Thursday, March 7, 2013

Step#4: Empathy -- The Moustrap

In session #4 (7 March) of our "Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life" book study being held at Oblate School of Theology we will be closing with this story, the mousetrap fable:


The Mousetrap

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.

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