Podcast: Animal Chaplain Sarah Bowen, Sacred Sendoffs

Sarah Bowen is an animal chaplain, multifaith spiritual educator, and author of Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, & Trying to Heal the Planet.

As a member of One Spirit Interfaith Seminary’s faculty, Spiritual Directors International, the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement, and several recovery communities, Bowen supports all beings regardless of their species or belief system. Bowen is also a co-founder of Compassion Consortium, the first interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies spiritual community.

In this episode, Rabbi Rami and Bowen—both S&H columnists—explore what it means to be an animal chaplain, grieving an animal loss, “interspecies” church and bringing animals into your spiritual practice and faith, and much more.

“In a lot of spiritual spaces, more than human animals have been left out. We’re trying to figure out ways to bring them in. Because they're in our sacred texts, they're in psalms, they’re in prayers. But we’ve kind of marginalized them and pushed them out.” —Sarah Bowen, from the Spirituality & Health Podcast

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Read Rabbi Rami’s thoughts on the episode: “Spirituality and Sentience.”