The Rev'd Richard Coles recently wrote a piece for "The Times" on the Blessing of the Animals at Blythburgh Church in Suffolk.  

"I was in Suffolk last Sunday and caught the end of one of the more distinctive Church of England liturgies. It was a pet blessing at Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, “the Cathedral of the Marshes”, a magnificently plain and spacious and light-filled parish church between the River Blyth and the A12. I say plain — its decoration was mostly destroyed by the dreadful Puritan “Smasher” Dowsing in the 1640s, but its roof was too high for him to ground the wonderful carved angels, which he particularly disliked. They soar above us today, and I like to think of them singing “Gloria in excelsis” over his wreckers just to annoy them.

On Sunday they were not the only feathered creatures, for there was squawking as well as barking and miaowing from the animals inside, and neighing from the churchyard too. Some find this sort of thing preposterous, others nauseating — Smasher Dowsing would probably have declared it idolatrous and shooed everyone away.

I have blessed a few animals in my time — everything from tadpoles to a shire horse — not to stoke controversy but because I like the idea of the parish church opening for the community it serves. I think our job is not to set a standard of orthodox belief that must be met before people may participate, but to invite them to step over the threshold and to share in a common life that is radiant with light, buoyant with hope and abounding in grace."

(Reproduced with kind permission of the author)