A Diogenes for school children

A pill bug meandering around the driveway one fine fall day,

Kids are surrounded by Alexanders, urging them to be leaders, to strive for career success, to do *something* with their lives.

Every child needs a Diogenes to remind her to seek what matters.

A science teacher, if teaching science, is as close to Diogenes as a child may get.

Another Christmas story

Less than a mile away, in the dim light cast by the plant lights in our classroom, a pill bug wanders around the compost. It moistens it gills, bumbles into a fellow pill bug, exchanges greetings with a brief twitching of touching antennae, then ambles over to nibble on a piece of potato.

It knows of existence, and the existence of others like it.

A North Cape May pill bug, wandering around, doing pill bug things….

Christmas means nothing, of course, to a critter no bigger than a wheat berry.

But living does.

The light is returning.

Amen.

There is joy and wisdom in silence and darkness. Merry Christmas!