Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night

by Barbara Brown Taylor

As anyone who ever took a biology class knows, human beings are diurnal creatures with eyes adapted to light. When we go out at night, we need light to see. Many of the creatures we glimpse in the beams of our headlights or flashlights are nocturnal creatures, with eyes adapted to darkness. They need very little light to see. For these reasons and more, it is we and not they who have bent the physical world to meet our particular needs. We are the human engineers who have filled the night with light so that our eyes work no matter what time it is. Where I live, the worst thing a new neighbor can do is move in and install a new security light that douses the stars for the rest of us.