Tip if you are video recording this story: you can have a clip of an adult stretching out their arm in one direction, then another clip of a different adult stretching out their arm in the other direction, so that when you edit it, it looks like they are stretching towards each other. It would be...

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

Leader: Ours is a world alive and aloud with the presence of creatures and critters. Animals abound, interwoven in our human lives and wholly independent. This is the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part....

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...

Leader: For the love of all began with the world. Congregation: All of Nature is sacred. L: Every creature is a thinking, feeling being. C: We are blessed with wondrous variety. L: We are part of nature and of every being on the planet. What we do to one affects the many. C: In this web of...

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...

...Our spiritual connection to the food we eat has...been harmed by a modern culture in which over-processed foods are so ubiquitous that we have ceased to think about foods in their whole forms any more. ...Michael Pollan writes, “Try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother...

I grew up on my family farm in the southern part of Illinois. There was nothing about it that was a golden age. And I’m NOT nostalgic about the good old days. I don’t like carrying water from the well out back. I don’t like going to an outhouse at 4 a.m. in the snow. I don’t like the wasps...

...For the affluent, sitting down to a dinner derived from perhaps twenty-five different food sources is taken for granted...Filling the plate and eating and drinking to fullness is a social event, an opportunity to admire the art before you, to pay your respects by consuming it....

...[H]ow we eat is not an isolated issue. While we would like to think, and often do think, with our independent human personalities, that what we eat is our own business, the truth is that what I eat, what you eat, has further reaching consequences than merely staying alive and being healthy. In...

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...

"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."...

Minister: Surrounded by the animals we love, we remember with gratitude the pets, protectors, and animal companions who have blessed our lives. People: We give thanks for our childhood pets, who taught us to love and to cry. We give thanks for our children's pets, who help us to teach them...