Cosmology

The intimate bond: humans and dirt

Astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said, “If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Every subatomic particle in an apple pie appeared in the first second after the universe expanded into being 13.7 billion years ago. He could have said the same of mud pies, though it wouldn’t have …

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Laudato si: wonder and care

Laudato si — Praise be! — are the opening words of each of the verses in Saint Francis’s beautiful Canticle to the Sun, and is also the title of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical defining the Catholic Church’s doctrines on the care of the earth. A couple of weeks ago, I found out from a blogger …

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Eostre and the universe story

Humans are story making animals. We have a story for everything, and many, many stories for the same things, depending on where and with whom we found ourselves when we arrived in this life. Our tales explain where we came from, how we got here, why we’re here at all, how to behave now that …

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Transcendence on the headlands

One of the most transcendent moments of my life happened on the Marin headlands, within view of the glittering city of San Francisco and the elegant curve of the Golden Gate bridge. It was March 9, 2014, and the wildflower season had started. I had been hiking and photographing them for three hours, working my …

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Samhain in New Jersey

I didn’t know I was going to a place I love in New Jersey until two weeks before I went, and had no idea I’d be celebrating Samhain there. But it’s the sort of place where that happens, so I might have guessed. Miriam McGillis is a friend, mentor, teacher. She started Genesis Farm, an …

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The Place Where You Go to Listen

At some point in the recent past I realized that daylight has a different sound than night does. Not the usual distinctions, like birdsong, crickets, traffic. When the sun rises, I hear a difference in the world, a tone — very, very subtle — with more vibrance in sunlight than the velvety sound of night. …

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A land of stone tablets

I’m still wandering the Utah desert with Moses. He’d be very used to this, but, though I love it, I’m positive I’d find forty years a few decades too many. Well, of course, he would say, with the air of a man who has come to grips with doing what his god says, no matter …

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Mysteries at my feet

The lines showed up one morning, on a section of my walk where the sand, driven over by a tractor, is unusually soft and shows an imprint easily. Lizard tails, I thought. I checked carefully for any sign of tiny lizard feet but didn’t see any indentations along the lines. About a mile on, they …

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