Blessing of the Animals 2026

Before we begin, I want to share a poem by Mary Oliver called “The Summer Day.”

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

I love this poem because it captures the surprising wisdom that can come from simply paying attention.

Oliver encounters a grasshopper. And she doesn't rush past it. She doesn't need the grasshopper to teach her some grand lesson. She simply notices it. She watches it eat. She watches it move. She notices its strange little face and its little rituals. She pays attention.

And by the end of the poem, that simple act of paying attention has become something much larger. It has become a way of asking what it means to be alive, to be here, in this particular world, on this particular day.

I wonder if that isn't part of what our readings are inviting us to do today.

In the book of Job, as Job wrestles with enormous questions about God and suffering and the nature of the world, he points his friends toward the creatures around them. “Ask the animals,” he says, “and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you.” Look to creation. Pay attention.

And then in the Gospel, Jesus says something very similar: “Consider the ravens.”

Consider them. Look at them. Notice them.

It is striking when Scripture invites us to encounter God not by looking away from the world, but by looking more closely at it. Look at the birds. Ask the animals. Pay attention to the grasshopper.

Perhaps this is one of the gifts animals offer us. They call us out of our own heads and into the world that is actually around us. We can be busy, worried, distracted, thinking about what happened yesterday or what needs to happen tomorrow—and then a dog puts its head in our lap. A cat settles beside us. A bird lands outside the window. A child stops to watch a squirrel.

And for a moment, we notice. We are here. The world is here. And we are not the only creatures living in it.

During this Season of Creation, we are especially invited to remember that creation is not simply scenery surrounding human life. It is not just the forests and lakes and mountains we visit. Creation is the living community of which we are a part.

And so today, when we gather with our animals, we aren't simply celebrating the fact that animals can be wonderful companions to human beings.

We are celebrating that they are creatures of God. Before they were our pets, they were God's creatures. Before they belonged to our households, they belonged to the goodness of God's creation. And they have their own lives, their own ways of being in the world, their own place within that goodness.

And yet, many of us know that our lives become deeply intertwined with theirs. We know their personalities. Their particular habits. The sounds they make. The places they sleep. The things that make them excited or afraid.

We know the ways they have comforted us, made us laugh, gotten us outside, kept us company, or simply been there beside us through ordinary days.

And sometimes we know what it is to miss them. For some of us, this year has brought the loss of an animal we loved. And paying attention means noticing that, too.

We notice the empty place where they used to sleep. We notice the quiet where there used to be footsteps or barking or a familiar sound. We notice the absence of a presence that had become part of the shape of our days.

That grief is one of the ways we know that this particular life mattered. This particular creature was a gift.

And perhaps that is another part of what Mary Oliver is getting at when she asks what she will do with this one wild and precious life.

Perhaps one answer is simply: pay attention. Pay attention to the creatures entrusted to our care, to the creatures we might otherwise overlook. Pay attention to the beauty that is already here. Pay attention to the losses that remind us how deeply we can love.

And pay attention long enough that we remember that we belong to something larger than ourselves—the great, strange, beautiful community of God's creation.

So in just a moment, we are going to bless these animals.

And we will bless not only the animals who are physically here with us today, but also those represented by photographs, and perhaps those who are present only in our memories.

As I move around the space, I invite you simply to notice. Notice the animals around you, the photographs of those who cannot be here. Notice the joy and the gratitude and, for some of us, the grief that we carry.

And as we bless these creatures, perhaps we can also receive something from them. The gift of attention and wonder. The gift of being reminded that we are creatures, too. Beloved creatures, living together in God's good and precious world.

So let us bless them—and give thanks to God for the ways they have blessed us.

Thanks be to God.