 We're not even playing piano at the age of eight. You're not? All? Okay. Kalaunja doesn't look on the site, really? If I can kind of hide it. Here, how's that? Hard to find. Good. How are you? You're an Aster? What's happening? How are you? I think I'm fine. I'll check. You're really a car. You're so cool. You're really physically assaulting me. I'll suck on you. You know that joke? You know that about the guy who escaped the tent with me. He's an American character. And his is already on the audience. They will not let him leave the stage. They keep bringing him here. And they've come back 20 times about it. And it sinks the piece again. But if I can say it's one of these times. What's it do? I'll leave that to us. I'll leave this for you. I'm hoping to get it right. Yeah, they're very full of money. It's kind of a game-changing joke. Yeah? Yeah. You know this is so... Encouraging. Yeah, yeah. She says it's almost like... You know, like... It's the word. I think that's it. That's great. Yeah. It's not so... She could pull that off. We're going to get you in the car. You get it? Yeah. The needle's not on the left. Yes. The T-bone. Yeah. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. And welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, enormously talented member of this congregation. And I'm happy to welcome you to this service. And as the cow said after crossing the high meadow, I'm utterly tickled to see all of you. And extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about this special place, I'm not sure if we have a tour guide for the service this morning, but if we don't, feel free to talk to any of us who are going to be around during the coffee and fellowship hour in the commons after the service. This would be the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that I can guarantee you you will not need for the next hour. So please, as you're taking care of that simple but important task, let me remind you that if you're accompanied by a youngster today and you think that young person would rather experience the service from a more private space, we have a couple alternatives for you, starting with our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some seats just outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can still see and hear the service. And one of the reasons we are able to see and hear the service is that, as is the case every weekend, this service is brought to us by a great team of volunteers whose names you are going to hand smiley for being our lay minister. Many thanks to Dorit Bergen and Joan Heitman for greeting us up this morning. Thanks to our ushers, Bobby Zainer and Ann Smiley. The all important hospitality and coffee are furnished by Richard DeVita and Jean for bringing the flowers that you're going to hand to us who are donated by Richard and Sally Builder and co-and-Paul Williams to honor their parents as well. Just a couple announcements before we get on with the service. The first announcement is that between one o'clock and three o'clock this afternoon, we're going to build gingerbread houses. We're going to build gingerbread houses. That's right. I know. It's a good thing you were sitting down for that announcement. It's so exciting, but it is exciting. It involves a whole family and it's going to happen in the commons area, just right out here. Again, from one o'clock to three o'clock, all we need you to do if you want to participate is to bring the decorative candies to put on top of the gingerbread houses because we're going to provide the graham crackers and the juice and the icing. And you might also want to bring some milk cartons or other little structures to serve as the base for the gingerbread house. Again, that's today from one o'clock to three o'clock. And speaking of numbers, like one and three, it's 133 days until the next cabaret. So, please, sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I heard the nine o'clock service and I know that this service today will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two or maybe even three new thoughts. We're glad you're here. Hello, my name is T.K. Browning. I'm your incredibly untalented intern minister. Our opening words today are from the Dao De Jing book that I love. Dao gave them birth. The power of Dao reared them, shaped them according to their kinds, perfected them, gave to each its strength. Therefore, of the 10,000 things, there is not one that does not worship Dao and pay homage to its power. And as Dao bore them and the power of Dao reared them, made them grow, fostered them, harbored them, brewed for them, so you must rear them. But do not lay claim to them. Control them, but do not lean on them. Be their steward, but do not manage them. This is called the mysterious power. Now have the lighting of a chalice. If you can rise and body your spirit and join me, follow along in the order of service. For daylight and darkness, for sunshine and rain, for earth and all people, we offer deep thanksgiving. For all things bright and beautiful, for all things wise and wonderful, for all creatures great and small, we offer endless praise. We kindle this light in celebration of the