Pastoral Prophetic Care Corner – Blessing of the Animals
By Rev. Dr. Michelle Walsh, October 28, 2025
For our Blessing of the Animals service on the first Sunday in October, I preached on our evolutionary kinship with animals, particularly our fellow mammals, and the hope that this gives to me in these times. Cooperative moral behavior and empathy are natural to all mammals, as Frans de Waal discovered in his research–that is the norm. It is only when animals, including we as human beings, are frightened, deprived of necessities, or damaged or harmed (particularly as children) that aggressive or destructive behaviors can occur. These are essential biological truths about our human nature as mammals which can never be denied or undermined, even when faced with the worst of the worst of what we are capable – and this truth lies at the core of our faith as Unitarian Universalists when we testify that love is at the center our faith and our belief in our ethical capacities as human beings.
The task before us remains to cultivate and witness to justice, democracy, and beloved community – here at First Parish as well as in our larger Neponset River region, country, and world. My spouse, your affiliate community minister, Rev. Dr. Clyde Grubbs, commented after my service that this is actually what makes human beings unique in the animal world – human beings are capable of utilizing our frontal cortex to organize on large scales according to our values and principles and in order to accomplish our goals. We share a frontal cortex with other mammals, who are capable of organizing in small groups or packs as well, but the human frontal cortex is much larger in allowing for greater complexity and capacity in our organizing abilities.
Clyde’s comment resonates with an additional summary of current research I discovered on what makes human beings unique among animals. Doctoral candidate Eli Elster at UC Davis, after a review of the history of the defeat of all arguments for human superiority to other animals, wrote that there remained one distinction: “Human culture is uniquely open-ended.” Hmmm, that seems to parallel a religious truth in which we believe: “Revelation (or the truth) is never sealed,” right? This means there is no closing the books on humanity and writing off human capacities, potential, or open-ended creativity, including our capacity for healing our broken relational connections and the interdependent web that is always mending.
Change happens – in an upcoming sermon at the end of October, I will speak about one of my favorite prophetic science fiction writers, Octavia Butler, who wrote in her greatest work, Parable of the Sower: “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” There is an essential Buddhist truth in this as well, if you remember a prior blog I wrote about where a farmer had different things happen with his perspective constantly challenged as to whether or not each thing would prove to be good or bad for him. The future is not sealed, and we are active participants in shaping that future – for ourselves, for our family and friends, for our community and for our larger world. May we embrace our faith in these open-ended creative possibilities and continue to recommit to living by that faith in our daily actions. Blessed be and amen.