Letter: Simple parable from the dean

I wanted to share this parable with you. I did not write it, and in all honesty, I have no idea of its origin. It was given to me, from friend to friend, during several iterations as a forwarded e-mail.

I received it more than a year ago, and it has been sitting in a notebook since then. I stumbled across it during the week before spring break, and I read it again with a new appreciation based on my experiences during the last few weeks.

Some may read this and not understand why I've forwarded it. Others will read it and will assign a specific message to it.

Still others will ignore the message outright. How you react to this is based on your experience, and it is valid.

In any case, I ask you to read this, and to reflect upon it either in context, or as an isolated story about life:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said: "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said: "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap ... alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer's wife did not get well; she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. If we are to make a better world, we must work to create a space where all are treated with dignity and worth.