I love dogs. I love their loud lapping at water bowls, their incessant enthusiasm, and their unabashed enjoyment of belly scratches. (I also love underdogs and hot dogs, but I think that’s a different topic!).
My dad went to St. Bernard’s High School. Their mascot was – yup, you guessed it – a St. Bernard dog. Dad was about twice as large as I am, so I practically drown in his old clothes. But I love wearing his high school letter jacket; the warm gray wool is a powerful shield that wards off winter winds, and the embroidered chest patch that depicts a huge, endearing St. Bernard always makes me smile.
I love that dog.
Now, my neighbors have two cats. Acorn’s a lot like a little brown tree nut – small, prone to falling from great heights, and almost always in danger of being trampled underfoot. Magma’s bigger and slower. Hard to realize she’s even moving, until it’s too late - suddenly you’re engulfed by a heavy gray mass! And holding her is like receiving a full-body bear hug: Magma’s weight crushes you like molten rock. She throws her weight around in a more figurative sense, too – Magma’s got attitude.
One of my neighbors took them to church for the Blessing of the Animals. Magma can’t stand car rides – I’m sure she spent the entire 20-minute drive complaining incessantly. Acorn’s sweet, but not the brightest gourd in the field, so she was a bit confused about where exactly she was. But both were blessed, the unwilling and the uncertain. And my neighbor says it was beautiful, a time when all of God’s creation was welcomed into God’s house for blessing and rejoicing. A time when the expansiveness of God’s love was made tangible, when the companionship of beloved pets was celebrated, and people experienced – not just mentally understood – the interconnectedness of all life on God’s great green earth.
It sounds nice, but it made me sad. The church was happy to ritually commemorate the love and lives shared by pets and their humans, but when my neighbor finds a partner with whom to share his love and life, the United Methodist Church will close its doors to him. My neighbor, my ardently churchy neighbor, whose heart is strangely warmed by singing centuries-old English hymns, will find those proverbially open UMC doors slammed in his face, simply because any marriage he enters into will unite him with a man.
Myself, I’m not home enough to have a dog – or a cat. I still dream of a day when I’ll take an early evening walk to the lake with my big, furry St. Bernard, a dog that sweetly will remind me of my late father. I expect all three of us to have a mutual love of the water, of long and lazy summer afternoons, and of warm winter nights lounging beside a fireplace. I also expect to take such a dog to our local UMC for a Blessing of the Animals.
Sadly, I also expect that same church to be unable to celebrate any partnership I may have with a human being. Now, let me be clear – I am blessed to live in Boston, MA, where there are many Reconciling churches within driving distance. Indeed, I attend one on Sunday evenings, and am discerning whether I should be more deeply involved with a second congregation that meets on Sunday mornings. I am blessed.
But official United Methodist policy forbids the celebration of same-sex marriages, even though they are legal here in Massachusetts. So if I can find the right person, we can share our lives and hearts with one another, can cook meals together for church potlucks, and may even spend our Sundays serving on committees and singing in the choir (I like to imagine dating a baritone, whose rich voice completely drowns out my tone-deaf hymn-mangling. It seems the Christian thing to do, to spare others of any auditory suffering I may currently be causing). But somehow, this dream life would be distasteful in the eyes of the church. If I’m looking for a ritual blessing of the God-given love that buoys my everyday life, the UMC says my St. Bernard is welcome, but my Bernard is not.
As a church, how can we celebrate companionship with pets but not with people?
When reluctantly forced to name this sad state of affairs, I must admit that the UMC stance can be summed up in one stale, stark quip:
Love the dog, hate the dog owner.
But take heart, friends: GLBT people may be excluded from the church, but apparently the hearts, minds, and doors of the United Methodist Church are open to felines. I’m going to be nicer to Acorn and Magma, and slip them a little extra catnip every now and then. After all, they can get a front-row seat in any United Methodist Church - maybe they can sneak me and Bernard in!
