Nothing But Mystery Below It
Filamentous strands are thickening near the spillway, and the round dot colonies, nitella, are spreading across the shallows...
Gideon L. K. Pollach
The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach is the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, where he has been asking what the pond has to teach since before he knew he was asking.
Turning Over
Some clarity only comes after everything gets stirred up first. Before it can settle, it has to churn. That's simply what happens every year around this time in a pond, and apparently in a life. St. John's Pond has gone through its turnover, right on schedule.
Neither Stopped to Explain
The finches never asked permission. They arrived on the porch in Dublin in June, built a nest over the one door we never use, and raised their young in full view of our living room window without so much as a nod in our direction. We did not invite them.
So Many Minnows
Dublin, NH Stand still in the shallows at Dublin long enough and they find your feet. Minnows, a dozen, then more, nosing at your ankles and toes in what my family has come to call, with more affection than accuracy, a pedicure. Pescatory pedicures. And this year they were more
The One Smoke
I do not know which kind of sky this is, and I will not pretend to. .. And this sky, whatever else it is, has not stopped speaking. It is still asking something of us.
The Coyote Was Never Real
Dublin, NH We made it through the heat wave here in Dublin, and the morning air finally has that washed, blessed feeling to it. Cooler, quieter, though a persistent rain has been dampening both plans and spirits since yesterday. Nobody minds saying so out loud. After days that pressed down
Between Sermons IV:
Part Four: The Work That Remains The snapping turtles come out of the pond in early summer. They come out with mud still caked on their backs. Prehistoric, unhurried, unbothered by the churchyard they are crossing. They have been crossing ground like this since before there were mammals to disturb
Between Sermons III
What the Water Carries We have been saying this longer than we knew. At every font, every Ash Wednesday, every altar, every graveside: the church has been enacting a theology it has not always been able to name. The practice has been more honest than the explanation that accompanied it.
Between Sermons II
The Assembly We tend to think of worship as something humans do. We gather. We sing. We pray. We listen. The building holds us, the liturgy shapes us, and what happens in that hour on Sunday morning is, we assume, the point. The rest of the week is what we
Dublin Lake: The Eagle's Ordinary Majesty
I stood on the beach yesterday at Dublin Lake with the kind of perfect summer light you don't get to keep for long. The breeze was coming off the water, warm and steady, the sky that particular shade of blue that only New England seems to know how
Sunday Reflection
Sunday Reflections & BlueGreen Theology
Is the eagle is still majestic, or are we over it? A refelction on ordinary majesty
Between Sermons
Between sermons, I have been working on something.