Hey Dan

We are told you made men and women in your own image –
Thus we desire to create things ourselves.

We are also told you gave our species
Dominion over the Fish of the Sea,
The Birds of the Air, and the Cattle,
And Every Creeping Thing that creeps upon the earth.
(Since we are not told that you gave dominion over insects to chameleons or pangolins,
or dominion over fishes to the beavers,
We may presume this means something more than eating animals
or altering their environments to serve our needs.)

And we are told how you brought every animal to Adam
To see what he would call them –
A task far from over today.

And after we began to name them,
We learned their way, and painted their pictures on the walls of caves.
And we established flocks and herds.
And other animals became our trusted guards and beloved companions
or conveyed us from place to place.

And some we put in cages to stare at.
Cages and Aviaries
and Parks and Pools and Aquaria.
And as we gathered these animal together,
We asked questions,
and gained all sorts of knowledge
and we took delight in their beauty.

And so the people you made…
Made Zoos.

And God created Marvin Jones.

So that the knowledge we have gained should not be lost.
And that the men and women who did these things should not be forgotten.
And that Achievements and Ideas and Wisdom should be shared,
and known by many people.

So, Lord,
We thank you for this Life.
We thank you for Marvin’s Enthusiasm and Hard Work.
We thank you for his Generosity and his Friendship.

Lord,
We ask that you bless Marvin’s work,
The things he left us,
That this knowledge will spread,
And others will build from it.

And we ask you to bless the work we do,
That we will carry out that ancient Dominion
wisely and well.

And Lord,
We commend to you Marvin’s Spirit.

(We like to imagine he’s busy taking notes from some document –
Perhaps one in Greek,
That went up in smoke with the rest of the Library of Alexandria –
Maybe an invoice for delivery of Saiga Antelope from the Black Sea
To Ptolemy’s Menagerie FOB)

We ask, Lord,
If that is not so,
It’s only because it’ better than anything we can imagine.

In Your Name,
Our Creator and Redeemer,