life we share. May it help unite our lives with the larger web of life to which we belong. We're about to sing our opening hymn, number 91, but first we're going to exchange friendly greetings with the wise and wonderful among us. Please be seated. And if we have some children in our midst, who would like to come forward for the message for all ages? Hello. Good morning. Those are really bright shoes. They're real pretty. So, all of you have visions of sugar plums dancing in your heads? No? Yeah. No, you do? What are sugar plums? Kind of a candy, I think. I eat hot chocolate. You eat hot chocolate? Oh, that's pretty good too. Yeah. So here's the question for you. Do you think that animals have feelings? Can animals be sad? Can they be happy? How do you know? Did you ask them? No. No? I can just tell. You can tell by looking at them, right? Yeah. Yeah. You think? They wag their tails. Oh, okay. Dogs wag their tails when they're happy. And when they're not happy, they have this hang dog expression. Right? Well, this is a story about animal feelings. This is a story from a long time ago from India. And so there was a king who ruled India, and he had this beautiful gray elephant that he just loved to ride. And the king commanded his servant to give this prized elephant of his the best of care. And so every day they let her out of the stable and onto the green fields where she could eat the tender grass freely. And they also, see, there is. I was wondering, where's my frisky elephant there? And they would also take this elephant to a clear pool where she could splash around and play. And then the evening they would bring her these big bowls of sweet rice for her to eat. Now, one day when the elephant was enjoying her evening meal of this sweet rice in her stable, a stray dog wandered in and began feeding at the small lumps of rice that would fall from the elephant's mouth around her feet. And this dog so much enjoyed that free food that the next day he came back. And then pretty soon he was a regular guest every evening in the stable. Well, as unlikely as it might seem, the little dog and the elephant became really good friends. And they began to play with each other. And the dog would jump up and sit on the elephant's trunk and the elephant would swing its trunk just like a swing and the dog just really, really liked that. Well, after some time a farmer happened to be coming into the village to deliver hay to the stable and he saw the dog playing with the elephant. And he said, boy, that is one smart dog. And so he said, I really want to have that dog for my own. And so he offered to buy the dog from the elephant's keeper. And because the dog was a stray, well, the keeper said, why not? And so the farmer gave him a pretty good sum of money to take the dog. And so he took the dog away. Well, that night, of course, the dog did not come to eat with the elephant. And he wasn't there to lie down and to sleep with the elephant as they had become accustomed to doing. By the next morning, the dog still had not returned. And the elephant started to get really, really sad. And she got so sad that she wouldn't eat those bowls of sweet rice and she wouldn't go out into the field to eat that sweet grass. And the next day she refused to go to the pool to take her daily bath. And day after day went and the elephant seemed to just not care about anything anymore. And so word was sent to the king, something wrong with your favorite elephant. And so the king sent for his physician and asked him to go and examine the elephant. And so he did and he looked at her, he examined at her from the tip of her trunk to the end of her tail and he said, I can't find anything that's wrong with the body of this elephant. So he said to the king, there's nothing physically that matter with your elephant, but I think there's something wrong with her emotions, something's wrong with her spirit. She seems to be really sad, to be sorrowing, as if she had lost something that was really precious to her. Perhaps she's just lonely. So the king called in the elephant's keeper and asked whether anything had happened recently that could have caused the elephant to be that sad. Well, yes, said the keeper. There was this stray dog that used to come around and eat the sweet rice that fell at the elephant's feet and sometimes I would watch them playing with each other. Well, what happened to the dog, asked the king. Well, a man came and offered to buy her, so I sold the dog to the man. Do you know where that man lives? I have no idea, said the keeper. And so the king put out a proclamation and he sent that proclamation to all the villages in his kingdom and the proclamation said someone has taken away a dog and the dog is very important to me and very important to my favorite elephant and if that dog is not returned immediately, whoever has it is going to have to pay a really large fine. Well, the farmer who had taken the dog saw the proclamation in his village and he grew very afraid that maybe the king would punish him and so he just let the dog loose. He was afraid to take it back himself. Now, dogs, and this one in particular, have a very good sense of direction and so that