Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 102
July 16, 2012
Too Big For Me
Globe centred on Asia and Oceania – Satellite image – PlanetObserver (Photo credit: PlanetObserver)
Day in, day out, people spend so much time being so angry, expressing such outrage at the way of the world. It seems so obvious that if only everyone would ______, major problems would go away. And yet on many topics, you can find experts making reasonable cases for both sides. The globe is warming, unless it isn’t. The world’s population will soon outstrip its ability to support it…unless population growth is slowing and preparing for a downward plunge. And so on.
If the experts can’t even agree, then how can I expend enormous amounts of emotional energy trying to change the world? I’m not even sure it needs to be changed.
Most of the world’s issues are too big for me. My job is to care for the bodies and souls given into my care, and that takes everything I have to give.
You may wag your finger at me and tell me I’m shirking my duty as a citizen/human being. But caring for bodies and souls means my job is to teach those within my reach how to live deliberately, to interact thoughtfully and empathetically with the world and all the people in it. Whether global warming is or isn’t happening is irrelevant. Either way, our job is the same: to care for the earth within our sphere of influence, to live as much as possible without waste, without unnecessarily dumping poisons into a creation that reveals God if we take time to go looking for Him in it. It’s my job to teach them that choices and actions have consequences, that there is no magic pill to fix all problems and remove all sacrifice or inconvenience. It’s my job to teach them that compassion and kindness trumps judgment, that we aren’t God and thus, we should give people the benefit of the doubt in virtually every circumstance.
If I manage to catch a few other souls along the way, glory be to God. And if my children learn from me that many of the world’s issues are too complex, too big to be clumped into all-or-nothing terms, then perhaps I’m helping create a future that isn’t ruled by hysteria.
July 14, 2012
Sunday Snippets
Time for another weekly roundup of Catholic bloggers over at RAnn’s This That and the Other Thing.
I couldn’t stand blogging 3x a week, so I compromised at 4. I know. I’m a lost cause. 
My only real religious post was this one: It’s Not Just What You Say, It’s How You Say It
I wrote some reflections on Nicholas and how to give each child enough of me.
I shared some photos from our trip To Mackinac Island
And here are my Signs of the Times.
July 13, 2012
7QT: Signs of the Times
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Sign that we are entering a whole new phase of babyhood:
July 11, 2012
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A sign that we have Too Much Time On Our Hands in this country:
http://www.floatingsheep.org/2012/07/church-or-beer-americans-on-twitter.html
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Sign that it’s time to clean the house: the other morning, Michael had something in his mouth and was gagging on it, but he wouldn’t let me in to get it out. When I finally prevailed, I found a piece of a plastic wrapper. That night we went to the pool, and about twenty minutes in, Michael smiled big at something and I saw a bright purple hair band resting on his tongue–a hair band he had to have been carrying since we left home. Yes, we have spent this week cleaning the floors. :/
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Sign that we truly are in a desperate drought: the fact that everybody’s aware of it. Growing up on the farm, I used to get so angry at the blind cluelessness of weather forecasters, who called all sunny days beautiful unless it was dangerously hot, even if the entire earth was parched and crying out for rain. Sometimes, favorable weather involves clouds and lots of wet stuff, and I’m sorry, that’s more important than your weekend plans. You know what? No, I’m not sorry. The world needs to get a clue about the rhythms of nature.
Please pray for rain.
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Sign #2 that we are truly in a desperate drought: the fact that our water bill was higher than our electric bill in July. And our lawn is still barely alive.
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Sign that I’m still trying to do too much: I spent this entire week, post-vacation, trying to catch up on NFP work and DS promotion…and I’m still not done. I thought surely I’d have time to do a fiction prompt this week. Nope.
___7___
My newest post for Catholic Mothers Online is on a topic I’ve spent lots of time thinking about: teaching a healthy sexuality to our kids. I was given the chance to review a new book written to help parents approach THE TALK. You know. That one.
July 11, 2012
Wordless Wednesday: A Trip To Mackinac Island
The boys checking out Lake Huron via 50-cent telescope
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Feet in Lake Huron
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My husband’s family, who gathered on Mackinac to celebrate their parents’ 50th anniversary. THIS is a big family, folks.
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Bocce ball on the lawn of the Grand Hotel
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Michael in pursuit of chocolate ice cream at the Grand Hotel’s 4th of July carnival. Baby, you’ve only got about twelve foods!
