One of the Founders of the Best Friends Animal Society which operates the internationally renown animal sanctuary in Utah, Diana Asher recently passed away. Asher was British-born and the cousin of noted producer Peter Asher, known for his work with James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and many others in the 1970’s. Diana was born in Eastbourne and moved to London where, I’d speculate she joined the original incarnation of the Process Church of the Final Judgement, where she possibly became known as Mother Diana.
I make this assumption as former Church member Timothy Wyllie states on page 121 of Love Sex Fear Death, his account of the Church’s history, that it did transition into Best Friends (in 1984 – and to be precise it was the Foundation Church of the Millenium formed by Process Church co-founder Mary Ann MacLean after she split with Robert de Grimston, who’s members formed Best Friends).
There are many cautionary tales of the rise and fall of occult groups but the Process Church’s story is one of the few that has a happy ending as the members’ pursuit of extraordinary empathy, community and service wound up producing this pioneering animal sanctuary that pioneered the “no kill” approach to sheltering animals and currently houses up to 1600 cats, dogs, birds, bunnies, horses and other animals, many in need of serious ongoing medical care. So there’s “gotcha” here. Best Friends has been doing exemplary work for decades now. They took the original utopian visions of the Processeans and into something concrete and beatific.
https://bestfriends.org/stories/julie-castle-blog/remembering-diana-asher.
thanks to Soror Amy for the tip