dog, once it was free, just ran all the way back immediately to the stable and began barking and running around the elephant's feet. And as soon as the elephant saw her old friend, she lowered her trunk and he jumped up on the trunk and he lifted her up and put her on his forehead. And then the elephant trumpeted a happy call that could be heard all the way across the king's palace and the two of them began to eat and never again, as long as they both lived, where they ever very far apart. This is an old story and I think it may be a true story because, you know, we've actually seen that happen in the United States. There is an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, the state of Tennessee, and there was one elephant there that became very, very friendly with one of the dogs and they were lifelong pals until that dog had passed away. And I should basically remind you that we can tell when elephants are really sad and lonely because they're the only animal we know of other than human beings that can cry, that can actually shed tears. So that's our story for you today and we hope you have a good time in your classes and a great holiday season and we're going to sing you out with a song all about animals, number 243. Thanks. Please be seated. First reading today comes from Lynn Unger, who is a Unitarian Universalist minister and a poet of some note. To tell the truth, oh, it's called the ox and the star. To tell the truth, the ox thought it was just a little unfair. I mean, it wasn't as if they had a lot of extra room in the stable. The stable already housed not only an ox, but also a cow, a horse, a donkey, and a variety of chickens. Still, when you get right down to it, folks have to sleep somewhere. So he didn't have much mind moving over and leaving his stall space to the man and the woman, especially seeing as she was so far along. Of course, he had no idea how far along until later that night before the ox could turn around, which there wasn't really room to do anyway, not only was there an extra man and woman in the stable, but there was also an extra baby. They laid him in a manger, the ox's manger, on top of the nice clean hay that the ox had intended for a snack later that night. But still, a baby is a baby, and you could hardly begrudge him a place to sleep where he was safe from careless hooves. No, the ox thought, looking back at the scene some years later, it really wasn't so bad. A bit cramped, a bit awkward, but nothing really to complain about when you thought of the cold outside. Not so bad, that is, until the next day when the shepherd started to arrive. With their sheep, with their sheepdogs, those bossy things, always ordering everyone about. You couldn't, he admitted, leave them out in the cold, and they seemed so eager to see the baby. Their rough faces gentle with wonder as they gazed at the little boy. But still, in retrospect, the ox supposed that one shepherd would have been quite enough, and the sheep could have stayed outside for a while, but the shepherds were folks used to being with animals in a quiet, comfortable way, so it could have been worse. For instance, there could have been kings. Rather like the ones that strolled in a few days later, three of them with gifts and camels. The ox was a patient beast, gentle and mild-mannered, but by the time he knocked over the myrrh, trying to avoid the stepping on the sheep and caught his horn on the elaborate tassels of the camel's headgear, it was simply more than the poor ox could stand. He kicked open the stable door and bolted out into the night. The night, it was nothing like he'd ever imagined, safe in the stable at sundown. The air was cold and somehow thin, as if stretched out into the vast reaches of the sky. And the stars, they seemed at once so close that his horns might dislodge them and so distant that his mind began to spin. One star seemed to hover above the stable, both closer and more majestically distant than all the rest. It was stunning, glorious, shimmering, with what sounded in the fevered imagination of the trembling ox, like distant bells or an unthinkable chorus of angelic voices. The night, the stars, it was beauty like nothing he had ever known, grandeur that left him terrified and shaken. The ox tried to move back toward the safety of the stable, but he couldn't seem to get his legs to move. The ox had no idea how long he stood there before he felt the warm touch of a hand on his neck. Ah, my friend, said the man called Joseph, so too you come out into the night. Could it be that even a simple beast fills his eye-do? Sometimes the splendor in there is much more than I can stand. I find myself gazing at the child until the time stands still, caught in the beauty of that new life. Why is it when I look at him, it's such a mean reading, to give to an expected dad? I feel like a whole new world is starting to unfold before my eyes. Does every father learn to live with such a glimpse of eternity? Sometimes it's more than this old heart can take. And I have to walk out into the simplicity of the night for fear. I will get lost in such open spaces. The ox being an ox said nothing, only leaned into the comforting warmth