 Check check. Check check. Desi 1, 2. Check check. There's a lot. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Now let's get musically present with each other 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 as the cow said after crossing the high meadow, I'm utterly tickled to see all of you here this morning. I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know you'll find that this is a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour after today's service. Just gather over here by the windows and we will take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need for the next hour. And while you're taking care of that simple but important task, let me remind you that if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that young person would rather experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you, including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some seats right outside the doorway in the commons where you and your young companion can see and hear the service. And as is the case every weekend, one of the reasons we are able to see and hear the service is that it's brought to us by a great team of volunteers whose names you get to see here right now. Handling the sound system is David Bryles. Our lay minister today is Lois Evenson. Our greeters upstairs were Patty Witte and Claire Box. Claire was the one opening the door for you. Our ushers today are Chuck Evenson, Brian Channis, and Ann Ostrom. The coffee is being provided by Biss Nitschke. Make sure you thank her. Anne Smiley has donated the flowers in honor of her mother. And our tour guide today is John Powell. Just a couple of announcements. We're going to build gingerbread houses today between one and three o'clock this afternoon in the commons. So kids of all ages are invited to participate in this great activity and you get to eat the product, which is kind of cool. We will provide graham crackers and icing. We'd like you to bring a couple bags of candies to decorate your gingerbread houses. Gum drops, licorice, and whatever pleases you. And you might also want to bring along some milk cartons and other items around which we can build the gingerbread houses. So again, today one o'clock to three o'clock in the commons. And lastly, there are 133 days, 133 days until cabaret. With that, I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirits, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. For today, come from the Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu. Dao gave them birth and 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 Tao 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 they claim to them. Control them, but do not lean upon them. Be their steward, but do not manage them. This is called the mysterious power. Now if you can rise and body your spirit and join me for the lighting of our chalice and follow along with the words printed in your 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. And now we invite you to greet the bright and beautiful next to you as we exchange friendly greetings. Please be seated. At this time I'd like to invite any kids to the front for our message for all ages. So do we all have visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads? Yeah? Do you know what a sugar plum is? No? Don't see a lot of sugar plums these days, do we? So here's the question. Do you think that animals have feelings? You think animals can be sad? You think animals can be happy? How do you know? Did you ask them? No? You think that maybe you can just see it with their expressions when they're happy or sad? Yeah, because sometimes your dog has a hang dog expression, which means your dog is sad. Well, this is a story about animals and it's a story, a very, very old story that comes from India and it's about animals that actually do have feelings. So you've heard a dog cry. Oh yeah, I've heard a dog cry too. So long ago there was a king in India and he had a beautiful gray elephant that he loved to ride. And so the king commanded his servant to give this prized elephant the best of care so each day his keepers led the elephant out of the stable into the green fields where she might eat the tender grass freely. Isn't that a great elephant? And they would also take her to a clear pool where she could splash around and play and in the evening they bought her these big bowls of sweet rice for her to eat. Now one day while the elephant was enjoying her evening meal in her stable a stray dog wandered in and began feeding from the small lumps of rice that fell from the elephant's mouth at her feet. And enjoying this free food very much the next evening the dog came back and soon he was a regular guest at meal time in the stable. Well as unlikely as it might seem the little dog and the big elephant became friends and they began to play with each other and they began to sleep with each other. And the dog would jump up and sit on the elephant's trunk and the elephant would wave its trunk just like a swing so that the dog would have fun. Well after some time a farmer from another village happened to be coming and visiting the stable bringing some fresh hay and he saw this dog and said that is a remarkable dog I have to have it. And so he offered to buy it from the elephant's keeper and because the dog was a stray and really didn't belong to anybody the keeper sold him to the farmer for a very good price and the farmer took him away. Well that that night of course the dog didn't come back to eat with the elephant wasn't there to lie down and sleep with the elephant. And the next morning when the dog still had not returned then the elephant was too sad to eat her bowls of rice and later on she wouldn't even eat the sweet grass in the pasture. The next day she refused to walk to the pool and take her bath and to splash around. Well