The Real Church and The Blessing of The Pets

Three days ago on October 4th, many parts of the Church celebrated St. Francis’ life and work.

Probably most of us know him for two things:  a prayer and a great appreciation and love for all of creation, especially animals.

Let’s start with that second one today.

In a couple of places where I’ve pastored we’ve had a service of The Blessing of The Pets.  For resources, we reached back into the richness of our historical liturgies and tapped into our current United Methodist Book of Worship. 

If you know me at all, you know I like to involve people in these things in any way possible.

So it was that once upon a time a self-identified sweet little lady was helping me lead A Service of Divine Worship and Blessing of The Pets.   She personified the image of a sweet little lady: “sweet” in that she oozed all that’s good, “little” in that even I towered over her as we stood side by side, and a “lady” in the classic Audrey Hepburn sense of that word.

We were the leadership team up front at the mic with a portable sound system.

Over thirty groupings stood on the church lawn before us on a sunny Saturday morning.  Individuals, couples, small families and greatly extended families looked back at us.  They were with dogs, cats, birds, some reptiles and a few little hand-held fuzzy things with twitching noses.

The people sang a song, a child came to the mic and read Scripture, I shared a quick homily and turned things over to our sweet little lady.

She referenced the handout and its Words of Thanks and Blessing, saying she would demonstrate how this was to happen.

“For example, I’m picking up my dog now.  ‘Thank you, God, for Thundermuffins.'”

I assume she continued with the next lines from the page, but I have no idea.  I was distracted by the crowd’s reaction.  It began as a quiet but corporate snort, quickly growing into politely stifled laughter with exchanged sideward glances that suddenly erupted beyond awkwardness into a crescendo of release and relief.

Then the pets who could make noise responded to the crowd’s noise and joined in.

Over what was now cacophony, she and I quickly continued the service with people joining in as best they could.  It  ended happily if abruptly.

Apparently nobody had heard the word Thundermuffins in a prayer before.

Some later claimed they hadn’t realized that Thundermuffins was her dog’s name.  They thought she was talking about something else entirely.

It was quite the memorable morning, and more than just our pets were blessed.

It’s like that in The Real Church.