Sunday Reflections: BlueGreen Meditations from St. John's, Cold Spring Harbor

Mary Oliver once asked whether the sunflowers blazing in summer heat might already know something about prayer that we're still trying to figure out. She had a name for the alternative — walking through the world in full self-attendance — and she said she couldn't really call it being alive. This week, before our summer pause, we're sitting with her question and the one the pond has been asking al...

Something has been digging at the pond's edge in the night. This is the week of the longest light — and the most important thing happening at the pond is happening in the dark. This week's reflection is about turtles, fear, and trusting work we never get to watch.

Last year, we rebuilt the pond's edge. The bluegill used to nest there. I worried we had closed that bottom to them for good. This week I found out we had not. A reflection on the ground that holds us, even when we can't see it.

Behind the office, the serviceberry trees are ripening. What happens next is one of the most extraordinary things we witness all year. I shouldn't tell you. But I must.

A double-crested cormorant crash-landed in the Pachysandra outside St. John's Church this week. A rector, a Boy Scout, barbecue gloves, and lab goggles were not enough. This is a Pentecost story about the one who comes alongside — and what it looks like when help actually arrives.

A mid-week postcard from the rectory: on pinching back peony buds, on a New Hampshire congregation that knows how to live in summer, and on the difference between fewer flowers and more flower.

The iris didn't know it crossed state lines. It only knew there was ground here, and light, and that was sufficient. A reflection for the Sunday after Ascension — on division, multiplication, and how good news travels.17

An oriole returns to the same pine tree. An eel climbs rock to reach the water it was born for. A tern crosses seventy thousand miles to the same spot. This week: what the creatures call fidelity, and what we can learn from keeping our own appointments.

We planted three hundred tulips last fall. The deer took most of them. The ten that survived are showing off. A reflection on guardrails, the long middle of the school year, and what abundance looks like when nobody is keeping score.

A Canada goose has claimed the path between the rectory and the church — and he is not moving. A reflection on Good Shepherd Sunday, Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," and what it means to hold your ground when it matters. Listen to Mary Oliver read Wild Geese here.

The spillway lost a weir board. The pond didn't mind. A lesson about kenosis, the baymen of Cold Spring Harbor, and what abundance sounds like when nothing is holding it back.

A vacation on the Pamunkey River raises an ancient question: who are your waters? And a second look at Thomas reminds us that doubt is not a failure — it's just a place.

The Ospey know. The Blackbirds know. The pond has been teaching us for weeks. Easter is here.

In this Bonus Holy Week episode, Gideon reads his letter to a 17th-century monk, Brother Lawrence. This episode is a Holy Week companion inviting you, dear listener, to practice the practice of the presence of God in this Holy Week. It's a little longer, but hopefully, worth it. To read the letter go here: A Letter to Brother Lawrence.

The spring peepers appeared at St. John's Pond this week — small exaltations rising from the water's edge, singing something they cannot name. This Palm Sunday, we listen for what they're declaring, and follow two ancient processions into Jerusalem.

The ice is finally gone, and the first full week of open water at St. John's Pond has arrived. But something is already unsettling about it. The male swan is patrolling — and what he's doing is, in its way, both completely natural and hard to watch. This week's Lent 5 reflection: a meditation on love, nature, and casual cruelty — and the question the pond is asking one week before Palm Sunday.

What does fearlessness look like? Not courage in the face of danger — something quieter than that. This week, a swan at St. John's Pond showed us. This episode has been republished due to a corrupted audio file.

A brief interaction with a grackle.

I've been wearing more sweaters this winter, and not because I'm cold. Then the snow came, and the mud came through it anyway. It turns out Lent and our boots have something in common.

Mid-winter break scatters us across the map, and Lent begins with a story about being sent somewhere you didn't choose. Back at the pond, the cold springs never froze — and the thaw is spreading from them.

Three days before Ash Wednesday, the freeze is breaking and a volunteer is counting muskrats in the mud. What if "remember you are dust" isn't a verdict but a homecoming?

While the rest of us watched the Super Bowl, the owls of Cold Spring Harbor were doing what they've always done — calling to each other through the dark. A bonus reflection on prayer, silence, and the voices that find us in winter.

The forecast promises more snow and bitter cold—the kind that makes you want to stay inside until spring. But St. John's Pond, buried under ice and snow, teaches a different way: not avoiding winter or pretending it's spring, but meeting it honestly while trusting something is working beneath the surface we cannot see.

Learning to embrace the cold, quiet, grace of a snowstorm.

A reflection on the abundance of life we cannot see.