Ed Pacht is an eccentric 75 year old widower living alone with thousands of books in an old woolen mill that was converted into warehousing for antiques like him. He and his late wife came to Rochester NH in 1980 to pastor a tiny Pentecostal church (now defunct), and he is still here after many changes, including the death of his wife, the closure of his church, two other churches, countless menial jobs, and eight different residences in and around Rochester. Ed is now an Anglican layman, at Trinity ACA in Rochester editing the diocesan newsletter, and, in effect, a full time writer and performance poet, appearing at NH Renaissance Faire (as Brother Sylvan, Wandering Bard) and at several of the many open mike poetry events in the area. He self-publishes his poetry and short stories in a series of chapbooks (booklets of about 50 pages) and has released four books through Lulu Press: two full-length: Sylvanus Anonymus of the Greenfriars (a novel with a Medieval setting), and Strafford in the Flow of Time (poems and photos of that town); as well as two novellas, The House on Brown’s Hill and Runaway.
In the classic Books of Common Prayer, Morning and Evening Prayer begin with a confession of sin. Modern liturgical revisers struggle with some of the wording, finding it too definite and too hard to say. The phrase, “…and there is no health in us…” is particularly troubling to them. It shouldn’t be. Because they are…