of the man and pondered. How could it be that simplicity and glory could be so strangely mixed? Did that singing still, that still filled him, come from out in the stars or somewhere deep inside? Eventually the man and the ox turned and headed back toward the stable. The man lay down in the straw of the ox's bed and the ox noses way in, so that he could look at the sleeping baby. Why, yes, I see it now. Somehow the face of the child, even in sleep, seemed to hold love wide enough to encompass animals. Shepherds, wise men, and every wandering stranger. The ox had lived in the stable all his life, but until that moment he had never noticed that through a crack in the roof, one star shone into the stable, impossibly bright, impossibly near, impossibly distant, shining on the impossibly open face of the sleeping child. Thank you, T.K. That is a touching story. The second reading was composed by Earl Hamner Jr. and it was actually originally a script, or a part of a script, for an episode of The Twilight Zone, first aired 55 years ago. A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and also that his faithful dog had been dead for many years. So he wondered where this road was leading them. After a while they came to a high, white stone wall along the side of the road. It looked like it was made of fine marble. And as he reached the wall he saw a magnificent gate in an archway and a street that led from the gate that was paved with pure gold. So he and his dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough he called out to the man at the desk, excuse me sir, where are we? Oh, the man said, this is heaven. Wow, said the man. But would you happen to have some water? We've traveled a long way and are thirsty. Oh, of course sir, come right in. I'll have some ice water brought right up. The man waved his hand and the gate began to open. But can my friend, the man said, gesturing toward his dog, can he come in too and get some water? Oh, I'm sorry sir, we don't accept pets. The man thought for a moment and he remembered all those years that his dog had remained loyal to him and he turned around and headed back down the road, continuing the way they had been going. After another long walk they came to a plain dirt road which led to a farm gate that looked like it had perhaps never been closed. Well, as he approached the gate he saw a man inside leaning against a tree and just reading a book. Excuse me, he called to the reader, do you have any water? We have both traveled so far. Oh, sure, he said, there's a faucet over there. Help yourself. And he pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. Well, how about my friend here, he said, gesturing to his dog. There should be a bowl beside the faucet. He's welcome to share. And so the two went through the gate and sure enough there was this old-fashioned faucet with a bowl beside it. And the traveler filled the bowl, took a long drink himself and gave some to the dog. And when they both had slicked their thirst, he and the dog walked back to where the man was standing by the tree waiting for them. What do you call this place? The stranger asked. Oh, this is heaven, was the answer. Well, that's confusing, the traveler said. The man down the road said that that was heaven too. Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and the pearly gates. No, no, that's hell. Well, doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that? Well, no, I can see how you might think so, but truth be told, it saves us a lot of time. Because you see, they screen out the people who are willing to leave their best friends behind. A treat to have Kristen and Trevor with us again today sharing with us this wonderful seasonal music. I suspect it may be as true for some of you as for me that many of my earliest and most vivid memories are of times when I became aware of other creatures that inhabit our planet with us. Silvery minnows flashing in the stream that bisected our farm. Riggling snakes and scurrying field mice that were exposed when I turned over a bale in the hay field. Cats mewing for milk at our doorstep, hens scratching in our barnyard. The psychologist Marianne Randour says that to children, animals are not lower, they are fellow beings of equal standing. And so it did seem to me at the time. Growing up about a century and a half earlier near Portage, Wisconsin, John Muir and his siblings felt much the same way. Witnessing the wholesale killing of passenger pigeons, they exclaimed, oh, what colors. Look at their breasts as Bonnie's roses, their necks aglow with all hues of the rainbow. It seems an awful sin to kill them. Responding with absolute certitude to his children's regret, the elder Muir, their father, agreed that the birds were quite Bonnie. But he assured them they were made to be killed and sent to us, God's chosen people, for our pleasure. John Muir would not himself follow in his father's footsteps. And as a young man recording what he experienced, what he witnessed on his thousand mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico, John Muir wrote, it never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers of religion that nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be, first of all, the happiness of each one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of this great unit of creation? They are all parts of God's family, unfallen, undepraved, all cared for with the same species of tenderness and love as is bestowed upon the angels of heaven or the saints below here on earth. And yet in the modern world, many still accept uncritically the soullessness of animals and many still presume that they are authorized by God or accorded the right by virtue of their own superior status to subdue the other members of the animal kingdom. Tetsuro Matsuzawa is an internationally celebrated scientist at the University of Kyoto's primate research center and he finds this attitude troubling. I really do not understand, he says, the need for us always to be superior in all domains or to be so separate, so unique from every other animal. Matsuzawa has reasons for reaching that conclusion. Not only apes, the apes that he studies, but creatures as dissimilar as parrots, porpoises, elephants, dogs and rats have demonstrated a capacity for communication, for learning, for problem solving, and for empathy that few would have dreamed of even 50 years ago. As in so many other ways, Charles Darwin was definitely ahead of his time insisting way back in the 19th century that dogs have the power to reason, that they know what it feels like to experience love, envy, grief and even the prick of conscience. Now the evidence that Darwin offered was anecdotal based on his experience of his own dogs and reports from other 19th century dog owners, but modern research has proven much of what he claimed for dogs to be correct. Now one of the reasons that dogs in particular manifest so many traits that Darwin attributed to them is because they've been around us for tens of thousands of years and this has resulted in what scientists call convergent evolution, two completely separate species acquiring new capabilities in tandem due to their close proximity and their shared agendas. And because of their intimate relationship with humans, a dog's brain has developed in quite a different way from that of its wolf ancestors and its emotional life varies from the wolves accordingly. For instance, like small children, dogs do experience separation anxiety when their owners are absent. Anybody ever notice that? And a dog's vocalizations, the range and the tone of its barking, that has developed in the company of humans in such a way that they are able to communicate certain feeling states to us. And because they are so eager to please, dogs pay rapt attention to their owners and pick up on their signals. One exceptional border collie responds appropriately to over 300 different commands. Now for those of us who have had long standing relationships with dogs, my wife Trina and I have had two dogs over the span of 35 years, this may sound completely familiar. But then again, what about certain other creatures who are not routinely a part of our domestic lives? Some of you may have heard about Alex. Alex is a famous African gray parrot. And Alex could carry on an unscripted conversation with its keepers and could count objects accurately. And controlled experiments with Alex showed that he could distinguish between the concepts of same and different. Are these two objects the same or are they different? He also could understand the concept of none or zero. These are tasks that are considered to be cognitively very demanding. Some parrots seem to be able to grasp the purpose and the function of words using terms like hello or good night, not just imitatively and not just randomly, but in the proper context. The parrot would say good night to you. He meant good night. Other birds like scrub jays seem to possess what researchers call theory of mind, which means that they seem to be attuned to what another bird may be thinking. And so when a scrub jay becomes aware that another scrub jay is watching them hide a nut, they will return a few moments later, retrieve the nut and put it in a different place. Another species, the Australian bower bird, is an artist. Male bower birds build these elaborate nests and then they decorate them with an assortment of colorful objects in an effort to, of course, attract females for their part are quite discriminating about which male they will choose to cohabitate with, who's got the nicer nest. These are the first animal other than humans that we know about that seem to have a genuine artistic sensibility. Dolphins have the highest ratio of brain size to body mass in the animal world and that includes us as human beings and they possess also many remarkable traits. They are highly social beings. They have their own way of doing things, ways that are not genetically inherited but learned. Like humans, like elephants, like the great apes, dolphins actually create their own unique cultures. Along with apes and elephants and some species of birds, dolphins know how to use tools. How? Well, they put sponges on their beaks in order to root out small things out of rocks so that they don't damage their beaks in the process. In captivity, dolphins quickly learn sign language. One