day after day went by and the elephant seemed to care for nothing at all. And finally word about this was sent to the king saying that your elephant must be really really sick. So the king sent for his physician who came to examine the elephant and he checked that elephant out from head to toe from the tip of her trunk all the way to the edge of her tail but he couldn't find anything wrong with her body. And so he reported back to the king and said Sire there is nothing physically wrong with your elephant that I can find but there does seem to be something wrong with her spirit with her emotions. She seems to be sorrowing as if she's lost something that was really really important to her. So the king called the elephant's keeper and asked whether anything had recently happened that could cause his elephant to be so sad. And he thought for a minute and he said well yeah there was this stray dog that used to come at mealtime and he would eat rice with your elephant and sometimes I would even see them playing with each other. Well where is the dog now? The king asked. Well there was this man came and he took her away. Well where does he live? The king asked. I have no idea said the keeper. So the king put out a proclamation and he sent it around to all the villages in his kingdom and the proclamation said someone has got a dog who is very special to this king and to his elephant and if that dog is not returned whoever has that dog is going to have to pay a really big fine. Well the farmer saw the proclamation and as soon as he saw it he became very afraid that if he brought the dog back he was going to be punished and have to pay that big fine. So he just let the dog go. Now so like so many dogs this one had a very keen sense of direction and he ran all the way back to the stable barking and he began circling around the elephant's legs when he got there and as soon as the elephant saw her old friend she lowered her trunk and he jumped up and the elephant curled her trunk up and the dog leaped onto her forehead and then she trumpeted a happy call that could be heard all the way across the king's palace and so the two of them the elephant and the dog began to eat and never again as long as they both lived were these two friends very far apart. Now this is an old old story but it actually has some truth to it because we know that there are other friends like this there is a sanctuary for elephants in Tennessee and there's a very famous elephant that made friends with the dog and until that dog died they were just like this so close and you know what when elephants get sad and they've lost something or they are hurt they're the only animal other than human beings that are known to cry. So that's the story about the two friends and I hope that you enjoyed it and we're going to sing you out with our next him. Number two four three like tears. 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 as it was. 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 and so he didn't 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 any room to do anyway. Not only was there an extra man and woman in the stable 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 the from careless hooves. No the ox thought looking back on the scene some years later it wasn't really 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 sheep dogs bossy things always ordering everyone about. You couldn't he admitted leave them out in the cold and they seemed so eager to see that baby. Their rough faces gentle with wonder as they gazed at the little boy. 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 way comfortable and unpretentious so it could have been worse. For instance there could have been kings rather like the ones who 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'd knocked over the mirror trying to avoid 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 like nothing he'd ever imagined safe in the stable at sundown. The air was cold and somehow thin as if it had been as if it had been 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 that sound 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 you too came out into the night. Could it be that even a simple beast fills as I do sometimes the splendor in there is more than I can stand. I find myself gazing at the child until time stands still caught in the beauty of that new life. Why is it that when I look at him 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 this simplicity and glory could be so strangely mixed? Did the singing that still filled him come out in the stars or from somewhere deep inside? Eventually the man and the ox turned and headed back towards the stable. The man laid down on the straw of the ox's bed and the ox snosed his 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 though it threw 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. Not yet, Trevor. Thank you, TK. The author of that story, Lynn Unger, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and a poet of some note as well as a storyteller. The second reading, A Man and His Dog, comes from Earl Hamner Jr. who was a script writer for the television series Twilight Zone and this is based on an episode that was aired 55 years ago. A man and his dog, they were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery when suddenly it occurred to him that he was dead. Now he remembered dying and that his faithful dog had been dead for many years. He wondered where the road was leading them and well after a while they came to a high white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like it was made of fine marble and as they reached the wall he saw this magnificent gate in an archway and the street that led from that gate was made of pure gold. So he and his dog walked toward the gate and as he got closer he saw a man