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In recent years, a team of researchers has been studying the hunting practices of marine life in the Red Sea, the body of water between northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and of Exodus, water-parting fame.1
For years, there had been reports of large, multi-species group hunts in these waters, centered on octopi. And not just one octopus and one fish teaming up to hunt together, but an octopus with up to ten different species of fish, all hunting smaller fish together in a coordinated effort. Their observations suggest that, rather than operating within a strict hierarchy with the octopus leading the way, these creatures appear to share leadership over the course of the hunt.
“The fish explore the environment,” says Dr. Eduardo Sampaio, who headed the study. “They find the prey. And then the octopus chooses between the options that the fish give—and [the octopus] moves there, flushing out prey. Then the whole group moves with the octopus.”
The feeding seems to be first-come, first-served, but over the course of a hunt, everyone gets fed. And everyone seems to benefit. The octopus can find food it otherwise would not have seen, and the fish have access to food it could not reach.
“This type of very complex dynamics that we think only emerged in complex societies,” said Dr. Sampaio. “We can find this in the wild, even between animals that are not related.”
But of course, complex social dynamics include some conflict. The team noticed that there are occasionally fish, usually blacktip groupers, who are not involved in the hunt and tend to just hang around off to the side, watching until they see prey, then moving in to take some. But when they do, about half of the time, researchers observed the octopus punch these fish for their foul play. The octopus was also observed to punch other fish it deemed not pulling their own weight, or when the group was floating around for too long. “[T]his creates more movement in the group,” Sampaio says, “and then the octopus stops punching.”
And here, as an aside, while I will defer to the animal behavioral biologist, in learning about this I came across healthy debate over whether an octopus punches or kicks. I mean, are these eight arms or legs?
Says Trevor Wardill, a neuroethologist who studies cephalopods, “[This study] really opens the door to thinking about what other coordinated animal behaviors are out there that we may be missing.”2
Scene 2
In January of last year, researchers tracking the orca population in Puget Sound, just off British Columbia, observed a heartbreaking sight: a mother orca was seen carrying her baby calf, which had died just days after birth, slowly nudging it on top of her snout through the waters of the sound, not letting it sink to the bottom for 11 days. Tragically, this same mother whale, known as J35 or Tahlequah, had been seen doing the same thing some seven years earlier in 2018, when she carried another one of her calves who had died minutes after birth up and down the coast for 17 days, covering some 1,000 miles before finally accepting the loss, or simply running out of strength.
Her family group is part of the critically endangered Southern Resident Orca population, whose numbers have declined dramatically in recent years due to declines in salmon populations caused by overfishing and polluted waters. Nearly 70% of pregnancies in the Southern Resident Orca population fail, often due to nutritional stress on the mother.3 Orcas are known to be extremely sociable creatures, using vocal communication and even exhibiting emotions such as grief.
“Over the last few years, we [have realized] that we have the same neurotransmitters that they have,” said Joe Gaydos, a science director at the University of California, Davis. “We have the same hormones that they have. Why shouldn’t we also have the emotions that they have?”
Unable to forage for food lest the calf sink, the mother depended on her pod to bring nourishment to her over both journeys. Other members of the pod even took turns carrying the calf so she could rest. Her sister stayed especially close, right at her side for much of her journey, as she carried and nudged, diving down to retrieve it if it fell, all of them bearing this grief as long as they could.
Scene 3
I was in the backyard with the boys some years ago, when they were especially young, maybe 2, 4, and 6. We had the sprinkler out, one of those old-time, fan-shaped sprinklers that I purchased down at the hardware store not to water the grass, but precisely for days like this one, so they could run through it. And boy did they ever. We were out there for hours, with the three of them just running back and forth through the sprinkler, giggling like kids running through a sprinkler. And the mist was like crystals in the air, and the grass could not have been greener, and I’d been trying to move the sprinkler around so as not to completely destroy the grass—I am my father’s son. But it had begun to pool in some places, and I went to inspect the grass by the basketball goal, and as I got closer, I saw something wriggling in the mud, a big fat worm—a nightcrawler, having emerged from the primordial slop. And so I got down on my knees and held my hands out in something like eucharistic anticipation as I scooped it up with some of the mud. I called the boys over, and they came, hovering over me, and we all looked down and beheld this small, slippery thing, alive now between us, so hard to hold onto, not here for long. And there was also this worm.
Scene 4
Last summer, a team of scientists published research suggesting that the woody tissues within the trunk of a single tree can be home to a trillion cells of bacteria, fungi, and other microbial life. That’s trillion, with a ’t’.
“An individual tree is sort of a complex ecosystem in and of itself,” said the author of the study.They also learned that these complex microbiomes differ from one tree species to another. For example, “Sugar maples, known for producing maple syrup, had more sugar-eating bacteria, whereas others, like the oak trees used for wine barrels, harbored a microbial group known to aid fermentation. Such examples demonstrate how tree microbes affect ‘our everyday lives in sort of unexpected ways,’ said Wyatt Arnold, a microbial ecologist and an author on the study.”
The research underscores the complexity and diversity of the broader forest, of which the tree is but one small part. Said one scientist involved in the study, “What looks like one thing is a trillion-in-one organisms living together.”
