A Mouse in the House

Dear Mice -

You have to admit, we had a good thing going for while, with you not making yourselves visible to me, and me pretending that I didn't hear you running around in the walls. But since you decided last night to venture across my line of vision, I'm afraid our alliance has ended. You are in for a world of hurt, and although you likely have me outnumbered, I certainly am bigger, smarter, and meaner.

Love, the girl in 23 B

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When I was five my parents and I moved into a big red house with an enormous barn on an old farm that my parents had no intention of ever populating with animals or even with produce. Despite their best intentions, however, we picked up a little livestock along the way, inheriting with the farmhouse a smattering of mice that took a few years to eradicate. That experience from years ago is why I suspected that the sound across the ceiling the last few weeks was not, as I hoped, a sign that my upstairs neighbor had gotten a small dog.

Last night, when little Mickey scampered across the kitchen floor as I was reading on the couch, my mind immediately recalled all of the mouse-related anecdotes from those first years in that house. There are too many to mention, but one favorite involves one flying out of the silverware drawer and giving my mother the scare of a lifetime in the week before my brother was born. We sometimes say that's why he's a little wacky.

What sticks out from all of these stories is that we find them funny. Even today when I was telling my mother that there's some critters in my apartment, she made a joke about hearing the snapping of mousetraps in the night. My family has always put a high priority on laughter - some of my fondest memories are of all four of us doubled over in laughter at something one of us had done.

There's no way I can write about humor - it's something you do, not something you talk about (although I often say the same thing about liturgy, and then waste a lot of words writing and talking about it). Although a definition of humor eludes me, its opposite does not: taking things too seriously. We laugh because we know what matters, and it's not the frustration of an unwelcomed furry guest. We laugh because we know that our pride is silly and that life doesn't go as you plan.

Life can be much more serious than a mouse in the house, but I'm happy to have laughed through tough times too. If I didn't laugh things would simply eat me alive - sprinkling our trauma with levity can be our only hope. Maybe humor is a coping mechanism, but what's the alternative? I'll cope rather than be destroyed.

Few character traits I truly can't abide, but one is taking ones' self too seriously. Someone who can't laugh might as well be speaking a different language than I am. Laughter sustains me through infestations and disappointments, through surprises and grief. Out of respect for the mice, I won't laugh when I trap them, but I will try to find a funny way to tell the story later.

Baruch atah Adonai

I spent the better part of the last 24 hours singing Yom Kippur services as a “ringer”in a temple choir. I also sang for Rosh Hashanah this year, and while I’d never suggest that this experience gives me any license to make claims about the Jewish liturgical life, I found (as I often do) that praying with a less-familiar religious group helped me to clarify my thoughts about worship.


I felt more at home at the High Holidays services than I have at many at services of Christian denominations. My guess is that this comfort has to do with two elements that were present in these Reform Jewish rites: focus on God and focus on community.

One would think that focus on God could go without saying when describing a worship service, but this is not always the case. This weekend there was no doubt on whom the focus lay. The assembly declared the attributes of God, the promises of God, God’s working in the world throughout history. Over and over we sang Baruch atah Adonai, blessing the One who has no need of blessing but who believe treasures our blessings. These blessings are seemingly frivolous, unneeded, but they are to us essential. Our souls exhaust themselves attempting to describe that which cannot be described and to praise that alone which can be praised.

While looking out to God the prayers of the liturgy also focused on the community, on the “us”. In my view, the best liturgy reminds those worshipping that we are an “us”, a group gathered in time and place, connected across time and place with those who also worship. Our “us” is not just a gathering of individuals but the intangible ties between people that create true communities.

If we focus on God and on “us“, there is little room left to focus on “me”. As indulgent as navel-gazing can be, if we truly seek salvation we cannot be looking inward. It is through others that virtue is expressed, that we respond to God’s call to live in grace. Worship is not a place for our personal devotion, even less a place to examine ourselves. I spend enough time focusing on myself.

These thoughts are incomplete, but since I’ve committed myself to academic study of liturgy it would be a bit anti-climactic to exhaust all my reflections on it in one blog post. I have no plans to change cult anytime soon, but things felt right today as joined another community in their worship. I find freedom in blessing the name of the Lord, setting aside any other concerns, remembering the appropriate object of my attention and expressing the praise I was created to express.

