Howling at the Moon...

I was listening to NPR Sunday morning as I drove home from a preaching gig at a tiny rural Congregational church. I heard an interview with Karen Russell, the 25 year old author of a new collection of short stories titled St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves. The author read an excerpt from the title story on the air; it was narrated by one of residents of St. Lucy's. She spoke of chapel as the favorite activity of the wolf-raised girls. She said that even before they understood the words, the music told them how to feel. They came to recognize that chapel was the people's equivalent of the moon-- the place they came, not for hunting or for fighting or for mating, but just for howling beyond all reason.

I am sitting with this as a possible new definition of worship: a place for howling beyond all reason.