Slough (sloo) n.
1. A depression or hollow, usually filled with deep mud or mire.
2. A stagnant swamp, marsh, bog, or pond, especially as part of a bayou, inlet, or backwater.
3. A state of deep despair or moral degradation. [def]
Over there past the railroad, a few kilometers northwest of our little patch of land, Shiloh Road makes a loop to reach out to Nurse Slough, which along with Cutoff Slough feeds into Montezuma Slough, and after joining up with several other sloughs in the Suison Marsh, it eventually circumscribes Grizzly Island with its otters and elk, and empties without fanfare into Grizzly Bay, which in turn, flows into Carquinez Straight, past Pablo and Rafael, and then out past the Presidio, emptying into the Great Stoic Pacific.
The dictionary defines “slough” as a depression, bog, or backwater. A tertiary definition is related: a state of deep despair or moral degradation.
I am situated in the same space relative to both definitions: not entirely in the backwater, and not currently in a state of despair, but rather adjacent to each. Within sight and smell of the decay, but not in it.
It is amidst this landscape that the Birds Landing Cohort took root. A tattered copy of A New Kind of Christian fell out of my backpack my second month here, I was asked about its contents, and the rest, they say, is ancient history.
Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered
Over time, I'll try and share stories about my conversation partners, this tiny local group of oddfellows. I'll ask their permission next time we have a cohort meetup, and even post a photo or two. Birds Landing is a quaint little place, a little forgotten by time. But it's close enough to The City to afford as much immersion in the de rigeur as one wants. When it comes to the conversation at hand, the one about the-church-that-is-emerging, we sit around chairs and and discuss and argue all things postmodern [academia stuff], postcolonial [geopolitical stuff], and postinstitutional [ecclesial stuff] over breakfasts or lunches or dinners.
We were taught that 160 years ago, forty-niners arrived in Cali either by prairie schooner or sea clippers: those who traveled here by boat around the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego were called argonauts. Our little group of local learners calls ourselves by the same name. Rather than disembarking, we're embarking and occasionally simply barking. — cxc
