… increasing religious plurality in our congregations has brought in perspectives and practices from earth-based religions of many kinds, amplifying an understanding of humankind as one part of a great interconnected web of all existence and deepening our humility and reverence for the web of life.

“I believe that if, on every Sunday morning before going to church, we could be lifted to a mountain-peak and see a horizon line of six hundred miles enfolding the copious splendor of the light on such a varied expanse; or if we could look upon a square mile of flowers representing all the specie...

"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.

"All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural....