Sacred Sendoffs
An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, and Healing the Planet
By Sarah Bowen
MONKFISH BOOK PUBLISHING
Sarah Bowen credits her first pet, a cat named Him, with putting her on the path to becoming an animal chaplain responsible for improving human-animal interaction. As a preadolescent, she freed a chipmunk from Him’s jaws, later grieving the cat’s own death. From that time on, Bowen made it her life’s work to “ensure animal deaths are witnessed and their bodies are treated with reverence.”
Sacred Sendoffs is a thought-provoking challenge to all humans with animals in their lives (which is all of us) to consider the value of animals, and why we tend to value them as lesser than people. She argues that even if we do insist on valuing humans as more worthy than animals, there is still an incentive to treat animals well: Doing so can engender a respect for all life.
She argues that even if we do insist on valuing humans as more worthy than animals, there is still an incentive to treat animals well.
This story is from the March/April 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the March/April 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.