In his autobiography, Theodore Parker relates that as a child, four or five years old, living on a farm in Roxbury, he was walking through the fields one day absent-mindedly swinging a stick through the tall grass. This was many years ago, in the days before the Civil War. It was summertime. He...

Dear God, hear and bless Your beasts and singing birds; And guard with tenderness Small things that have no words...

A meat eater comes up to a vegan: “Did you hear about the new study saying vegans are more likely to go blind? I guess it’s because you don’t get the proper nutrition.” The vegan replied, “Nah, it’s just from reading all of those tiny ingredient lists.” Vegans (vegetarians who don’t...

We light this chalice, spark of the original fire of creation, to remind us that we all on this planet—the furred, the feathered, the finned, and the scaled, along with us featherless bipeds—we are all made of the same star-stuff and all share a common destiny. We all share the same hopes of a...

Whitman Jones had just turned nine. That was good. But he was going to a new school in a new town, and that was bad. In his old school he knew everyon—they had been in classes with him for years. In this new school he didn’t know one single person. Not only that, the first day didn’t go well...