Johnny Thulin

There’s a strange and slightly bothersome truth about stargazing that I’ve never quite gotten over. On a clear night, when the sky is dark enough and your eyes have finally adjusted, you can see galaxies and clusters that are unimaginably distant, but only if you don’t look directly at them. Stare straight at the faint smudge of a distant cluster, and it disappears. Look slightly to the side, and suddenly it’s there again, shimmering at the edge of your vision. Astronomers call this averted...

Long-eared Jerboa (Public Domain plate). Source: Wikimedia Commons The Strange Little Creature and a Deeper Thirst The other evening, while watching a nature documentary, one of the strangest creatures I have ever seen came bouncing across the screen: the Gobi Jerboa. With oversized ears, huge hind legs like a miniature kangaroo, and a tiny body, my very first reaction: I’ll admit-was to recoil just a bit. It looked like a creature made entirely of spare parts. Then, I watched it in action....

I wasn’t planning to be in Cleveland that night. Work had brought me there: one of those unexpected trips that come with the life I live, where pastoring and the trades overlap more often than people realize. I finished the day late, grabbed a quick dinner, and found myself wide awake near midnight in a hotel far from home. It was raining. The kind of rain that hushes a city and makes everything feel softer than it should. I took the elevator to the top floor and walked down a long hallway to...