Meditation for Summer Service of 22 August 2004 Please join now in a spirit of meditation. This is a poem by Mary Oliver. _Buck Moon -- From the Field Guide to the Insects_ Eighty-eight thousand six-hundred different species in North America. In the trees, the grasses around us. Maybe more, maybe several million on each acre of Earth. This one as well as any other. Where you are standing at dusk. Where the moon appears to be climbing the eastern sky. Where the wind seems to be traveling through the trees, and the frogs are content in their black ponds or else why do they sing? Where you feel a power that is not you but flows into you like a river. Where you lie down and breathe the sweet honey of the grass and count the stars; where you fall asleep listening to the simple chords repeated, repeated. Where, resting, you feel the perfection, the rising, the happiness of their dark wings. We'll be silent for a moment.