Open Our Eyes – Mar. 20, 2023

“The very places Indiana bats trusted to preserve them betrayed them. Cool, dark, and humid, cave air not only holds bats in metabolic equipoise, it also invigorates a fungus new to North America. Brought from Europe on spelunkers’ gear, spores of the fungus multiplied rampantly in caves of northeastern states, then spread farther and faster […]

Going By Another Way

I’ve heard and read the story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus* so many times that the words slide past me without registering anything other than a slightly bored familiarity. T.S. Eliot’s poem, which once upon a time startled me with its immediacy and particularity of detail, has now become yet another expected, regular […]

The First Noel the Angel Did Say – Dec. 29, 2022

The first Noel the angel did say,Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;In fields where they lay keeping their sheep,On a cold winter’s night that was so deep. … They looked up and saw a starShining in the east, beyond them far,And to the earth it gave great light,And so it continued […]

Woodchuck Waits – Dec. 1, 2022

“Deep in his burrow he’s safe from other mouths. It’s his own hunger he has to escape. Winter has wiped bare his vegetarian table. He would starve if he stayed awake. Asleep—a sleep so deep his heart barely beats and his body cools to nearly the temperature of ice—he expends almost no energy. Only at […]