Dear Hearts,
Summer grows a little thinner, giving us so much harvest, so much of her goodness.
Our summer meetings are a wonderful, easy place to come relax and remember the bounty of life,
of God’s gifts and mighty companions.
Here is your reminder to join! We meet tomorrow, Thursday at 7:30 at St. Michael’s Church.
Below please find this week’s blog/poem inspired by my lesson this week:
There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him and to salvation of the world. ACIM WB 193 5
all love,
marybeth
July 30 2018 A Rabid Fox Bit Mama Francesca marybethscalice
A rabid fox bit Mama Francesca’s legs 11 times.
Her daughter said she was just glad it was her mother
and not her little girl that took those teeth.
If we have to be wounded,
If we have to suffer attack,
let it be someone who can handle it. Right?
Something about this thinking
hurts my head; hurts my legs.
like the teeth of the fox are embedded
in my shinbone.
I feel if Mama was attacked,
so was I,
so was the child.
We all tear.
Maybe this is what He meant when He said,
Be merciful.
Mercy for Mama.
Mercy for her daughter.
Mercy for the baby girl.
Mercy for the fox.
Mercy for me,
because none of us suffer madness better,
or easier, than another.
We are all somebody’s meat.
Even poor crazy fox had a vicious disease.
Is it really a little less terrible to dream
a more terrible version of things,
where baby could be bitten,
so that makes Mama what? a hero?
A better choice of victim?
I want to wrap my arms around a daughter
who tries with all her mental pistons
to pump something good into this script.
But I know good when I feel it.
And I know when we are settling for pig scraps;
compromising with the devil,
who says, somebody has to take it.
The devil lies.
When I hold mercy
I remember the beauty of fox;
the one I saw leaping
like a silver-crimson bullet
over stone wall.
I also remember one I saw
in a 5 by 8 cage
so deeply depressed, she died.
Tell me, who is the victim,
and who the victimizer?
Forgiveness says
they are the same fox,
beauty and beast,
both inside of me.
along with mama, the sacrificer
and the hero,
along with daughter, the compromiser,
who is brave in the wrong way;
and with baby girl, the innocent-
could-be-prey.
When I think what mercy might say,
I hear my own madness,
the dis-eased thoughts of mind
trapped in a body that feels small;
fragile and defended against a
sometimes friendly,
mostly whacked world.
I am aware of fears and doubts;
about what I am, what this place is,
how life could be given
and then brutalized,
bloodied and undone.
Mercy is a rest,
the kind that lets
thoughts lay down
with one another,
like lion and lamb.
Or suddenly exposes
the being there,
in that tree
by the ridge
of your yard
that has a soul,
that is a life
which can be friended.
All mercy is self-mercy.
All love is self-love.
When I think
what forgiveness might offer,
I look at my legs,
tan and freckled.
I look to my heart,
trembling with compassion.
I look to God and then back
to this looney bin we live in,
and she no longer feels distorted,
but Designed for my love,
presented for my forgiveness
which cannot accept compromise;
or the half-baked lies of ego consolation,
but goes sniffing for true miracles.
Forgiveness plucks
every tooth from every leg
and puts its under my pillow.
Fairy Godmother always comes