Blessing of the animals
Written by Courtnay Wilson, St. Peter’s Anglican Kaikōura.
At St. Peter's Anglican in Kaikōura we had our Blessing of the Animals service on Sunday. In addition to blessing the nine dogs and one cat present (and the domestic animals not present) we blessed, at a distance, the wild animals that call Kaikōura home, including the dotterels/tūturiwhatu, hutton's shearwaters/tītī, little blue penguins/kororā, and hector's dolphins.
Many people shared stories about what they had learned from the animals.
From Kaikōura Tītī Hutton's Shearwaters, who tend to crash land on roads in Kaikoura on rainy nights en route to the sea, I've learned that we all get disoriented by the storms of life and, sooner or later, we crash land. When that happens, we often can't help ourselves. Like the hutton's shearwater, we need a helping hand to get us flying again.
Kaikōura Tītī Hutton's Shearwater (Photo: Department of Conservation)
Kororā Little Blue Penguin (Photo: Anita Spencer | Department of Conservation)
Tūturiwhatu Banded Dotterels (Photo: Banded Dotterel Study Kaikoura)
From the Kororā Little Blue Penguins and Tūturiwhatu Banded Dotterels, I learn about fidelity to place. These birds are incredibly loyal to the particular places they call home; it doesn't work to just pick them up and move them off to another place so that we can develop a patch of land. We humans could learn from them in an age when so much of the ecological crisis is linked to a lack of rootedness, to humans not knowing, and hence not caring enough about, their place.
Tulip on the pulpit
The highlight of the morning for me was noticing, as I walked the 15-minutes to church, that I was being followed by Tulip, the cat who has adopted me. Not only did he follow me to church, he joined in the prayer meeting beforehand, sat calmly in the back pew (unperturbed by the barking dogs), and after receiving his blessing, hopped up on the pulpit and made himself at home. After the service, he walked back home with me. Tulip was determined not to miss out on the blessing! He must have missed the memo that I do home blessings.