Excerpt and Link for New Piece

I love that my essay, “A Shimmering Universe, Barely Seen,” has just been published online by Mockingbird. Here’s how it begins (with link to full piece toward the end).

Credit: SilverV via iStock

My daughter Bekah has a quirky and remarkable gift. Ever since she was a child, she’s had a knack for looking at a stand of clover and immediately — instantly— finding a four-leafed cluster. Over the years she’s plucked her finds and tucked them in her journal. She’s well into adulthood now, and on a recent spring day, strolling with her and her then-fiancé on a mountain road, we passed a clump in full display. This time she outdid herself: within seconds she had found two four-lobed clovers.

“How do you do that?” I asked. She smiled and shrugged. Once back at the cabin we looked up the probabilities on Google: Only one out of every 5,000 stems (or 10,000 according to another source) have the foursome.

Bekah gave me one of the two she had found and I taped the gift to a page in my own journal. Looking at the clover just now, I’m baffled again. Perhaps a brain scientist or ophthalmologist could theorize about pattern recognition. About how some people have sharpened perceptual abilities. How some of us don’t.

The biblical tradition cares deeply about sight — about not missing the glory in front of us. …

Full essay found here: https://mbird.com/theology/a-shimmering-universe-barely-seen/

Consider, perhaps, reading it, and if it strikes you, leaving a comment on the Mbird web site.!