(NB: I really struggled with whether to use G_d or God when writing this post, or whether to use other titles in each reference I made to the Creator. Something feels icky about using Judaism as a springboard for my reflections and then tromping all over one of their customs, but I decided using G_d would just be too precious.)

Being Prodigal

When we’re just plodding through Ordinary Time, I don’t expect to hear one of the Greatest Hits readings. But it’s the Twenty-Fourth Sunday today, and one of the parishes where I sang this weekend read the long form of the Gospel, including one of the Top-Ten Parables: the Prodigal Son.


People who get fussy over this sort of thing like to point out that it should be called the “Prodigal Father”, because it is the father whose lavishness we celebrate. But the son is lavish too, just with the wrong resources. In the narrative he gets all the action (in more ways than one), he goes on an “emotional journey”, as they say. He is the main character.

He remains the main character because it is he to whom we are meant to relate. We are the sinful and broken in need of forgiveness. Blessed are those of us who have known a love that celebrates our arrival no matter the circumstances and welcomes us back into home and heart. Not everyone knows that acceptance, and I am fortunate beyond measure to have friends and especially family who love me despite my selfishness and faults.

Although my experience of being loved helps me to believe in a God who loves, the core of my belief comes from turning the parable on its head. I have also had cause to be the father. There has sprung up in me a mercy that is not self-satisfied pardon, nor an absolution that congratulates itself on its own benevolence, but is a love that simply overpowers any offence. If I, a sinner, can feel that love, then I do not question that God can do that and more.

Set Me as a Seal on Your Heart

During my summer of crazy tri-training I had a little phone trouble. There were a few days when I wasn’t getting notifications of messages, so when trying to organize my standing swim-breakfast date with Brendan and Nicole they left message after message and I thought they were blowing me off.

It seemed reasonable that they would want a morning off from me stomping up the vine-covered back stairs at 7:30 to eat their English muffins, so I went straight from the pool to class and didn’t think too much about it. Around noon-time I checked my email and saw about 15 different messages from them. Where are you? Are you ok? What did you do this morning? We went to the pool and looked for you.
For some reason I take great comfort in the image of Brendan, dressed for work, standing at the front desk of the pool in the humidity and heat, asking our favorite lifeguard to check the bottom of the pool.

Those two were married yesterday, in a liturgy that was sacramental in every sense of the word. Over pasta and breadsticks about six weeks ago we put together a ritual that included four languages, three blessings, two pieces by Handel, and a procession to beat the band.

The Gospel reading was the Beatitudes, and as I listened to those words read while my beautiful friends stood side by side, and our other friends and their families surrounded them in joy, my breath was taken away by how perfect everything was. They already live the Beatitudes, they already live the Good News. They are peacemakers who hunger and thirst for justice. They are pure of heart and merciful. The truth that was confirmed in the light of that Gospel passage isn’t displayed in piety or lofty speech, but in the work those two do for other people, the love they show their friends, and that they went out of their way to look for me at the bottom of the pool.

Yes, there is a special grace involved in their sacramental marriage. Still, even before the vows, the air in the church was simply crackling with grace. By doing good work their whole lives they have surrounded themselves with other generous and loving people, and the power of the community’s love was nearly tangible.

Because I’m so practical (and cynical) I know it seems a little incongruous that I am often talking or writing of love. If love were only the romantic, indulgent kind displayed on all of the wedding cards that I browsed the other day, then I doubt I could be bothered for very long. But because of God and the people in my life I know fierce, diligent love. I know productive, gritty love. I know relentless, inescapable, sustaining, thrilling love. I have learned Father Zosima’s lesson that “active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared to love in dreams”, and led by the example of the people in my life I have tried to plunge into that love.

Nicole and Brendan let me tag along on their adventures in goodness, and I am so grateful. This morning I congratulated them once more and sat on the Common with a few of our other friends from our volunteer year. The sun was shining and the breeze was cool: a perfect September morning. We talked about work and family and told dumb jokes, and then I went off to noon mass. Sitting in the pew (a rare occurrence) I had trouble focusing, thinking about the previous day. In my distractedness clarity hit me like a ton of bricks: my whole life is a sacrament. The outward signs of grace are not objects - not my apartment or car or job. Relationships manifest grace, and I have better ones than I deserve.

Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.


Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.

Song of Songs 8: 6-7a