There were many celebrations of Earth Day over the weekend, including at the church where I serve as pastor. We held a blessing of animals that was open to the wider community. All sacred occasions should include food, and we offered (per theme) animal cookies, goldfish crackers and cheddar bunnies.
As far as the living, breathing animals, a number of cats declined the invitation to the blessing, their responses ranging from mild annoyance to outright hostility. But we had a pack of tongue-hanging, tail-wagging dogs, all happy to be there: Maggie, Millie, Augie, Georgia Bell, Oatmeal, to name a few. We did not have any chickens or ducklings, which proved happily fortuitous because there was a rambunctious dog named Rooster.
Anne Lamott claims that, in substance abuse recovery programs, healing is not only sobriety but connection — connection to a higher power and also to community. Disease and dis-ease both isolate. The blessing of healing entails wholeness and community. While the environmental crises are enormous, I believe that a higher power is in us and the world, working through all things to restore peace, harmony and wholeness. Like the theory of quantum entanglement, in which the tiniest building blocks of life are connected across vast space, we effect change far beyond ourselves. You might call this the blessing of connection.
When I ponder the idea of blessing, I think of the reciprocal aspect of giving and receiving. To be blessed is less about reward or gain as much as an awareness of forces beyond our ken. Dogs understand the blessing by tail-wagging. I wonder if our lack of enthused receptivity to the beauty around us is why we lost our tails.
Watching the chaotic scene of dogs in the church parking lot, I recalled the lines from Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai about “the precision of pain and the blurriness of joy.” What hurts is specific; suffering is personal. I know of friends, including parishioners, who have recently lost their beloved pets. But they told me that they still experienced joy at the blessing of animals. Joy is "blurry" in that it opens us to something vast that might not come into focus. But we feel it, and joy connects us to others. That is also part of the blessing.
My son blessed a snail, whom he christened Bob. He and his brother also blessed several lizards, but only from afar — not even the lizard-loving youngsters were quick enough to catch them. When my boys grew frustrated by this futile pursuit, I led them to the snack table, where we found it much easier to grab hold of an animal cookie. We blessed the food and ate together.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church as well as a writer, pizza maker, coffee drinker and student of joy.
