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The big news in the Suffolk village of Blythburgh this weekend is the annual church service for the blessing of animals.

This year, for the first time in a decade, the jodhpur wearing vicar won’t be saddled up as, sadly, Neville his horse, recently died.

But other horses will be trotting on the medieval stone floor. The cast some years has included cats, dogs, llamas, tortoises, parrots, hamsters and a bull. All creatures great and small.

If it sounds like a scene from The Vicar of Dibley, that may be because Richard Curtis, who wrote the sitcom, lives nearby and is said to have taken inspiration from this service…although in the real life version the church choir don’t sing Donny Osmond’s Puppy Love.

Animals mean more to us than most of us know.

In a revelatory new study, How Animals Heal Us, the writer Jay Griffiths explores how our non human companions transform our wellbeing - how they restore our health, as guardians or confidantes, as friends or therapists. On the bed, lying at our feet, licking a face.

For those of us who have a creature we turn to for consolation or conversation, it’s no surprise to be told these creature comforts are real.

Or how animals may be wise without words. In ancient times, wrote Terry Pratchett, cats were worshipped as gods… and they have not forgotten this.

The zoologist Jane Goodall says animals too are spiritual creatures - meaning they are amazed at things outside of themselves. Chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are. They are part of nature’s wild alleluia.

One reason our non human companions are so good for us, says Griffiths, is that they are often drawn to play.

From wrestling frogs to kittens chasing their tails or dogs retrieving sticks, from mud wallowing elephants to whales blowing underwater bubbles at each other.

In serious times, when history is walking a tightrope and the morning news can make our nerves jangle, the sight of parents playing with children at the beach or teenagers kicking a ball in the park, is a reminder of the deep human call to recreation - the need to be re-created.

To make ourselves up again.

Animals seem to get that we are wired for play. In his latest novel Playground, Richard Powers explores the hidden playful lives of deep ocean creatures and he quotes the biblical voice of wisdom from the story of creation.

‘I was delighted every day, playing at all times…playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of humans. ‘

We may bless the animals in church, but they may bless us every day.
Ask the animals and they will teach you, says the Bible, the birds of the air, they will tell you…

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