raised me to be a vegetarian, but I started to like meat and can't give it up. Any ideas?" I told him my fish story and said, "When you think about eating meat, flap your hand against your thigh like my fish was struggling for life. Flap, flap, flap." His eyes got big, and he said, "I get it." A few weeks later he said, "It works, thanks." 

           At the age of 30 I was recently divorced and decided to go to seminary. It was there I found a community of vegetarian students. In October of 1981 I went to a church retreat center and met Flag who was a small deer whose mother had been killed by a hunter and was saved by the camp director and raised on a bottle. Flag was tame and allowed everyone to pet him. Flag and I are in the top left photo. I knew then I was a vegetarian. Many decades later one day in an Ethics class a student said, "Dr. Mummert, you say you are a vegetarian, but all the vegetarians I know are not as heavy as you." I smiled and replied, "There are two reasons for that: I like seconds and desserts." Another day a vegan student asked me, "Why aren't you a vegan?" I answered, "You don't have to kill the cow to get milk and you don't have to kill the chicken to get eggs." She smiled and gave me a look which silently said to me, "One day you'll get it." That day came on Earth Day 2016, after thirty-five years of being an ovo-lacto vegetarian, after reading Will Tuttle's book, "The World Peace Diet." It is a great book filled with everything you never wanted to know about the meat, dairy, and egg industries because the information changes you.. It also explains what eating meat does to your body and the little blue marble spaceship we Earthlings inhabit. I wept for four days and knew I had to change. I did for seven years until Hamas invaded Israel and I knew the horrible loss of innocent life would receive another war response which would take fifty times the loss of innocent Palestinian lives and I told myself, "I need some comfort food" and began eating pasture raised eggs, even though I knew the industry threw male chicks into shredders or suffocating bags and killed the laying hens after their productivity wanned. I stopped eating eggs and became a vegan again during Holy Week of 2026 when I attended a Soul Works retreat at Mago retreat center in Sedona, Arizona.

     I grew up in a Lutheran Church, graduated from a United Church of Christ college and a United Methodist seminary, and I have made spiritual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the Galilee, and India. During my six week pilgrimage to India Swamiji Krishananda of the Divine Life Society read my mind/heart twice during a darshan. He asked me "George, what does this scripture mean, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added onto you'?" I was amazed because that was my mantra I kept repeating every day for four weeks before I got to Rishikesh. I am blessed with many other wonderful spiritual experiences and one mystical experience which have changed my life. For many years I served small churches as an ordained pastor while I taught Philosophy and Religion classes in a Community College, but I left the institutional church because of the slow pace of social change within it. When people ask me what my religion is, I reply, "I agree with the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi who said, 'Love alone is my religion.'" My Ph.D. dissertation is "The Altruism of Mysticism" where I examined the philosophies of seven mystics  from different religious traditions with academic credentials - Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, Schweitzer, Kelly, Weil, Hammarskjold, and Heschel - and deep moral character and actions. I argued that they all loved similarly because their mystical experience was grounded in the One Source of Love. At this time when many are calling for "Christian Nationalism" I do not call myself a Christian anymore, but Jesus is my rabbi and guru. Rabbi means "teacher" and guru means  "the one who shows me the way from darkness into Light." I  believe that Jesus, his family,  the early disciples, and the early church were all vegetarians. I  also believe when he "cleansed" the Temple it was primarily in disgust and protest for the holocaust of animal sacrifices performed there and he was also motivated to free the animals in living out the prophet Hosea's words of "I desire mercy (steadfast love), not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6)." They crucified him for that protest and today they are jailing the courageous animal liberators who free animals from CAFOS (concentrated animal feeding organizations), hen cages, animal testing labs, etc. The government and the meat industry labels them "animal terrorists." C'mon man!     

     When I retired in 2015 I wrote a book of short stories all of which had some vegan education in them. Very few people changed after reading it. I gave one presentation to a vegan group about, "The Very Veggie Jesus."  I went to a few protests, ate a lot of wonderful food at Vegan meetups, and shared my views when asked. But I also lost hope.  I feel the suffering of the animals every day. It hurts knowing they cry tears and feel immense suffering and we as a people do not stop it. I went to the Mago retreat in Sedona, Arizona hoping for a soul reset and I got it with my sister KatyeAnna's help and the help of 20 other people who shared space, time, energy, and love with me So after a few years of hopeless inactivity, I'm back! Ready to "BE LOVE & LOVE ALL." Ready to write again, speak again, sing again, educate again, protest again, eat great vegan food at church and community pot lucks again,  create and manage an educational website now, and love again.

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                       In The Spirit of Love, namaste, geoagape   "May all know peace and be unafraid."

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​​​​The photo top left is Flag and me at Red River Methodist Camp in Oklahoma. Flag  helped me become a veggie in 1981.​​

The photo in the middle top column is my Mother's paint by number rendering of The Good Shepherd. It is now in my possession and hangs above my home altar.

The photo of me on a playground tilting cow was taken at Rescue Ranch, Statesville, N.C.

Changing Hearts Animal Sanctuary is in North Carolina. Several photos below were taken there.

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I agree with my Yeshua my Rabbi Guru that the best way to enter the Beloved Kindom of God is as a "little child,"

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"The laughter of the infinite God must vibrate through your smile. Let the breeze of God's Love spread your smiles in the hearts of people. Their fire will be contagious." Paramahansa  Yogananda

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Click on the first photo below and get a bigger and clearer image.

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