My biology friends talk of a pond as an ecosystem in which plants, animals, and microorganisms live together in a finely tuned environment. For me, my pond is a sanctuary.
Actually, my pond is not mine but a neighbor’s; still, my family and I have come to regard it as ours. Fifteen years ago when we moved to the country, we were delighted to find that the pond had a variety of fish–fingerlings to mature catfish and grass carp. And when we decided to feed the fish, our delight grew to amazement as 5 lb. catfish, leviathans from the depths, emerged, their large mouths engulfing entire slices of bread in one gulp. We spent an entire summer wooing them with bread and crackers, urging them closer and closer to the bank so we could take in each barbel, each scaleless head.
Later, when the 3 ft. grass carp was spotted, a ghost-like silhouette barely perceptible in the shadows near the dock, we were awestruck.
If the catfish and grass carp were the big shows, there were countless small shows: bluegills that emerged from spanning beds along the southern and eastern banks; small rock bass that hid among the rocks near the pond dam, and eager schools of redear sunfish that followed our shadows as we made our way to the feeding spot.
The winter that feet of snow covered the pond for months, we waited for the spring thaw, hoping beyond hope that the fish had survived. Most did not, and we grieved to find the carcasses of the big catfish and grass carp floating and decaying near the dock. A few sunfish and bass survived, but very few. And so we restocked the pond.
The next summer, duckweed–a free-floating, seed-bearing plant–made its appearance. As it began to grow and spread across the surface of our pond, we held our breath. Would this veil of green weed consume the pond, depleting the oxygen and choking out the sunlight?
Daily, my husband would drive his lawn mower and small trailer down to the corner of the pond where the wind blew the duckweed, corralling it in along the bank. Using a long-handled rake, he would collect hundreds of pounds of duckweed, mounding it into the trailer and then dumping it into the woods behind our house.
And then the next day, he would begin again. Our resident Sisyphus, he would repeat the task, only to find more duckweed the next day. For months, he raked, mounded, dumped, and waited. Sometime in mid-September, we looked out upon a miracle: the weedless surface of our pond, a sanctuary renewed.
For my birthday this year, I bought myself five koi for the pond. Each night when we feed the fish, we wait expectantly for the flash of white and gold among the hungry mouths of the sunfish and catfish. And when they come, we cannot contain our gratitude that they have come.
In the sanctuary of a pond, one can worship privately and communally. I have spent hours, alone, walking along the bank, sitting at the edge of the dock, or kneeling in the shade–looking, always looking at the wonders in the water. But I have also spent hours alongside my family, sharing these same wonders.
In James Wright’s poem, “A Blessing,” he writes of an experience with two horses in a pasture just outside of Rochester, Minnesota. He marvels at the horses who “bow shyly as wet swans” and “love each other.” As he moves in for a closer look, he admits that he would “like to hold the slenderer one in my arms” for her ear is “delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.” Finally, he realizes: “That if I stepped out of my body I would break/ Into blossom.”
Stepping out of our bodies and breaking into blossom seems the most sacred worship to me. In Matthew 6: 27-29, we read:
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his lifespan? And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how lilies of the field grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. . .
In the sanctuary of my pond, I do not labor to add hours to my life, I do not consider my clothes, I do not worry.
In the sanctuary of my pond, I step outside myself and blossom. Regularly.
