Defending the value of a "Blessing of the Animals Service" Richard Treadwell, wrote, "We have held a Blessing of Animals for as long as I remember. It [frequently] rains in Oregon so everyone comes inside on those occasions, except the large hoofed ones. In all of these years, we've only had one ‘accident.’ That was when a dog mistook a visiting woman's pant suit for a fire hydrant. That stunned visitor became a pillar of our congregation and Director of our Soup Kitchen. She'd never had such a welcome."

I’d say that woman had a very down-to-earth introduction to the Church! The wonderful thing about pets is that they are so clearly of the earth. We are reminded of this every time we have to clean the litter box or pick up after our dog out on the morning walk. But we are also reminded of this when with canine joy our dog greets us as we come home or when our independent cat finally condescends to sit our lap and purr.

So this is a Blessing of the Animals service, but the reason we love a service like this is that most of the time we feel blessed by our pets. The Blessing of the Animals is a two-way street! The Blessing of the Animals is the blessing of animals.

Fellow creatures they are, these pets of ours and we have a deep relationship with them. There are critics who say that the Judeo-Christians heritage advocates the domination of humans over the rest of the creatures, but we don’t have to read the scriptures that way. No, in the first creation story, the one you heard this morning, it is clear we share a world with the animals. We are, like them, creatures—created by God to live in world of mutuality. And in the second creation story, there is a clearly acknowledge partnership with animals in the archetypal (and pre-scientifically quaint) narrative of the Garden of Eden:

The LORD God said, "It isn't good for the man to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him." 19-20So the LORD took some soil and made animals and birds. He brought them to the man to see what names he would give each of them. Then the man named the tame animals and the birds and the wild animals. That's how they got their names. None of these was the right kind of partner for the man. [CEV]

So the Lord God creates woman and the rest, as they say, is history.

Our relationship with our pets can draw us into the embodied truth about our selves and our actual relationship with the Universe. Too often we "live in our heads." We experience the sterility of modern bureaucratic systems. We dread being a number, and yet we are at the same mightily attracted to the digital world TV and computers and the Internet which pull us away from our ancient roots, into a future that perhaps many of us fear and choose not to think about. We glorify technology, and yet that whole enterprise can come crashing down like a house of cards, or be twisted into evil as the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center has shown us.

But who shares with us the rubble and our sorrows? There was a story last week about the search and rescue dogs working at "Ground Zero" in New York City. Like humans, they suffer in their work. They get cut on the sharp shards, and need bandages on their paws. Their eyes hurt from the dust and smoke, and so they need that treatment. But most poignantly of all, the dogs are getting depressed because in this horrible disaster, there is no one found alive, and therefore no one to rescue. The trainer has to work with the dogs after their shift to motivate them to go back the next day and search some more. As Tom Brokaw said, at the end of the story, "We’re all in this together."

Animals share our joys and our sorrows. Animals cannot speak, write, or make movies, but they bring us out of our heads back to fundamental realities. We play catch with a dog, or scratch a cat’s belly, or rub a horses nose, or as I was many times fortunate to do, gaze in awe at the autumn majesty of the great flocks of migratory geese settling across the vast North Dakota plains, and in those moments, we are blessed beyond anything mere reason can offer.

We too often forget this earthiness in church. We act as though we have no bodies, only souls—or that our bodies don’t matter! We think in words we have all the answers, and make idols of our ideas and in them find cause to separate from one another and even to go to war. So maybe a dog turning our pants leg into a fire hydrant isn’t such a bad idea. And my totally neurotic cat Buffy and I are thus fellow creatures on the earth, and if you’ll pardon a pun, that gives me paws for reflection!

Delighting in the humorous humbling that comes with a liturgy that animals attend, a Franciscan brother (a member of the Order founded by beloved St. Francis), wrote,

Usually the Blessing of Pets is held outdoors. But I remember it rained one year, and all were invited inside St. Stephen’s Church in Manhattan. It was quite a sight to see pairs of creatures—one human, one animal—sitting in the pews. The pastor joined right in with his beagle. Noah’s Ark was never like this! Some people criticize the amount and cost of care given to pets. People are more important, they say. Care for poor people instead of poodles. And certainly our needy fellow humans should not be neglected. However, I believe every creature is important. The love we give to a pet, and receive from a pet, can draw us more deeply into the larger circle of life, into the wonder of our common relationship to our Creator. Kevin E. Mackin, O.F.M., a Franciscan of the Holy Name Province.

And it’s that relationship Jesus meant when he said, [Luke 12]

[24] Look at the crows! They don't plant or harvest, and they don't have storehouses or barns. But God takes care of them…[And] [27] Look how the wild flowers grow! They don't work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn't as well clothed as one of these flowers. [28] God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. Won't he do even more for you? Have faith! [CEV]

The Blessing of the Animals is what we’re about to do, yes, but the blessing of the animals is also what they, by God’s loving kindness, do for us. Our pets are signs of God’s creative faithfulness, preaching the gospel in fur, feathers, and fins—and keeping us from getting so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good. Amen.