Sacred Sendoffs

Sarah Bowen is an animal chaplain and advocate for all creatures. She offers workshops on interspecies mindfulness practices, works with humans around animal grief/loss, and advocates for exploited and endangered species within both religious and secular contexts. You can often find her huddled over wildlife struck by cars, giving them a sacred sendoff. Bowen is also a cofounder of Compassion Consortium, the first interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies faith community, an academic dean at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary; a columnist on animal/human relationships for Spirituality & Health magazine; and the author of two award-winning books on modern spirituality, including Spiritual Rebel. Her work has also appeared in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Elephant Journal, mindbodygreen, and on a wide range of podcasts. She holds a BA in Human Ecology, MA in Religious Studies, and is joyfully engaged in postgraduate research in Humane Religious Studies and Anthrozoology.

Him 1

Our Dearly Beloved 4
An Inconsistent Truth 7
Pondering Animality 11
Sacred Sendoffs 36
Companioning Animals 49
Expanding Creaturely Compassion 94
Free-Living, Wild Beings 103
Not Quite Wildlife 127
Farmed and Corporate Animals 142
Trying to Heal the Planet 181
Afterword: Living Beyond Our Lives 191


Acknowledgments 197
Bibliography 199
Notes 219
About the Author 239