Cover photo: “Dogs in VA State Parks” by Virginia State Parks via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) - On the way to a Pet Blessing?

St. Francis Week: Pet Blessing

Pet Blessing video by Kyle Oliver for prayr.cc (CC BY 2.0)
Cover photo: “Dogs in VA State Parks” by Virginia State Parks via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Cover photo: “Dogs in VA State Parks” by Virginia State Parks via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) - On the way to a Pet Blessing?

Update: New media link added. Thanks, Sarah Weedon!

Media links: YouTube video, video download (right/control click, “Save link as”), video download with blank space for adding church info* (right/control click, “Save link as”) * No cuts necessary—just added white titles to black backdrop between 0:47.20 and 0:52.20.

We hope you’re having a great St. Francis Week. We’re approaching his Oct. 4 feast day, which a church near you is probably celebrating this weekend with a Pet Blessing.

St. Francis is said to have preached a sermon “to the birds of the air.” We’ve already seen this week that he had a special relationship with creation and believed it worthy of praise—in honor of its Creator.

When I think of pets and faith, I’m reminded of Elizabeth Drescher’s research on the spiritual lives of the “Nones.” It turns out that both religious and non-religious people make much of their spiritual meaning through “four Fs”: friends, family, food, and Fido.

So today, here’s looking at you, Fido. Thanks for helping us stay grounded and aware of the blessings and love that surround us.

We hope the video is helpful as you reflect on the blessing that animals and especially pets can be in our lives. And we hope you use the video to promote your church’s Pet Blessing. Enjoy!

If you do want to use or remix this video to promote a Pet Blessing at your church, make sure you include the “Sights & Sounds” credit slide. This slide acknowledges the photographers who took the photos (and also this site). Again, the download link is here (right/control click, “Save link as”).

Don’t like the music? Your video editor will let you remove it. Don’t want the final Creative Commons Prayer slide messing with your branding? Feel free to cut it too.

My pals Nurya Love Parish and Brendan O’Sullivan-Hale created videos to demonstrate how to edit in your own event info (Mac, Windows) and also how to promote your video on Facebook.

I’d love for you to reach out if you decide to remix this video. Although this is a site for multimedia prayer, we could create more resources like this in the future if that would be helpful.

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You can reuse or remix all the resources on this site for any purpose as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license (usually CC BY 2.0), and indicate if changes were made. Learn more about reuse at creativecommons.org.

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