Blessing the Animals

Celebrate the Mystery, Compassion, Wonder and Beauty of Animals

Take a spiritual journey through this beautiful collection of blessings, prayers and meditations about the creatures, wild and tame, that inhabit our world. These moving contributions about all types of animals--playful dogs and beloved cats, giant whales and powerful elephants, tiny insects and delicate birds--are drawn from many faith traditions, including Native American, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist.

A special section also provides animal blessing ceremonies you can use to memorialize the loss of a companion animal, offer prayers for an animal suffering illness or injury or simply recognize the spiritual connection we create when we fully appreciate another member of God's creation.

Contributors include:

Akhenaton - Cecil Frances Alexander - Matsuo Basho - Henry Ward Beecher - Henry Bergh - Annie Besant - Ambrose Bierce - Black Elk - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Martin Buber - Yosa Buson - Isaac Caruso - Chang Chiu-Ch'eng - John C. Chendo - Gilbert Keith Chesterton - Feng Chih - John Ciardi - Jean Cocteau - Rev. Dr. Scott Cowdell - James Dickey - Emily Dickinson - George Washington Doane - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Mark Doty - Johann Eckhart - Mary Cronk Farrell - John Bookser Feister - Rev. Roberta Finkelstein - Eliza Lee Cabot Follen - T. Griffith Foulk - Anatole France - Saint Francis of Assisi - Diana L. Guerrero - Joy Harjo - Stanley Hauerwas - Kathy Heffernan - Jane Hirshfield - Alicia Hokanson - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Victor Hugo - Kobayashi Issa - Francis Jammes - Saint John of the Cross - Naito Joso - Kabir - Galway Kinnell - Rudy Kipling - Laurie Klein - Mukai Kyorai - Laurie Lamon - Lao-Tzu - D. H. Lawrence - Richard Lehnert - Letakos-Lesa - Paul Lindholdt - Kevin E. Mackin - Seumas MacManus - Lauren McLaughlin - Fiona McLeod, (pseudonym of William Sharp) - Sugawara no Michizane - Mirabai - Rev. Gloria S. Moncrief - John Muir - Claire Rudolf Murphy - Gloria Pinsker - Po Ch -i - Sri Ramakrishna - Pam Reinke - Rivage (pseudonym of Mary Newman) - Christina Rossetti - Jalaluddin Rumi - Carl Sandburg - Meghan Nuttall Sayres - Albert Schweitzer - Sir Walter Scott - Masaoka Shiki - Izumi Shikibu - Mark S.Sisk - Christopher Smart - Rabindranath Tagore - Henry David Thoreau - Mark Twain - Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo - Evelyn Underhill - Carl Van Vechten - Walt Whitman - James Arlington Wright - William Butler Yeats