Grieving pet owners turn to religious groups

WHEN her old English bulldog Lucy contracted lymphoma and died unexpectedly last year, Ingrid Nelson was rocked by grief. The dog was a deep source of support for Nelson, a sometimes-overwhelmed single mom. “She was just my soul dog.”

- MICHELLE BOORSTEIN

Her grief was compounded by responses she got to her sadness. Animals don’t even have souls, a neighbour said. A colleague told her animals don’t go to heaven. Nelson wanted answers to these theological and spiritual questions from her Christian faith, but she was wary of mentioning them at the Congregational church she attends in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Even though the denomination is liberal, she worried someone at the church would repeat the same unsympathetic doctrine. Instead, she said: “I internalised and prayed on it.”

And she went to see an animal chaplain. The existence of animal chaplains, who offer spiritual care for people with pets, for people who work with animals and for animals themselves, is just one example of how people are increasingly reexamining the relationship between humans and the natural world, and in the process changing their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.

Nelson met twice with the Rev Ginny Mikita, an ordained interfaith minister who runs a pet grief support group.

Nelson wanted to know: how does God see nonhuman animals? She told Mikita about her feeling that her connection with Lucy contained mutual consciousness — even holiness.

What do you believe, Mikita recalls asking Nelson. How do you imagine heaven?

“This is really about, for the first time, for a lot of people, deeply thinking about these issues,” Mikita said. “What do I believe and why?”

The spiritual counselling helped lift the “horrible grey cloud” of Lucy’s death. It led Nelson to delve into scriptural references to animals: In Genesis, God calls the creation of animals “good”. In the story of Noah, God makes a covenant with “every living creature.” God personally feeds animals in the Book of Psalms.