The truth is that we share this planet with all sorts of sentient beings. And who is to say that the things we consider insentient indeed are so? Our job, quite simply, whether homo sapiens, ursus maritimus, salvia rosmarinus, pegmatite, or canis lupus familiaris, is to live fully, to get along, and to reflect the glory of the one who made us.

As human beings, we like to think ourselves masters of the universe, which is a laughable and ludicrous notion. It takes all we can muster just to hang on for a few brief moments in time. We do better to think ourselves as servants of the small slice of this wide and exuberant and inscrutable world to which we are granted access.

A servant seeks to serve: to enrich, improve, embellish, enable the quality of being for the one served. A servant acts with due caution, with careful consideration, with constant vigilance, with a gentle and measured touch. A servant is happy when the one served is happy.

This is a happy world if we will see it a it is, if we open eyes and ears and fingers to its wonders, if we let it be what it is rather than subverting its dignity to feed our own lust and greed. Look, listen, touch, breathe. Bury your nose in the luxurious grey fur of your Aussie. Stroke the tufts of hair behind her ears and listen to her pleading yelps. Watch her run with utter abandon, flinging herself atop a head-high mound of snow only to press her muzzle deep into its cold and grainy recesses.

Try to experience the world through her eyes and ears and nose and mouth and body: instantly attentive to the sudden call of a crow hundreds of yards away: plunging eagerly into the frigid waters of a spring freshet; drawn with insatiable curiosity to the humanly-undetected scent of a decaying porcupine; standing still, nose in the air, drinking in all the marvels borne on the back of the early spring breeze; grabbing up a branch much too big to handle — but who cares! — running with it, dancing with it, leaping with it, for no purpose other than sheer joy; jumping and barking and turning circles for no other reason than than the one you love, the one who loves you, has come home again.

Dare we say her life is enriched by our love as ours are by hers? Dare we say a vernal pool or pileated woodpecker or quaking aspen or tallgrass prairie or glacial erractic is enriched by our care and attention and appreciation and respect as we are by theirs? We are blessed with them and they with us. And that is what we must remember.

“Our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom — and is far more vibrant, far more holy, than we could ever imagine.” (Sy Montgomery)