Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

So, let’s once again turn to Nature for our spiritual teachings and turn to the animals for their wisdom. And perhaps the greatest spiritual lesson that the animals in our lives offer to us who walk with them, is their gift of unconditional love.

The gift of our animal companion’s unconditional love is a profound gift that offers us an example of how to love in the most joyous, nonjudgemental, loyal and accepting manner. Their love teaches us how to feel seen and loved for who we are regardless of how we look or how much money we make or what we achieve in our professional lives. The gift of our animal companion’s unconditional love shows us how to offer constant companionship and unwavering comfort, in good times and hard times.  Maybe especially in the hard times. For so many of our families years, as soon as someone in our family started crying, they would find ‘grandma pug’ Indy snuggled in their lap.

Our animal companions have the ability to teach us so much about how to be in relationship with our fellow humans. Imagine what life would be like if we loved people in our relationships and in this world in the way our animal companions loved us. Imagine what the world would be like if all relationships were based upon unconditional, nonjudgemental and radically accepting love. That is the spiritual lesson that our animal companions offer to us through their simple and unwavering unconditional love and affection. If we are open to learning, our animal companions can teach us how to love and in turn can call us into greater love in and for this world.

In her book titled The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, the naturalist Dr. Jane Goodall who recently passed wrote, “Let us use the gift of our lives to make this a better world.” For those of us blessed to walk with animal companions, the gift of our lives would be the presence and the spiritual wisdom of those animal companions. She calls upon us to use those gifts not only to heal and transform our own lives but to use those gifts to heal and transform the world.

In her book Dr. Goodall also writes that ‘what we nurture and encourage wins.’  Dr. Goodall wasn’t just hoping for a better world, she was telling us that what we feed, what we give power to, will be what will ultimately flourish. She was telling is that if we feed and nurture the sort of unconditional, joyous, accepting and nonjudgemental love that our animal companions teach us, then that is what will ultimately prevail in this life and in our world. Love will prevail. That is a very essential, timely and powerful message for these times!

Thanks to God for Animals and their love and their wisdom!