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Calling all creatures great and small today

Two Clearwater congregations will join in in a Blessing of the Animals, where pet owners will be asked to care about all animals.

CLEARWATER - The Rev. Leddy Hammock, with her flowing skirts, long wavy hair and gentle manner, cries easily when she talks about animals suffering needlessly.

From the wild rabbits her Uncle Jim used to shoot when she was a young girl to Bilbo, the rat-hunting cat at her church who has yet to catch one, she and her staff at Unity Church of Clearwater can't bear to see any living thing in pain.

So when a beloved black angel fish in the church tank by the name of Shadow got weak and sick, the staff chipped in $150 for him to have surgery.

The vet removed a growth from his little body.

"We bought him another year," Hammock said in a soft voice, smiling at his memory.

Shadow, she believes, has a place in the kingdom of God as do all the other animals on the planet. God loves them, as he does us, she said.

This afternoon, she and the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, a devout vegetarian and minister at Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater, will bless the fish, birds, reptiles, dogs and cats and all other beings, as Hammock puts it, who "don't have a voice," at a ceremony under a tent at the Unity Church grounds.

The occasion is in honor of Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology and founder of the Franciscans, a Roman Catholic religious order whose members devote themselves to preaching and to caring for the poor and the sick.

Many local churches chose to have their blessing of the animals services on Oct. 4, the actual feast day, including Calvary Episcopal Church on Indian Rocks Beach.

Deacon Dennis McManis said 82 people brought more than 90 pets, mostly dogs and cats, to the event.

McManis read the gospel and said prayers while the Rev. Bob Waganseil sprinkled holy water on the pets' heads and offered blessings.

"We use the occasion to honor our pets," McManis said. "Our animals show us how to live in harmony."

And to the question many people ask clergy: Do animals have souls?

The Rev. Hammock answers, "Yes."

They have feelings. They protect their young and more, she said.

"Anyone who has spent time with animals knows they express unconditional love, trust, individual consciousness and memory," she said. "Those are all the qualities of a soul."

Still, she said, the blessing is more for the owners than the pets.

Animals, like young children, are blessed already and cannot have done anything wrong that would earn them anything close to eternal damnation, she said.

"They seem to have a perfect sense of what's right," Hammock said. "And they forgive quickly."

So the owners will be asked to rise today, to share in a responsive reading and pledge compassion to their own pets and speak up on behalf of the welfare of all animals.

After her teenage son, Levi, plays the song Imagine on the piano, Hammock will recite Thoughts About Animals by Walt Whitman.

It reads in part: "I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins . . . not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. . . . This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and the animals."

Bring your furry or scaly friend to a Blessing of the Animals at 4:30 p.m. today at Unity Church of Clearwater, 2465 Nursery Road. Free.