A holy curiosity

Somewhere, and I can't find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?" If I did not know about the rotifers and paramecia, and all the bloom of plankton clogging the dying pond, fine; but since I've seen it I must somehow deal with it, take it into account. "Never lose a holy curiosity," Einstein said; and so, I left my microscope down from the shelf, spread a drop of duck pond on a glass slide, and try to look spring in the eye. [123]

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper Perennial, 1998. ISBN: 0060953020.