sitting at a desk to one side. When he was close enough he called out, excuse me, where are we? Well this is heaven, sir, the man answered. Wow, you tell me. Well would you happen to have some water? We have traveled very far and we're thirsty. Well of course we have water sir, come right in and I'll have some ice water brought right up to you. The man waved his hand, the gate began to open. But can my friend, the man said, gesturing toward his dog, can can he come in too? Oh I'm sorry sir, we don't accept pets. The man thought for a long moment remembering all those years that his dog had remained loyal to him and so he turned back to the road and continued on the way that 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 never been closed. There was no fence and as he approached the gate he saw a man inside leaning against a tree and reading a book. Excuse me, he called to the reader. Do you have any water? We've traveled far. Oh sure, he said, there's a faucet over there and he pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. Just come on in and help yourself. Well what about my friend here? He said, gesturing to his dog. Well there should be a bowl next to the faucet. He's welcome to share. And so the two of them went through the gate and sure enough there was an old fastened faucet and a bowl sitting beside it. The traveler filled the bowl and then took a long drink himself. When they were both full he and the dog walked back to where the man was standing and waiting for them. So what do you call this place? The traveler asked. Oh, this is heaven. Now that's rather confusing. The man down the road said that that was heaven too. Oh you mean the place with all the gold streets and the pearly gates? No, that's hell. Well doesn't it make you mad for them to be using your name like that? Well no, I can see how you might think so but the truth be told it saves us a lot of time because they screen out all the people who are willing to leave their best friends behind. Thank you Trevor. Thank you Kristen. What a treat. That's glorious. As I suspect is true for some of you some of my earliest and most vivid memories are of times when I became aware of the other creatures that occupy this planet with us. Silvery minnows flashing in the stream that bisected our farm. Riggling snakes and scurrying field mice exposed when I would roll over a bale of hay in the pasture. Cats mewing for milk on the doorstep, hens scratching in our barnyard. The psychologist Mariana Radour 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 a century and a half ago near Portage, Wisconsin John Muir and his siblings seemed to feel much the same way witnessing the wholesale killing of passenger pigeons they exclaimed, oh what colors. Look at their breasts as bonny as roses, their necks a glow with every hue. It's awful like a sin to kill them, isn't it? Then responding with absolute certitude to his children's regret the elder Muir agreed that indeed these birds were quite bonny but he assured them they were made to be killed and sent for us, God's chosen people, to eat. John Muir would not however follow in his father's footsteps and as a young man recording what he experienced and what he witnessed on his thousand mile walk to the Gulf 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 one great unit of creation? They're all part of God's family, unfallen, undepraved, are cared for with the same species of tenderness and love as he bestows on the angels of heaven or the saints here on earth. Well in the modern world many still accept uncritically the soulless state of animals and they presume that we are authorized by God or accorded the right by virtue of our superior status to subdue the animal universe. Tetsuro Matusaki is an internationally celebrated scientist at the University of Kyoto's primary primary research institute and he finds this attitude rather troubling. He says, I really do not understand the need for us always to be superior in all domains or to be so separate, so unique from every other animal. Matsuzawa has ample reason for reaching that conclusion because not only apes but creatures as dissimilar as parrots, porpoises, elephants, dogs, and rats have demonstrated a capacity for communication, for learning, for problem solving, for empathy that few would have dreamed of even 50 years ago. As in so many other ways, Charles Darwin was ahead of his time insisting that dogs have the power to reason, to know what it feels like to love, to envy, to mourn, and even to experience the prick of conscience. And the evidence that Darwin offered for all of this was anecdotal. It was based on his observations of his own dogs and reports from other 19th century dog owners but modern research has proven much of what Darwin claimed to be correct. And one of the reasons that dogs in particular manifest so many of the 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 to a completely separate species acquiring new capabilities in tandem due to their close proximity to each other and their shared agendas. And because of this intimate relationship with humans, a dog's brain is now quite different from that of its wolf's ancestors and its emotional life varies accordingly. For instance, like small children, dogs experience separation anxiety when their owners are absent. We've probably, if we've been had dogs, we've seen this, we've witnessed this. And moreover, scientists say that a dog's vocalizations, the range and the tone of its barking, have developed in such ways as to enable them to communicate certain feeling states with to their human companions. And because they are so eager to please dogs pay close attention to and they readily pick up on signals from their owners so that one exceptional border collie responds appropriately to 300 different voice commands. Now for those