Bless You!

Today was Animal Blessing Sunday at church, and what a joy. Multiple dogs and two bunnies, and lots of photos of stay-at-home pets (including my kitty Pippin, who would not feel blessed by having to get into his carrier and be in a strange place) and remembering beloved animal companions who have died. Blessings to all creatures and all who love and care for them.

Peace,

Rev. Laura

***

Bless You!

The Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
October 3, 2010

A couple of nights ago,
for the first time in many years, I dreamed of my dog Winky,
beautiful, sweet Winky who was our dog when I was a little girl.
Winky was half-golden retriever, half-husky,
with a black husky back and a golden face,
and true to her ancestors, she loved to run and she loved us kids.
Winky has been dead for a very long time.
She died when I was thirteen years old.
But in my dream, she was alive again, and I thought in the dream
how wondrous it was that she had lived to be in her 30s.
I got to pet her like in the old days,
and she came and sat with me and put her head on my knee.
It was so good to see her, even in a dream.
When I woke up, I felt really blessed.

And in honor of our Blessing of the Animals Sunday,
I wanted to talk for just a little bit about,
what is a blessing?

Sometimes when we talk about blessings
we’re talking about the good and wonderful things
that other people and other creatures bring into our lives.
I felt very blessed
to have gotten to dream about my dog Winky
and remember all the things that made her so special to me.
Winky was a blessing to me.
Having her in my life brought me so much joy.
She didn’t have to do anything special; she did it just by being herself.
I loved her eyes, all soft and brown.
I loved the way she would lick my face.
When I was very little, I loved the way she would let me lie down
and put my head on her stomach, like I was her little puppy.
She was my friend, and that was a blessing.
She brought me joy.
She made me happy, just by being in my life.
That’s a blessing.

Our animal companions bless us in so many ways.
I think of my beloved cat Gingersnap,
who came along a year or so after Winky died.
Ginger blessed me all her life, in different and special ways.
She was a quiet girl.
Our Siamese cat Nick talked enough for both of them.
It wasn’t until after Nick died that Ginger talked at all,
and then it was this weird little “Hekkk” sound,
but that was her thing.

Another thing about Ginger was,
she was very picky about people.
She didn’t feel safe with a lot of people,
so the fact that she wanted to be with me made me feel very special!
By the way, when she was in her late teens,
I met the man who I ended up marrying, my husband John,
and in all seriousness I will tell you:
one of the reasons I trusted him early on
was that my cat Ginger loved him right away.
She would climb up on the couch and sit in his lap,
which she didn’t do with anyone but me.
She knew he was a good person.

Ginger blessed me, too, in helping me understand
what it means to get older.
I wasn’t around very much to see my grandparents grow old and sick.
I lived far away from them.
I couldn’t help take care of them.
But I was the one who got to take care of my sweet kitty
as her vision got dim and her hearing started to go
(and by the way, the one advantage to that
was that the vacuum cleaner was no longer a source of terror to her).
When her arthritis got really bad
and she couldn’t jump up onto the couch any more,
John and I were the ones who found a little footstool for her
so she could do it in stages and still come snuggle with us like always.

And in the twenty-first year of her life,
when I woke up one morning
and found her suddenly sick and worn out
and refusing to eat any more,
I was the one who got to hold her and pet her
and be there at that moment when her spirit just went away
and she died.
And even as I wept
it was a blessing and a holy mystery to be there in that moment.
In a culture where death is so often hidden,
kept safely away from the living,
we are still able to be with our pets in the moment of their passing.
And it is no less a mystery than any human death.

These animals: they teach us so much.
We are with them so intimately every day of our living
They connect us to the wonder of being alive and having to die.
By their very presence they witness to the flow of life itself
into so many manifold forms.
Life looks out at us from eyes that are not alone
and reminds us we are only one little bit of this world.
There is so much we don’t know,
so much we don’t understand.
To touch that beautiful strangeness in an animal,
in another person,
to befriend and love and share our lives with another creature:
that is a blessing.

And we can respond with simple words of love:
Bless you! we say to our friends, animal and human alike.
And these two little words say so much.
Bless you! we say, and what it means is,
I want so many good things for you.
I want you to be safe.
I want you to be happy and joyful.
I want you to be well in every way.

We know we can’t make these things happen just by wanting it.
We can’t make someone else happy.
We cannot always keep our loved ones safe.
But our blessing reminds us to do everything we can do
to make it so.
It joins us together,
those who bless and those who receive the blessing,
joins us together in love and hope.
And that, we trust, is enough
and more than enough.

Bless you!
Amen.