Harrington's Sea

The priest no longer calls himself a priest.

He doesn’t correct the mailman who says Father, nor the woman at the grocery who asks if he’ll bless her car, but he hasn’t worn the collar in seven years. His faith left him not in crisis but by degrees, the way the tide retreats: imperceptibly, until the bay lies bare and stinking.

He lives in a cottage the church once rented for retreats, a mile from the parish and fifty yards from the sea. Built in the 1930s, when solitude was considered medicinal, the place now sheds its paint in scabs. The wind makes hymns of the window cracks. Each morning he carries his coffee to the shore and watches the sea decide what it will keep and what it will give back: bottles, crab shells, half a shoe. Once, a child’s plastic recorder with barnacles in the holes. The gulls scream, the waves erase. He doesn’t pray anymore, but the act feels adjacent to prayer.

He has made a liturgy of tides. Low tide leaves mudflats the color of bruises. When the tide comes in, it does so aggressively, hissing at the rocks. He thinks of the shore as a breathing thing, the only creature patient enough to live forever.

One morning he writes his first letter:

To Whom It May Concern,

I have resigned, though I doubt You read the paperwork. I write not for absolution but clarification. I once believed in order, in purpose, in the benevolent geometry of creation. Now I see only repetition: the tide that comes and goes, accomplishing nothing but persistence.

If You exist, tell me what it’s for.

Yours, conditionally,

J. Harrington (formerly of St. Luke’s)

He folds the paper, seals it with wax, and slips it into a bottle. It is half a joke, half a dare. He throws it into the incoming tide and watches it vanish into glare.

He does not expect an answer.

A week passes. The days unspool in their small routines: sweeping sand from the floorboards, feeding the neighbor’s cat, walking the beach to see what the sea has delivered.

He finds another bottle wedged between stones, brown glass chipped at the rim. It takes effort to pry the cork free. Inside is a scrap of paper.

You mistake repetition for futility. What repeats is not pointless; it is faithful.

He laughs aloud, startling the gulls. Probably some local child, or an old parishioner testing his soul through performance art. Still, he pockets the bottle. The handwriting is neat, genderless, blue ink slightly bled but legible.

That night, after too much wine, he writes again.

Faithful to what?

The sea repeats because it must. It has no will, no memory. If that is faith, I cannot admire it.

He tosses this bottle under the moon. The gesture feels absurd and sacred at once, and when the tide takes it, he feels an ache like nostalgia.

The correspondence continues.

To think the sea has no will, you must think it beneath you.

—A.

He replies:

And if I thought it above me?

The answer comes:

Then you would call it God again.

—A.

By midsummer, he has half a dozen letters — some found in bottles, others left on his porch when he’s away. Each bears the same initial: A. He keeps them in a drawer beside his bed, rereading them in the sleepless hours before dawn. Their logic grows stranger, their intimacy deeper.

If you’ve lost belief, why keep asking?

—A.

Because silence is worse than rejection.

Then you still expect to be answered.

—A.

I expect only echoes.

Perhaps that is all prayer ever was.

—A.

He tries to trace the source. The nearest neighbors live half a mile away. The postman swears he’s seen no one lurking near the cottage. Sometimes he imagines A. is another exile, someone who walks the beach at night. Sometimes, he barely manages to admit to himself, he imagines A. isn’t human at all.

When Father Connolly phones to check on him, the old man chuckles. “You always did talk to the walls, Jack. Maybe now the walls are answering.” Jack laughs too but doesn’t mention the creeping sense that the letters know him too well, that A. remembers lines from his old sermons and questions he never spoke aloud.

One stormy night in August, the sea hammers the dunes. The priest lies awake as waves assault the shore, dreaming that the water is trying to speak, syllables collapsing before they reach him. In the morning, the beach is littered with dead jellyfish, translucent lungs. Among them he finds another bottle containing another note, this one unsigned.

You ask what it’s for. It is for the asking.

You ask what end it serves. It serves the asking itself.

You are angry because the sea does not answer in words you can record. But you were never built to hear it whole. Only in fragments.

Only in low tide, when the world reveals what it meant to hide.

He reads the letter again and again. The handwriting is unmistakable. It’s his own.

He stops writing after that. The silence feels heavier, as if something waits within it. The waves continue their rhythm, indifferent to belief. He dreams that the sea is an immense ear pressed to the earth, listening to every confession ever whispered into wind.

He begins to mutter as he walks — apologies, bargains, fragments of liturgy. Sometimes he kneels in the surf and lets the foam cover his hands, as though the water might absolve him.

In September, a letter arrives by post — real mail, stamped and addressed.

Reverend Harrington,

I’m one of the guests who stayed in the cottage years ago, when it was still church property. I found a bottle this summer with your name signed inside.

I don’t know if it was meant for me, but the words struck something deep.

I’ve been ill, and your letter made me feel less alone.

Thank you.

—Anne T.

He stares at the name. Anne. A. Could it have been her all along? The thought brings relief and disappointment in equal measure. He writes back:

Dear Anne,

I’m glad the words found you. They were written to no one in particular, though perhaps meant for anyone who might listen.

If you’d like to correspond, I’d welcome it.

—Jack

No reply ever comes.

Autumn drifts in. The sea darkens, the wind hardens. Damp creeps into the walls. He writes fewer notes now, but the habit persists. Each bottle feels like confession, even if the ocean is the only ear.

Lord — if I can still use the word —

I no longer know if faith was belief or endurance. I envy the sea’s endurance. I forgive You, though I suspect You never asked for that.

—J.

He leaves this one on the porch railing. By morning, it’s gone.

The first frost comes early. The beach empties. His hair whitens to match the foam. He grows thin, but a quiet calm settles over him — a resignation that feels perilously close to grace.

One night he dreams again of the sea speaking, this time in his own voice. He wakes to find the tide unusually high, licking at the porch steps. Lantern in hand, he goes outside. The moon has fled behind clouds. The air smells of iron.

Something lies on the sand: a human shape half-buried, carved from driftwood. Its chest is hollowed out and packed with folded paper. He pulls one free. It’s written in blue ink.

You have been heard.

All that’s left is to listen.

He looks toward the dark water, which seems to breathe. The waves draw back, revealing a black mirror. For an instant he sees faces moving in it — not ghosts, but memories: the congregation at St. Luke’s, the sick he anointed, the child whose funeral broke him. The sea gathers them in and gives them shape. He stands until the tide returns to cover them.

In the morning, the beach is smooth as if nothing happened. The driftwood figure is gone. The priest writes one final letter.

To Whom It May Concern,

I have stopped asking. Not from despair, but completion. I understand now: prayer is not a message sent but a posture assumed. The sea’s faith is not in purpose but in persistence.

If that was what You meant all along, then I was not forsaken — only slow to learn.

Yours,

J. Harrington

He carries it to the waterline. The tide is low, the sand shining like old glass. He sets the bottle down and lets the next wave take it gently.

Then he sits on the rocks, watching the horizon. The sea breathes out and in, as it always has. Far out beyond the surf, a glint of glass catches the sun, turns once, and disappears into the bright, endless water.

He watches until it’s gone, and then he keeps watching.