Mother Claire's Sermons

In 2019, the musical Hadestown opened on Broadway. Hadestown is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story of Eurydice, who goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus, who comes to rescue her. Orpheus fails - Hades gives them a chance to walk out but they must do so single-file, and Orpheus is not allowed to look back at Eurydice. Just as they are about to complete the test, doubt causes Orpheus to turn around, condemning Eurydice to return to the underworld. The audience knows it ends badly from the beginning - even if you don’t know the original story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the opening song lets the audience know it's a sad song. But the story is told so well that it still breaks your heart when Orpheus fails - there is oftentimes an audible gasp from the audience when he turns around. But the story ends with Hermes, who functions in the story as ...

In my mother’s hall closet there’s a heavy, bright red case. In it is her collection of vinyl records. I love to lug that case out from the closet to the record player and slowly flip through each one like I haven’t done so countless times and carefully consider which record I will drop the needle on first. One of my favorites received its first trip to the turntable simply because I thought the concept was hilarious: Willie Nelson sings Kris Kristofferson, with background vocals by Kris Kristofferson. But the words of one of those songs continue to speak to me. The title of the track is “Why Me,” sometimes also called, “Why Me, Lord.” And if you know anything about country music, you might make some assumptions about the direction in which the song will be going. Especially as the music starts slowly and you hear those first two lines: “why me, Lord what have I ever done/to deserve even one” and I was ready for a dramatic country recitation of troubles, but Kris Kristofferson is a bet...

Growing up, my brother and I fed our love of watching baseball from the nationally broadcast local networks. We got WGN out of Chicago and TBS out of Atlanta. Of course, we couldn’t make it easy on our parents and choose the same team to follow - I chose the north side Cubs and my brother the Atlanta Braves. And I’ve loved baseball as long as I can remember. Not just the game itself - and, for the record, I love the pitch clock, hate the ghost runner, love the universal DH, and hate regular season interleague play - but I love baseball culture as well. There’s just a different kind of vibe for an everyday sport. I’ve heard it said that baseball is the game you go to when you want to have a conversation with the person you’re with. Major League Baseball’s regular season lasts 162 games, and one of my favorite sayings about the season is, “everyone’s going to win 54 and lose 54, it’s what you do with the last 54 that counts.” I listen to a baseball podcast that wraps up every season with...

Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go. Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for a living. But the child that is born on Sabbath day, Is bonny and blithe, good and gay. “Monday’s child”, first printed in 1836, is one of many fortune-telling songs, popular as nursery rhymes for children. It is supposed to tell a child’s character or future from their day of birth and to help young children remember the days of the week. I think I prefer the version taught to my kids at day care, which sets the days of the week to the theme of The Addams Family . But the poem “Monday’s child” received a bit of a resurgence with its use in the Netflix show Wednesday. It was where Charles Addams found the inspiration for his character Wednesday’s name in the  Addams Family  comic strip, and the show leaned into the linkage, with every episode title being a play on words with “woe...