AT THE CHURCH O’ THE PINES this morning, silence and peace-and-quiet are not the order of the day. Rather, many joyful spring hymns are being sung and there is much welcoming back of friends and relatives who traveled south for the winter months. A rambunctious ruby crowned kinglet sings from the pines and balsam firs by the riverbank. Our little
AT THE CHURCH O’ THE PINES on this Sunday morn the congregation is excited. They are excited because any day now—perhaps any hour—their friends and relatives that we call ‘snowbirds’—but they aren’t actually the real kind of snowbirds we just call them that—will be returning from the south. Sometimes very far south from what humans call another whole CONTINENT! There
ON THIS APRIL DAY, spring has arrived at the old caretakers’ cabin at the Church O’ The Pines. The canoe was taken out onto Old Man River, there to discover wood ducks and Canada geese and mallards and map turtles. Last night the first full choir of wood frogs and chorus frogs throbbed under the stars, and today the snoring
GOOD MORNING from Orchid Corner at the Church O’ The Pines…Where outside along the river, Sparky the Cardinal is singing his heart out; Canada geese are gabbling, wood ducks squealing, sand hill cranes trilling as they fly over; and the full, glowing disc of the sun rising over sparkling water. After a fine, soaking rain for the forest, it is
GOOD FRIDAY OR HOLY FRIDAY is remembered and honored as a reminder of many things. Of the universality of suffering, and the ubiquity of death. Of the power yet stupidity of evil. Of the feeing of hopes and expectations dashed. Of the pain of mourning. But it is also the day for Christians that symbolizes the Divine taking human form,
HERE AT THE CHURCH O THE PINES on Palm Sunday, we have no tropical fronds to lay before an honored Teacher. But snow is beginning to fall and it appears the pine boughs will soon be bending low. Nor have we hosannas to shout—although the blue jays are hollering enthusiastically. But we recall the story of a humble donkey bearing
ALL THE MEMBERS of the Church O’ The Pines were excited this week, as temperatures soared and spring breezes blew. The eagles chirped loudly from their nest tree, and chickadees sang their two-note, ‘Spring’s here’ mating song. Down at the river bank, male hooded mergansers practiced their sweet little growling sounds to attract the attention of impressionable females. Sparky the
HERE AT THE CHURCH O THE PINES by the great river, the tall, deacon pines have seen many things. The Spanish-American War, two World Wars, epidemics and pandemics, recessions and depressions, the invention of the radio and television, the telephone, the motion picture, the arrival of the automobile and internal combustion engine, men going to the moon, the great, world-gathering
SOMETIMES, here at the Church O’ The Pines, when a gibbous moon dangles among the limbs of the tall timber, I can almost imagine I am camped on some old, favorite campsite, deep in the North Country wilderness. Of course, this is a favorite campsite, too; and in the times of Zebulon Pike and Schoolcraft, this, too, was wilderness. And
THERE WAS NO POST from the Church O’ The Pines this morning, as I was visiting another sister church—the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of St. Cloud. There we had a lovely reading/signing/mini-concert and visited with old and new friends. One notices that a U. U. congregation is very nearly as nice as our Church O’ The Pines group. Well, maybe just