The Blessing of the Animals

I have a distinct childhood memory of a relative of mine commenting about some friends, “Well, they’re dog people,” with one eyebrow raised knowingly.  The implication was that these friends cared more about dogs than people; it was a critique – a judgment.  I’ve figured out since then that for most of the people my relative would have dismissed as “dog people,” their dog is their hobby; not just their pet.  Having your dog (or dogs) as your hobby is not much different from any other hobby – playing the piano, quilting, fly fishing – in that my hobby might be my cup of tea and not yours, and that’s really OK – in contrast to judging people for their otherwise harmless hobbies, which is not OK.

Our family dog, Weasley, is not my hobby.  She does enrich my life – she is a member of our family, and she is a blessing to me.  So this past Sunday afternoon, at our second annual Blessing of the Animals service, I spoke briefly about how, even though we call it a blessing of the animals, it is our pets who bless us.  And I spoke, perhaps heretically, about whether animals have “souls.” Now, in my opinion, the “soul” is a mushy theological construct if there ever was one.  But I found and used in my little talk a wonderful piece by a veterinarian named Stacey Mantle, in which she gives her view of the subject.  She writes, ““Animals do have emotions and they also have souls, and I’ll tell you how I know that.”  She goes on to catalog a list of human atrocities she has never seen an animal commit.  Then she says, “Let me tell you what I have seen.  I have seen my own cats sleep next to me so they may keep me a little warmer while I was ill. I’ve seen my dogs play games with me just to force a smile to my face.  I have seen a cat rush into a burning home not once, not twice, but six times to save her kittens, nearly losing her own life in the process.  I have seen a ferret pull a frightened kitten out of a deep hole in the ground.  I have seen a coyote fetch another dog so that it may get the proper medical care that it needs.  I’ve seen a dog, who loves to jump on people, avoid jumping on me when I injured my back. I’ve seen elephants cry.  I’ve seen monkeys scream in empathy when one of their own was injured.  I’ve seen puppies whine all night long when they were separated from their mothers.  I’ve seen a dog pull a child away from a fire.  These are only a few of the things that I’ve seen.  To list them all would take a lifetime, and I think you get my point.  As for the soul thing?  Well, it is my humble opinion that if you have emotions, any kind of emotions, then you have a soul.  Now, I can’t prove that animals have souls.  But then, I can’t prove that you or I have one either. And for all those people who firmly believe that animals don’t have souls – well, I suppose if there really is a heaven, you’ll probably have the job of cleaning out all the litter boxes.”  http://vetmedicine.about.com/library/viewers/uc-animal-souls.htm.

So – litter boxes aside – I’m wrestling once again with whether to become a vegetarian.  I was, once, for about a year.  Is being a vegetarian a theological issue?