of us who have had long-standing relationships with dogs and Trina and I have had two dogs over the course of 35 years, this sounds very familiar, but then what about some other animals that are not routinely a part of our domestic lives? Some of you may have heard about Alex. Alex was a famous African gray parrot and this parrot could carry on an unscripted conversation with his keepers and could also count objects accurately and controlled experiments showed that Alex could differentiate between the concepts of same, are two things thing the same, or are these two things different? And he understood the concepts of none or zero tasks that are considered to be cognitively very demanding. And some parrots are also able to grasp the purpose and the function of words using terms like hello or good night, not just imitatively, not just randomly, but in their proper context. Parrot says good night to you? Probably means hey good night. Other birds like scrub jays seem to possess what researchers call theory of mind. And that means that they are attuned or seem to be attuned to what another bird is actually thinking. So when a scrub jay becomes aware that another bird is watching them hiding a nut, they will return to that nut, that hiding place a bit later, retrieve the nut and move it to another location. Theory of mind. Another species, the Australian bower bird, is an artist. Male bower birds build these elaborate nests and they decorate them with all kinds of colorful objects. Why? Because this is the way that they attract female bower birds. And the females, for their part, are quite discriminating about which male they will choose to cohabitate with depending on the beauty of the nest. These are the first animal that we know of other than humans that seem to possess an artistic sensibility. Dolphins. They have the highest ratio of brain size to body mass in the animal kingdom and that includes human beings. And they too possess numerous remarkable traits. Dolphins are highly social. They have their own way of doing things, things that are not genetically inherited but are learned. Like humans, like elephants, like the great apes, dolphins are actually culture creators. And along with apes, elephants, and some species of birds, dolphins know how to use tools. They don't have hands, but they can use tools with their beaks. And in captivity, they quickly learn sign language. One particularly responsive dolphin, Akiyakami, became so proficient in sign language that she could respond to new commands the first time her trainer issued them. These were not trained behaviors, he reported. She had a deep understanding of the grammar of language. Other dolphins appear to possess what they call mirror neuron cells. Mirror neuron cells in the brain because they have this ability to mimic the behaviors of their trainers. For instance, if a human being bends backward and lifts one leg, the dolphin will turn on its back and lift its tail in the air, creating an analogy between those two appendages, its tail and the human leg. Among the great apes, orangutans are recognized as master escape artists, able to outwit zookeepers' best attempts to contain them. And chimpanzees, they not only use tools, chimpanzees have been known to modify an object so that it better serves its intended purpose. Now in an earlier era, toolmaking was believed to be a property that belonged exclusively to hominoids. It was our special mark of superiority, homo-faber, but that too is now questionable. Moreover, in certain respects, chimpanzees exhibit mental skills that are superior to our own. So when they are exposed to a random sequence of numbers displayed instantaneously on a touch screen, chimps are able to duplicate that random sequence with far greater accuracy than any human subject. Scientists attribute this to what the chimps have, which is flash memory, which is what we ourselves lack. So chimps are remarkable in their ability to remember, but can they really think? Jane Goodall, who became widely known for her decades of observation of chimpanzees in their natural habitat, Goodall witnessed several instances in which her subjects, the wild chimps, appeared to be acting deceitfully, trying to pull the wool over other members of their troop. And this requires a certain amount of thinking of calculation, but because her evidence for this was like Charles Darwin's anecdotal, most primatologists have never taken it seriously. Goodall says to say that the chimp was actually thinking about his actions is not scientifically permissible. The most one can say, she says, is that if that chimp were human, we would say that she was acting deceitfully. And to claim anything more for that chimp would make one guilty, of course, of anthropomorphizing. Now like humans, chimpanzees can be murderous. In the wild, troops actually make war on each other, but they also, like humans, exhibit empathy. They care for and they share with one another. Evidence, perhaps, of a rudimentary moral sense. And the same is true for elephants. Matriarchs, the acknowledged leaders of elephant bands, have been observed rescuing a calf from drowning in a deep pool. On another occasion, a wild elephant was observed bringing water to its dying companion. And elephants also, like humans, recognize their own dead and they will stop, they will become suddenly quiet when they encounter another elephant's corpse or its skeleton. And wet in pain, as I mentioned to the children, elephants have been known to shed tears. And more than that, neuroscientists have recently detected economo cells, economo cells in the brains of these elephants, also 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 they are connected, those spindly cells, they're connected to our own feelings of love, emotional suffering, and sociability. Other creatures have them