Look at the Beautiful Lady ...

#LentUnEdited

Mommy's side was all women. My big sister told me often that I was Raised By Women For Women, and so I owe my entire being to every women who has ever taught me, held my hand, contributed to supporting and sustaining me, and I try to give back as often as I can.

My mother was somethin' ... when I talk about "Mama" and all her teachings and cookings and such, that's my grandmother. Mommy, her daughter, was undiagnosed with a panoply of mental instabilities, and hysteria, suspicion, uncertainty, rumours, instability ... 'tiz like mother's milk to me.

You know, growing up in olden times, I think each of us thought our home life was normal. I mean, sure, there were TV families, but no one really lived like that, and I didn't realize how completely wacky, let's say, my mother was until I was ... seriously, maybe out of college.

I always remember, very distinctly, the nuns who were Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), Scranton, PA, telling us over and over again, that our earthly parents were merely CUSTODIANS of our lives and souls, and that our TRUE parents were God as our Father, The Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) as our Mother, and Joseph, our earthly step-father, and as long as we threw ourselves in to complete devotion to the Holy Family, no harm could ever befall us.

I can't tell you how much that affected me. I remember so vividly whenever things would get bad, a practice I continue to this very day, I will gaze upon the face of Mary and be instantly calmed. Gewrl, you wonder why I'm so dramatique? and love flowery language? Get THIS prayer we would say. FLY ! away ... I've got to FLY ! away ...

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that NEVER was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I FLY unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy, hear and answer me.

In speaking with Benedictine nuns later in my life, I found out that the IHM nuns, since their founding, were mostly sent in to hard-scrabble communities full of poverty, large families, alcoholism, violence and such, I would see that all around, although none of those were my personal experience, and so the assurance that we were not actually children of these imperfect earthly vessels, but merely issues, was evidenced by them fulfilling their only duty on earth, which was to guide us towards our real, heavenly parents, and here we were in parochial schooling. Inculcation complete.

I don't begrudge it, not one second. Once I found out Mary is more than the BVM, that that is but ONE name for The Great Goddess, I was hooked, because "God is not a boy's name" (-the Episcopal Women's Caucus), and a man can't create something out of nothing, only WOMEN can do that, and we were ALL created in God's image, so God is at LEAST half-woman, gewrl ... FLY to Mary, you've got to FLY to huh.

You know, If you and I have worked together there's probably been a point in your life where things are all going to hell and I left a holy card of Mary on your desk with a note that says, "Look upon the beautiful lady ! All will be well !" and I believe that. There's not a week that goes by where I don't find a picture of huh, or a statue of huh, or call her up in my mind's eye and gaze upon here and like a big ole Methodist woman in a rocking chair, she takes my hand between her two big motherly paws, and she pats my hand and whispers quietly and calmly, ||: it's O-kay ... it's all going to be O...kay ... there's now :||

TURN OFF ! these programs with these hysterical reports. We're not even CLOSE ! to the bad news, so what's it going to be like when it is, a re-run of the move AIRPLANE ! ? Watch a video of a beautiful field of flowers with bird's chirping, and glance at headlines ... there's no REAL news other than #StayAtHome and #FlattenTheCurve. and from me? #LookAtTheBeautifulLady xoxo