particularly responsive dolphin named Akiakami became so proficient in sign language that she could respond to new commands the first time, the very first time her trainer issued them. These were not trained behaviors he reported. This dolphin had a deep understanding of the grammar of language. Other dolphins appear to possess what we call mirror neuron cells because of their ability to mimic the behaviors of their trainers. So for instance, if a human trainer would bend over backwards and lift his leg, the dolphin would turn on its back and lift its tail in the air, creating an analogy between the two appendages, leg and tail. Among the great apes, orangutans are recognized as being master escape artists, able to outwit zookeepers' best attempts to keep them contained. Chimpanzees not only use tools, but they have been known to modify an object so that it will better serve its intended purpose. Now in an earlier era, toolmaking was believed to be a property belonging exclusively to hominids. It was our special mark of superiority, homo-faber. That claim is now debatable. Moreover, in certain respects chimpanzees exhibit mental skills that are superior to our own. So when a chimpanzee is exposed to a random sequence of numbers that are displayed instantaneously on a touchscreen, those chimps are able to duplicate that sequence with far greater accuracy than any human subject. And scientists attribute this to what they call the chimpanzee's superior flash memory. So chimps can remember good memories, but do they think? Jane Goodall became widely known for her decades-long observations of chimpanzees in their native habitat. And she witnessed several instances when her subjects seemed to be trying to pull the wool over other members of the troop. They were acting deceitfully. And this requires, as we all know, a certain amount of calculation. But because her evidence was, like Charles Darwin's anecdotal, most primatologists simply didn't take it seriously. And later on, Jane Goodall remarked that to say that a chimp was actually thinking about his actions was not scientifically permissible. The most that one can say is, if she were a human, we would say that she is acting deceitfully. And to claim anything more for a chimpanzee would make one guilty of what? Anthropomorphizing. Like humans, chimpanzees can be murderous. In the wild, troops of chimpanzees will wage war at each other. They also can exhibit empathy they will care for and they will share with one another, evidence, perhaps, of a rudimentary moral sense. And the same is true for elephants. Matriarchs, the acknowledged leaders of an elephant band, matriarchs have been known to rescue a calf from drowning in a deep pool. And on at least one other occasion, a wild elephant was observed bringing water to a dying companion. And elephants, like human beings, also recognize their own dead. They will stop, they will become momentarily quiet when they encounter another elephant's corpse or skeleton. And when in pain, as I told the children, elephants have been known to shed tears. Neuroscientists have recently detected economic cells in the brains of elephants, economic cells. And they've also been found in the brains of whales and great apes. And these are spindle-shaped neurons that were once touted as the cells that made us human because those cells are connected to our feelings of love, emotional suffering, and sociability. Although elephants and whales diverged from our branch of the evolutionary tree tens of millions of years ago, the developmental outcome for each of these species was remarkably similar. This may kind of confuse us. It may be a cause for puzzlement, but probably that's because we have misconstrued evolution as this straightforward progressive movement from lower to higher levels of sophistication. But as Virginia Morrill argues, evolution is not linear. It is divergent, which means that we all sit on different limbs of this bushy tree, each species as evolved as the next. The anatomical differences simply the result of ecology and behavior. So she says, we are not the culmination of all these lesser beings. They are not lesser, and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. So far so good. But what about some of these other creatures that we routinely dismiss as inconsequential and lacking in those special qualities that we've identified in the so-called higher members of the animal kingdom? Well, even some of those have considerably more mental and emotional intelligence than we have been giving them credit for. So take rats. Well, I'll take rats. When my wife Trina and I were undergraduates in college, she adopted two handsome hooded rats that my sister had to give up because of her asthma. And these cuddly creatures lived in Trina's apartment for two years, free and uncaged. Her mattress was on the floor. So in the morning, the rats would clamor up on the mattress, and they would awaken us by nuzzling in our ears. And at the sound of the refrigerator opening, they would scamper out of their hiding place, climb up our legs, sit on our shoulders, and wait for a treat from the icebox. In terms of personal hygiene, they were as fastidious as