Animal Wisdom: Learning from the Spiritual Lives of Animals (Sacred Activism)
What we do for animals, we do for ourselves. Bender, a veterinarian and animal advocate, discusses this central tenet of her personal philosophy in a work that is basically one of unconditional love. When we love animals and fully understand them, their innate happiness and connection with the world will make us happier. In seven chapters, Bender explores these beliefs, writing of the connections animals make with each other and how we humans can connect with them. Stories of pets that find their way to their humans hundreds of miles distant, or of therapy animals that calm psychiatric patients, illustrate her theme that animals have souls (the Latin anima, meaning “soul,” is the root of the word animal) and that our souls and theirs can communicate. Her final chapters provide guidelines for how to connect with animals intuitively in an extrasensory or telepathic capacity, which she believes that everyone is able to do. --Nancy Bent