I need your help. No, I am not stranded in some far-off place where I have lost my wallet and cell phone. It is much more serious than that. If you believe there is something special about us as a species, something that sets ours above all others, I need you to help me see what it is.

A dogwood tree sets me on this quest. A still and silent beauty, it stands just outside the kitchen window, now — all of a sudden, it seems — a deep, dark yet vivid red where green had just been. How are we the masters of this? We and it share the same seven characteristeristics common to most life. We share some DNA. It and I sometimes even share the task of feeding Ogden, a squirrel who is content to munch on what the tree provides when I am not at the ready with the raw almonds he prefers. What I don’t have in common with the tree (or any other living thing) is this: I never will stop people in their tracks and cause them to have to catch their breath because of any beauty beheld.

And, oh, what it will do next. In a few months, it will stand starkly bare but still beautiful in the gray, winter’s light, and will cause me to worry that a particular limb might succumb with the arrival of a wet, heavy snow. Soon enough, once again, I will look up and be startled by the appearance of pale green of buds, I will stare as if spellbound at a profusion of pink blossoms.

So, without having concluded there is an answer, without having established a belief in the validity of the question, I ask “What sets us apart?” Is it our ability to conceptualize, to conceive of such an idea as beauty and to recognize it in the world? I often have wondered if this might be it, but I am not prepared to deny a dolphin’s ability to think. As for an appreciation of beauty, how am I to look at the nests of bowerbirds and believe only base instinct causes them to create such works of art?

Some spiritual traditions take for granted there is no difference between you and an amoeba. Others, such as the Judeo-Christian tradition, places us way above single-celled life, just below God but in His image — as distinct from the rest of Creation. I was reminded of this today in a column discussing a book by historian Timothy Snyder, who writes that Adolf Hitler considered the idea that humans “were above other animals, and had the capacity to decide their future for themselves” to be a poisonous one propogated by Jews. It was at odds with his belief that “the law of the jungle was the only law.” One need not agree with the Führer‘s hateful rhetoric, or believe in a kill-or-be-killed state of existence, to question the belief in human superiority. Hitler believed one’s race was paramount, not one’s humanity.

Some of you have deeply-held beliefs on the subject. Others have interesting and provocative theories. Help a brother out; share your thoughts on what makes us greater than — or the same as — the rest of Creation. My interest is genuine. In the meantime, I will look out of the kitchen window at the red-for-now beauty, remember poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer’s much maligned and parodied work, and think “What the poet wrote a hundred years ago is true. I will never see a poem as lovely as you.”