any cat that I had ever witnessed. They would cleanse themselves thoroughly after being handled by any curious stranger. Although they are routinely used and disposed of as research subjects, behavioral studies are now showing that rats have distinctive personalities, that they do exhibit altruism, they are self-aware, and they actually will make decisions based not only on what they know, but what they don't know. And that is a faculty called metacognition. But hey, I could have told you all that 25 years ago. Controlled research has revealed some remarkable findings about other life forms as well. Ants. In ant colonies, older scouts teach younger ones how to navigate unfamiliar territory. East Asian archer fish, they are excellent marksmen. They can knock insects and small birds off branches even out of the air by releasing a powerful, precisely aimed stream of water at them. But this is not a natural talent for the archer fish. Young fish increase their accuracy by watching their more accomplished elders. In order to do this, the researcher, Thomas Schlegel notes, they have to take on the viewpoint of the other fish. It wasn't that long ago that one would invite laughter for showing even the least regard for creatures that the philosopher Rene Descartes once dismissed as meat machines. Despite his tarnished reputation for conducting deprivation experiments with monkeys, Harry Harlow, the late University of Wisconsin primatologist, Harry Harlow made startling discoveries about the capabilities of his primate subjects. But because he feared ridicule from his fellow scientists, Harry Harlow kept those findings secret for decades. And Harlow also worked extensively with an orangutan at the wireless zoo by the name of Jiggs. And Jiggs made him a believer in animal intelligence. Upon his passing, Harlow offered this compliment. Jiggs died demonstrating a level of curiosity greater than that of many of our university's undergraduates. So every time we come up with a quality, an attribute that makes Homo sapiens somehow different, somehow superior, a similar trait just seems to kind of crop up in one animal or another. And so attempts to create some kind of a clear demarcation between the human and the non-human, yes, those efforts are ongoing because many of us still find it difficult to surrender this whole notion of human primacy. But in many respects, animal emotions, animal thought, animal perceptions, they do resemble our own, even though they are still fitted to that animal's unique circumstances. And for this reason, the philosopher Peter Singer has offered us this piece of ethical advice, this ethical dictum for our consideration. It is wrong, he says, to sacrifice important interests of the animal in order to satisfy less important interests of our own. Given the manner in which we've been gobbling up all of their real estate, disrupting their lives through climate change, raising them in confined animal feeding operations, such a dictum as the one that Singer offers us to strike us as inconvenient, as hard to live up to, but it is certainly worth further pondering. So what about heaven? What about the soul? Whatever the scientific evidence might suggest, there are many in our culture who still turn to the criteria that have been established by religion for answers to that particular question. And no dog is going to heaven, many of them will insist. Now I'm frankly agnostic about this whole matter of soul because there's so much disagreement about what a soul is, how it's constituted. But I do appreciate the poet Mary Oliver's take on this issue. She writes, I keep looking around me, and one question leads to another. In the face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. So why should I have a soul and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it and not the camel? Come to think about it. What about the maple trees? In this season, when the theme of incarnation leaps to the forefront, may we deepen and broaden our understanding of what that term incarnation might mean. And were we to recognize animals also as children of God, as human beings, we might feel a whole lot less lonely. Blessed be I don't know. And now I do invite you to participate in the giving and the receiving of our offering and our outreach recipient this time around is the Madison Starlings Youth Volleyball Chapter. Please be generous. We can conveniently share any joys or sorrows, cares that were recorded in our Cares of the Congregation book that does live right outside the center doors most Sundays. There were no entries today, but if you do in some future Sunday have something that you would like to record for us to announce to the rest of the congregation, we invite you to put it in this book. But now we will turn directly to our closing hymn, number 207. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. As with these words from the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhardt, apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. And if I spend enough time with the tiniest creature, even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare another sermon. So full of God is every creature. Blessed be. Amen.