Say Thank You, But To Whom?

Even atheists like a bit of a blessing on a solemn occasion. And those dreadful non-sectarian woolly humanist pseudoliturgical spasms are too ghastly for words. We want a bit of continuity, a bit of justification-through-history, and what better than this one:

Salue parens omnia rerum natura

That's how that old naturalist and Stoic Pliny the Elder ended his monumental Naturalis Historia (1st Century AD). Translation: "Hail mother of all things: Nature" and while we're fouling it up -- motherfuckers -- a nod of acknowledgment over the Christmas turkey wouldn't be out of place, just to remind us that we were all got here by the same inexorable logic, and could be got out again just as quickly...