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.
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
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
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.
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
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
Is the eagle is still majestic, or are we over it? A refelction on ordinary majesty
Between sermons, I have been working on something.
I noticed her sometime last week — a mud cup pressed against the beam just above the lintel, and inside it, perfectly still, a swallow. Blending in. I stood there reverently, thankfully still. Meeting a new colleague.
Vestry Dinner Reflection Those four sycamores — two at the rectory, two at the church — have been standing on this ground longer than anyone gathered here tonight has been alive. They have watched rectors come and go, vestries form and dissolve, building campaigns succeed and fail. They host countless nests, in
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These fish return to the same shallows each spring. They fan circular nests in sand. One settles at the center of each, guards eggs. The whole edge becomes a nursery. I worried we had closed that bottom forever.
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Behind my office, four serviceberry trees hang heavy with fruit. Small berries, dark purple-black, sweet enough to draw blood. For four days, the trees become the center of everything.
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The bird was disoriented. Turns out he'd hit his head, we'd learn later. And from where he sat in the Pachysandra, two large mammals descending on him with barbecue gloves and towels probably did not read as rescue. He waddled away from us as quickly as a waterbird can on land.