as well. Now, although elephants and whales diverged from our branch of the evolutionary tree tens of millions of years ago, the developmental outcome with these various species was remarkably similar. This may be a cause for some puzzlement. And if it is, it's probably because we have misconstrued evolution. We are used to thinking of evolution as this straightforward progressive movement from lower to higher levels of sophistication. But as Virginia Morrill says, evolution is not linear. Evolution is divergent, which means that we all sit on these various limbs of a bushy tree. Each species, as evolved as the next, the anatomical differences largely the result of ecology and behavior. And thus, 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. What about certain other creatures that we routinely dismiss as inconsequential, lacking in those special qualities that we have identified in the so-called higher members of the animal kingdom? Well, some of those, too, have considerably more mental and emotional intelligence than we have traditionally given them credit for. So take rats. Well, I'll take rats. You don't have to take rats. When 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. Now her mattress was on the floor, and in the morning the rats would clamor up on the mattress and 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 have ever seen. They would clean themselves thoroughly after being handled by any curious stranger. Now, although they are routinely used and disposed of as research subjects, behavioral studies are now showing that rats have distinct personalities, that they, too, exhibit altruism, that they are self-aware, and that they make decisions based on what they know and what they don't know. A faculty that is called metacognition also thought to be exclusively human, but hey, I could have told you all of that 20 years ago. Controlled research has revealed some remarkable findings about other life forms as well, among ants. Ants, mind you. Scout ants teach younger ones how to navigate unfamiliar terrain. It's not instinctive. These younger scout ants have to be taught that skill. And East Asian archer fish, they are excellent marksmen. They can knock insects and small birds off of branches and right out of the air by releasing a powerful, precisely aimed stream of water. This is not a natural talent that they possess. Young fish increase their accuracy by watching their more accomplished elders. In order to do this, researcher Thomas Schlegel notes, they have to take on the viewpoint of the other fish. It wasn't long ago that one invited 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 baby monkeys, Harry Harlow, the late University of Wisconsin primatologist, Harlow made startling discoveries about the capabilities of his primate subjects. But fearing ridicule from his peers, Harlow withheld his findings about these primates for decades. And Harlow also worked extensively with a vilus zoo orangutan named Jigs. And Jigs made Harlow a believer in animal intelligence. Upon his passing, Harlow offered this compliment. Jigs, he said, died demonstrating a level of curiosity greater than that of many of our university's undergraduates. No offense, you undergraduates. So every time we come up with a quality or an attribute that seems to make Homo sapiens distinctly different or innately superior, a similar trait crops up in one animal or another. And yet attempts to establish some kind of clear demarcation between the human and the non-human world, these are ongoing. And most people still do find it difficult to surrender our human primacy. And yet in many respects, animal emotions, animal thought, animal perceptions resemble our own, as well as being fitted to that animal's own unique circumstances. And for this reason, the philosopher Peter Singer has offered an ethical dictum for our consideration as human beings. He says, it is wrong to sacrifice important interests of the animal in order to satisfy less important interests of our own. I'll let you ponder that. But given the manner that we have been gobbling up all of their real estate and disrupting their lives through climate change and raising them in confined animal feeding operations, a dictum such as Peter Singer's may strike us as inconvenient, hard to live up to, but it is worth thinking about further. So then what about heaven? What about the soul? Whatever the scientific evidence might suggest, there are still many who will turn to religion for their answer to the question about who is innately superior. And they will tell us, no dog is going to heaven. Now I am frankly agnostic with respect to both heaven and the soul, because there is so much disagreement about what they both signify. But I do appreciate the poet Mary Oliver's take on this matter. She says, I keep looking around me. One question leads to another. And 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? And 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 our understanding of what that word incarnation might mean? And were we to recognize animals also as children of God that as human beings, we ourselves might feel a lot less lonely. Blessed be and amen. And at this time, we welcome Kristin and Trevor back to the keyboard and the flute as we receive our offering this morning. Please be generous. An ancient book and there were no entries today, but just as a reminder, this book always sits right outside the center doors. And if there is someone in your life that you would like to remember, to commemorate, then we invite you to put an entry in our book. So we will turn right now directly to our closing hymn. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. We close with words from the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, 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 and amen.