Bunny's Burrow: Hopping into Life

 Losing a friend has a way of making you stop and ask questions you didn't know you needed to ask. Not because every ending is someone's fault, but because every relationship leaves something to learn from. I've been doing a lot of thinking about who I am, how I communicate, and where I can grow. It's easy to point outward when we're hurting; it's much harder and often more worthwhile to look inward. I don't want this experience to make me bitter. I want it to make me kinder, wiser, and more intentional with the people who are still in my life. Sometimes the hardest lessons come wrapped in goodbye, and all we can do is thank them for what they taught us and keep becoming a better version of ourselves. ❤️

  The People Who Quietly Hold the Sky Up Some people make history by stepping onto the biggest stage. Others make it possible for someone else to stand there. I've been thinking lately about the second kind of person. It's easy to celebrate astronauts, elected officials, military leaders, or anyone whose work is visible. Their accomplishments deserve recognition. We should applaud excellence wherever we find it. But behind many remarkable lives is someone doing an entirely different kind of remarkable work. Someone keeping a family together. Someone carrying the emotional weight no one else sees. Someone remembering birthdays, making difficult phone calls, checking in on friends, welcoming strangers, comforting children, and somehow finding enough energy to encourage everyone around them. Gabby Giffords is one of those people. Most know her story. They know the unimaginable challenges she has endured. They know the courage it took to rebuild a life after violence tried to steal...

  This morning began with the usual start of the day negotiations. Coffee convinced the kettle to do its job. Outlook remained unconvinced I was, in fact, myself. Again. I remain convinced Outlook and I are in a long-term relationship built entirely on mutual distrust. Allegedly.... 😂 I settled into work, opened the programs I'd need for the day, and, as usually happens, my mind wandered off before the rest of me had quite logged in. I genuinely enjoy my job. After some of the twists life has thrown at me, that's something I don't take for granted. Still, every now and then I'll stop halfway through an email and wonder what the kids are doing. Who's making everyone laugh? Who's discovered the greatest idea in recorded history? Who's quietly helping themselves to the snack cupboard while hoping nobody notices? (Bet it's Cade for the last one) Children have an infuriating habit of making complicated things wonderfully simple. I've never heard one intr...

  Enlil, Enki, and Nisaba as a Functional Triad in Mesopotamian Thought The ancient Mesopotamian flood stories... the Eridu Genesis , the Atrahasis Epic , and Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh are usually reduced to a single dramatic sentence: humanity multiplied, grew too noisy, irritated the gods, and provoked a deluge. That summary is accurate as far as it goes; it simply stops too soon. What if the flood is not merely a tale of divine anger? What if it also preserves a deeper vision of how Mesopotamians understood civilization itself to function? Let's slow down. Ancient religions are often read as collections of colorful divine personalities engaged in rivalries, negotiations, and occasional acts of astonishing pettiness. The myths certainly preserve those personalities. Yet beneath them lies something remarkably systematic. Again and again, the same gods occupy complementary roles in maintaining cosmic and social order. Ancient myths rarely function as systematic theology in...

 God's Name Was Never Just a Name Why ancient Israel heard something very different when God spoke of His Name "Sometimes the smallest words carry the biggest ideas." Put the Kettle On... There are verses you can read a hundred times before one ordinary word suddenly refuses to behave. Mine was name. Not because I didn't know what a name was. Because I assumed the Bible meant the same thing I mean when I say, "Hi, my name is Bunny." It doesn't. At least... Not always. The deeper I wandered into the Hebrew Bible, the stranger that little word became. God keeps saying His Name is somewhere. His Name dwells in the Temple. His Name is placed upon Israel. Jerusalem bears His Name. Eventually, even the nations are described as being called by His Name. That's... odd. Because the very same Scriptures insist that heaven itself cannot contain God, much less a building made of cedar and stone. So what exactly is His Name doing there? Now I'm curious. We Re...

Letters from My Desk: What the Silence Taught Me July 10, 2026 Привет, dear readers. I am Bunny (not the name my parents gave me.) I come from the frozen beauty of Yakutia, in the Sakha Republic . I live in the United States now, but some places never leave your nervous system. People often imagine silence as emptiness, but Yakutia teaches something different. Silence is full of life. Stand outside on a winter night long enough, and you begin hearing things you never noticed before: the distant crack of trees as the cold tightens its grip, the soft scrape of snow beneath your boots, a raven somewhere beyond the forest. Silence doesn't erase the world; it sharpens it. I didn't understand that lesson until years later. One evening I found myself sitting alone in a room so quiet that the refrigerator sounded almost impolite. Family conversations had slowly become holiday emojis. Friendships hadn't ended with arguments or betrayal; they had simply drifted, as so many relations...