Among The Behemoth’s many goals, we work hard to be a respite. Sure, we want to remind you that the world is a bigger and better place than your social media feed suggests. Yes, we want to show you that God is a bigger and better God than you imagine or fear. We want to prompt awe and wonder, and to share a bunch of cool science, history, and other stuff. But we also want to be a kind of Sabbath magazine, a place of holy rest. Somewhere you can talk about God and science without arguing about origins all the time. Somewhere you can talk about the trees of the field and the birds of the air without a lot of anxiety about environmental degradation or harangues about creation care.
It’s not that we don’t care about how God made the world or how we can best take care of it. We do! But there’s already so many places to talk about those things, and few publications or websites that try to behold tranquilly. As I write this, political conventions are sharing headlines with a nationwide heat dome. We thought we’d try to cool things off with some dispatches from Antarctica and Alaska—which turned out to be some of the best pieces The Behemoth has ever published. That’s not to say we have no interest in current affairs—we’ll be watching the Olympics this weekend, too, and we’ll watch with even more wonder after reading Lindsay Stokes’s piece on running. (Her previous pieces on how the heart works are relevant reading, too!) Finally, Traer Scott’s photography of wild animal babies has a certain currency of its own—her book came out this week. No matter how hot things get, we’re always happy to have our hearts warmed a little more by some cute newborns.
