Towards the end of meeting, Odin and Freya were definitely ready for worship to be over. They were clearly chafing at the silence, turning to their mom with imploring eyes, and starting up a sort of whining chant. Meanwhile, Georgia was leaping all over her dad, and gnawing on the ear of a ragged stuffed animal. Further out in the crowd, Vanessa and Django joined the fun with a bit of yipping and howling—yowling, if that’s a word. Meanwhile, way in the back, poor Gigi was hacking up some sort of hairball.
If you think Portland Friends Meeting has gone feral, you wouldn’t be too far off. We’ve been channeling creativity for the past few months, as a way of meeting the pandemic head on. We relocated to the nearby Friends School’s outdoor space—much quieter than our space at the meetinghouse. We held a couple intergenerational meetings for worship and saw children and families we hadn’t seen since before COVID. We’ve tried outdoor singing—and learned that rounds are challenging in an outdoor socially distanced context.
Recently we took things to yet another level, holding the first ever Interspecies Worship, also known as Bring Your Pet to Meeting Day, also known as Bring Your Stuffed Animal to Meeting Day, also known as Wear a Silly Hat Day (hey, it was Halloween, so the hat thing seemed roughly on message).
The teens agreed to host, and when the Interspecies plan was announced the week before, someone quipped whether the teens were the other species. A couple of people confessed to showing up because they wanted to see what chaos might ensue with different pets and stuffed animals thrown together.
All together we met 7 dogs, about 20 "stuffies" (brought by kids and adults!), and many silly hats. We started with singing All God’s Critters. And we finished with just a bit of canine chaos towards the end. Many thanks to Mary Desilva and Jonathan Ewell and the Eller Fitzes for their contributions!