True poverty, the poverty of the spirit, is the realization that there is no intrinsic reason for one’s being at all. In this fundamental poverty of creatureliness, there is equality. The human person has no more claim to intrinsic being than a plant or animal, a star or a stone.

Rev. Michael J. Himes & Kenneth R. Himes
“The Sacrament of Creation: Toward an Environmental Theology”
Commonweal, January 26, 1990