Blessing of the animals – we extend our hands, and in our magnanimity, we offer our blessing because that is, of course, what all our animals and the wild things really want, after all. And we bless, and we bless. And then we go home.
Uh, no.
Blessing of the animals – there’s more to it than ten minutes on a Sunday.
Blessing OF the animals – they bless us simply by being. In their own unique lives, whether they are our beloved animal companions who would happily sit on our laps for hours on end, or the wild creatures who have not a clue as to who we are and don’t really care anyway – in their own unique lives, in and of themselves, they are a blessing to God’s good Creation of which we are a part.
These services of blessing celebrate the unique gifts to Creation that the wild things and our domesticated companions are to us and to the world.
These services of blessing point to how we might truly bless the animals – not with words, but with lives of action, lives that lament the destruction we have caused so many of these creatures, but also lives that are dedicated to righting those wrongs and to bring healing and new life to individual critters and to the whole web of life.
There are three PDF documents for the blessing of the animals: