“A Ward House Stirring” by William Morris

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“What I wish for everyone here is that you avail yourself of the stirrings of the Holy Spirit,” says the High Council member from the pulpit as miniature thunderstorms spin around his head fogging up his glasses.

In the front row, the Bishop's wife changes into a bouquet of flowers so stuffed with baby's breath every unbaptized child stops squirming and falls asleep.

In the back row, the covenantal mice wait patiently for the big people to finish up so they can hold their own sacrament service.

Someone is wailing in the coat closet that's an appendage to the east foyer. The family who arrived so late they decided to not enter the chapel sends their missionary who recently returned from Indiana to investigate. She is swallowed by the mass of coats until only the tips of the unvarnished fingers of her left hand are visible. The wailing ceases, but the RM does not emerge. Her younger brother rushes over and draws her out. She is covered in cherry blossom petals and drops of pleasant-smelling rain. The parents ask what happened to her. When she replies, she speaks in Swiss Italian.

Out in the parking lot, a young, recently engaged couple make out in the back seat of a Cooper Mini by swapping lines from The Princess Bride. Their gossamer wings and mother of pearl horns are irritated that their bearers are wearing fleece vests over their Sunday best. The irritation doesn't seem to be reaching the couple, who only see each other's eyes and lips.

The maps in the depths of the library are battling over heartland theory. They will papercut themselves to shreds if the ward librarian doesn't catch them in time and give them a good talking to about contention. Meanwhile, the little used copier is slowly turning its toner into gold pixie dust with the help of a bored scribe angel.

Up in the white noise machine just outside the door of the Bishop's office, something that escaped from the ethernet cable is rolling around joyfully in the constant, constantly changing frequencies.

The Relief Society president of the ward that meets in the building last is in the kitchen brewing Kool-Aid in an empty Costco-size jar of pickles. As is traditional, she adds a splash of faith, a heaping teaspoon of charity, a stick of cinnamon, half a cup of honey vinegar. But she is all out of hope and knows deep down that without that intensifier this batch will only last most of her sisters through next Thursday.

The Sunbeams have all gone feral. Have sprouted thick bristles and large tusks. Are grunting. Are rooting across carpet, behind the stacked chairs, and in the overturned trash can for stray Starbursts. Their teachers are standing on the small, wobbly table, bracing each other and silently praying for a parent to stop by.

The dwarf tree of life in the nursery has born enough white, glowing globes of fruit for every child to have three with one left over to split among the workers.

The ghost in the last bathroom stall—the one nearest the font with the bench and the hook—knows he shouldn’t think of himself as a ghost but can't seem to consider himself as any thing but, refusing as he is, in spite of the coaxings of his ancestors, to move away from the location even though he is stuck on the other side from it.

In the multi-purpose room, the youngest of the young women opens her battered quad to the Pearl of Great Price, pushes two fingers and a thumb into the spongy pages, draws from them a doll-sized Flaming Sword, and evens up the ends of her six braids.

Unsure how far behind current fashions it should be, the decor in the Mothers Room keeps changing eras, a flicker of florals, corduroys, velvets—colors rioting, then softening, then fleeing entirely only to surge back again.

It is snowing aphorisms in the Stake President's office, but the bespectacled frog he has trained and set apart to detect clichés is tracking down and swallowing most of them before they reach the laptop the Stake President left open when he rushed to the other ward house for a ritual he'd forgotten was taking place there.

A ward clerk is counting the tithes and offerings: eighteen pigeon feathers; a Nintendo game cartridge; a BMW keyring with most of the blue and white enamel chipped off; a memorized set of times tables; the penultimate dragon's egg of the dispensation of the fulness of times; all the hours from the last three Saturdays that hadn't been devoted to yard work, errands, meals, and several episodes of Burn Notice.

The missionary plaques in the glass case glare so hard at the BYU-Pathway poster on the bulletin board across the hall its edges begin to curl.

The caffeine traveling the bloodstream of the young man helping his mom set up for Sharing Time is being sapped of intensity by the sounds of the closing hymn that is piped in to the Primary Room.

The seraphim in the storage shed at the far corner of the parking lot is trying to fix the snow blower even though it's still late September. It worries that their sessions basking in the late summer sun have not been recuperative enough to get them through the gloom of winter. It can feel a merit badge sash hidden in the depths of the sleeping bags piled at the back at the shed calling to them, but they firmly believe it is not their place to liberate it.

Back in the chapel, everyone's phones are vibrating with excitement as the time draws near for them to emerge from their hour's dormancy. They are listening to the closing prayer but are not really listening to it. Soon they too will be stirring.

Outside, just above the zoning-appropriate steeple, a dove descends, hovers for a moment, transforms into a swarm of bees and buzzes away.

This piece was published in 2025 as part of the 14th Annual Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.