Crows found ways to adapt to our concrete forests but we have not yet found ways to make sure we are in balance with the rest of creation.

All organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air, and water... In the process, each organism changes everyone’s world.

Arm's length: What was once a defensive or suspicious expression has now become a gesture of care, an indication of love and protection.

Part of being in community is noticing what's needed. Part of being in community is doing what is necessary but unclaimed.

We light this chalice in honor of the animal realm, Furred and hoofed, two-legged, four-legged, many-legged, Fanged and clawed, gentle and fierce, wild and tame. May we remember that all animals are our relatives, Worthy of our care and respect.

In my chapel, redwing blackbird unravels her liquid song in the cattails.

If justice is to be realized, our voices must speak loudly—even boisterously—of love.

Surrender is the last thing, often the only thing, available. And so we give ourselves to it. We fear it is our end. Sometimes—with grace or luck—we find it is our liberation.

May we recognize and abandon the familiar attitudes and practices that do not serve the whole. We are who we are and we have the opportunity to be who we want to be, to create a new inheritance for the future....

Characters: Narrator, Very Important Person, Enemies (including Leader of the Enemies), Spider, and at least four Cave Rocks. Materials needed: Grey, silver, or white yarn Narrator: I’d like to share a story with you today – a story about a simple little spider who did an amazing thing. You’ll...

For the blessing of animal companions we give thanks. For the beautiful ones, those whose fur is silky and whose tails are long; whose feathers are brilliant or whose voices are splendid... we give thanks. For the frantic ones, the runts and the hungry, who run for a food bowl or a pat as though...

I am frequently astonished by monarch butterflies. Delicate beyond belief, they fly thousands of miles each year from all parts of the continent to settle in the forests of South America. To my delight, their migratory route takes them along a bridge near my home. A few days ago, I was driving on...

Great spirit of life, We pray today for our animal friends, Grateful for their companionship and devotion. By our kindness to them, May we be worthy of their love. We pray also for pets who are gone from us, But who brighten our days And who comforted us by night....

I understand history as possibility...that could also stop being a possibility. —Paulo Freire The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the rustling grass, where the bobwhite drums and the meadowlark's melody is vanishing. The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the dark forest...

(In the) Spirit of Love and Remembrance, we mourn and honor [pet's name]. In life he embodied: the one-ness of all living things. In death he bears witness: to love beyond the bounds of race, kin, or species. This is a love with which it is tasked upon us: to unite, heal, and consecrate. From the...

I remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when, once a week, my mother would don her shirtwaist, climb into the family car, and make her way to the A&P. How did she choose her groceries then? In our family, in New England and a long way from the fertile, productive valleys of California, proximity...

"Humans are part of the web of life. What we do to the planet, what we do to other species, and what we do to other people, we end up doing to ourselves."...

A person is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred, that of plants and animals as that of other men and women, and when one devotes oneself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

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...