The more I prepare issues for The Behemoth, the more I’m impressed with the ordinary. I’ve said it before (probably too many times), but it’s in the ordinary that we can find the presence, grace, and handiwork of God. We started The Behemoth to help us all see God in the spectacular. What I didn’t anticipate is how often the spectacular is as close as a turn of the head.
Take water. I’m not going to spoil the piece, other than to say this: One of the most common substances on Earth behaves in the strangest of ways.
Then there’s the article that reminds us of a long-standing truth celebrated by a large number of Christian traditions: The Almighty is found not so much in miracles as in human speech, a bath, and a meal.
This issue’s poem, by the well-known writer and farmer Wendell Berry, uses simple and evocative language to help us be attentive to the grace all around us.
But we did want to mix it up a bit: check out the article on distances in space. There’s nothing ordinary about the mind-boggling distances between us and everything else in the universe.
Yet one takes comfort in knowing that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.
—Mark Galli, co-editor