Forget being able to see the forest for the trees. From this view, the question is, where does the tree end, and the forest begin?
Scene 5
Perhaps you were like me and were completely taken for a few days earlier this spring by the Artemis II mission to travel the furthest any humans have gone away from Earth, to the far side of the moon and back—and learned, like me, that we are to call it the “far side” and not the “dark side” of the moon, for it is only dark to us on earth, but has light from the sun shine upon it regularly. A small thing, of course, but isn’t one of the great gifts of space travel the way it changes our perspective in large and small ways?
Another gift of space travel is simply watching human excellence in awe-inspiring action. To be reminded of the years of coordinated efforts between hundreds, if not thousands of people, all working toward one goal, that even today in 2026 still seems outrageous and hard to fathom—to hurl a group of four people that far into space and back again.
And the astronauts themselves could not have been more perfect ambassadors for the project and its aim, and, really, the wonder of humanity. They seemed to embody who we are at our absolute best—brilliant, thoughtful, articulate, incredibly brave. They brought in cultural leaders from around the world to talk to them about the significance of the moon in their context. “We wanted to know how everyone sees the moon,” said Reid Wiseman, captain of the mission. “We all look at the moon every single night, so what does it mean? What does it mean to someone in Ghana, or Spain, or Australia? We need to feel those things when we’re up there.”5
I was also struck that this mission took place in this season in which we’ve been confronted with the reality of artificial intelligence, which is raising questions about our consciousness and humanity, and what human life will look like in the future. Maybe even what human life is for? But watching those five astronauts floating out there, and seeing their warmth and humor and humility and vulnerability—the jar of Nutella floating past the camera, troubleshooting a malfunctioning toilet—isn’t that why it touched us? That it was human eyes seeing it? A human voice telling us about it?6
Perhaps the most moving part of the mission came when the crew radioed down to dedicate two unnamed lunar craters. One, “Integrity,” after their ship, and the other, “Carroll,” after Reid Wiseman’s wife, Carroll, who had died from cancer in 2020.
“A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one,” said Jeremy Hansen, the mission specialist, over the radio to mission control, “her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie…It’s a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it ‘Carroll.”
The astronauts floated toward each other and embraced for a hug while mission control kept nearly a minute of silence before finally responding. “Integrity and Carroll crater, loud and clear. Thank you.”7
****
Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in our year devoted not to an event or story but to a teaching and idea: the doctrine of the Trinity, which says that God is both one and three. Which is famously arcane and confusing, but it is the way the church has, through her history, tried to hold fast to the much more profound truth that relationship is at the heart of human life, and all life, and all creation, and so relationship must be at the heart of God. God is “one,” we say, and yet God is also “with.” And the interplay of these two—one and with—is the mystery of divine life, and all life.
Which helps explain why the lectionary for this Sunday offers us scriptures on the mystery of creation and our role in it. First, the creation story in Genesis 1, which is really a poem, a song, describing a kind of cosmic dance, as God speaks order into the chaos, everything connected, everything playing its part, everything holy.
And then the psalmist sings in wonder and terror, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established—what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
What are human beings who could bring Nutella to the far side of the moon, along with their heartbreak, their friendship, their hope?
Even in our Gospel lesson, which we know as the Great Commission, isn’t Christ sending the apostles out to go and learn the world? Go and discover the gift of your neighbor and the incredible texture of human life? And in your seeing, open your own eyes as well as theirs to the Kingdom of God that is already alive within it?
Our faith teaches us it is only the imagination of a wild God who could make these things possible. Punching octopi, grieving whales, tree trunks containing tiny forests unto themselves. All of it tangled up with these human lives we lead and cannot help but share, slippery and fleeting as they are.
A God who created all things and called it good, over and over again—a blessing that, for all our trying, we could never hope to wipe away. A God who invites us to accept our place in this wondrous story of life, often beautiful and often tragic. But underneath, hidden from us most of the time, surfacing after a hard rain or a moment of unguarded joy, revealed to be altogether holy.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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1Ari Daniel, “Octopuses and fish share leadership — and enforcement — in group hunting,” NPR, Sept 23, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5120912/octopuses-and-fish-hunt-enforce
2“Some Octopuses Treat Fish Like Hunting Buddies, Science. org, https://www.science.org/content/article/some-octopuses-treat-fish-hunting-buddies
3Julie Cappiello, “Tour of Grief” Orca Seen Carrying Second Dead Calf for Over 11 Days,” World Animal Protection, Jan 23, 2025, https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/tour-of-grief-orca-seen-carrying-second-dead-calf-for-over-11-days/
4Alexa Robels-Gil, “In Every Tree, a Trillion Tiny Lives, New York Times, Aug 27, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/science/biology-trees-microbiomes.html
5David Brown interview with Reid Wiseman,, “The Leader of NASA’s Artemis II Mission Is Still Moonstruck,” The New Yorker, May 24, 2026, https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/the-leader-of-nasas-artemis-ii-mission-is-still-moonstruck
6Special thanks to dear friend Jenny Sherourse, for this observation!
7Rachel Treisman, “Astronauts suggest naming a moon crater ‘Carroll’ after their commander’s late wife,” April 7, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/04/07/nx-s1-5776440/artemis-moon-crater-carroll-wiseman