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Getting ready for a family bike ride around the perimeter of the island
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What children do to amuse themselves when formal dinners run too long.
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After watching everyone else, including his big brother, order off the fancy menu, Nicholas began insisting he wanted to order off it, too. He even ate some of what he ordered.
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Family dinner on the porch of the Grand Hotel the evening before departure
I realize as I try to choose pictures to include that you can’t capture a trip in a handful of pictures. Ah well, you do the best you can.
Shared with Wordful Wednesday at 7 Clown Circus.
July 10, 2012
Just Write: Nicholas
A family in our town is burying two of its children this morning. You probably heard about it; it made the national news, two kids electrocuted in the water by their dock. We didn’t know about it until we came home on Sunday–we spent last week on Mackinac Island with family, and the only news we had was the New York Times digest they slid under our door every morning.
When you’re on vacation, you don’t bicker the way you do in real life. I mean, there’s some of it, but the worst fights we had were the ones about getting kids to get dressed already! Mom and Dad are focused in on family time, and without the usual responsibilities of cooking, cleaning and deadlines, we simply enjoyed being with our family with much more purity than we reach in regular life. And it made me realize how much I needed to adjust the way I live at home.
Life with Nicholas, in particular, has been locked horns. Everything is a battle. Everything. I blame the age and grit my teeth, waiting for it to pass into the blissful age of preschool, knowing there ought to be some way for my behavior to mold his, but unable to find it.
It was Christian who (unknowingly) got me started on the right track. The older two were at the Grand Hotel‘s children’s program one night, and after a somewhat disastrous dinner, my father-in-law had taken a group of grandkids, including Nicholas, for a walk. We couldn’t find them, and Christian was gnashing his teeth. “I wanted to take a walk down to the horse-and-carriage rental place with him,” he said. “Michael’s asleep, I thought we could spend some focused time on him for a change!”
The words pierced deep. I realized that is what Nicholas has never gotten from me since Michael came along: time. It’s time he needs from me.
He didn’t get it that night, because it took us until 9p.m. to locate our child with his grandfather. But I came home with a fresh determination to make sure Nicholas doesn’t get waved aside in the interest of my oh-so-important, uh, Facebook status updates. Or even in the name of housecleaning or deadlines. And I had a moment with Nicholas and Michael on the kitchen floor yesterday–Nicholas playing horsey ride on my stomach, and Michael slobbering happily all over my face, amused by the fact that he was taller than Mommy. Bliss. Very wet, slimy bliss. But bliss nonetheless.
Honestly, day one back home was tougher than I expected. I must discipline myself to confine computer time to specific intervals, and not have it as a dull background presence in my consciousness. There’s always something to check–recipes, etc. And the kids were back to their usual bickering.
But yesterday, when I found my frustration level ratcheting upward, the thought of that family burying their children chopped the legs out from beneath it. What wouldn’t those parents give to be me today? I promise myself now, and every hour today, that I will be grateful for the gift of my children. I will take time to live in the moment with them, to meet their eyes, to revel in the softness of their skin, and to make each of them–but especially Nicholas–feel like they are the most important thing in the world to me.
Because after all, they are.
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I just can’t stand blogging only 3x a week. I can’t stand it. So here’s my compromise: Tuesdays are for free-writing with Just Write at The Extraordinary Ordinary; stream-of-consciousness, little editing, get-my-thoughts-out-there in half an hour or less. And for now, I’ll still take Thursday off.
July 9, 2012
It’s Not Just What You Say–It’s How You Say It
Photo by ~diP, via Flickr
“There’s a brick wall–go beat your head against it!”
That’s how our pastor summed up the Old Testament reading yesterday. God was being frank–Elijah was being sent to give Israel a piece of God’s mind, and they weren’t going to take it well. It applies to us, too; if we are called to speak up on a certain subject, we have to do it, even if we know the response is going to be lukewarm or outright hostile, and success is unlikely.
A liberating thought, in some ways, but it’s not that simple.
It’s an election year, and politicians are already bombarding us with recordings of barking dogs to make them appear folksy, delivering half-truths in the most inflammatory language possible in order to fire up the base. Facebook friends are posting witty, scathing one-liners about those who disagree with them. And on the religious front? I’m sorry to say, most of the time evangelization looks more like self-congratulation.
My point is that when you have a call to speak, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Success is not the prize, as the song says, but God didn’t give us a call so we could go smear nastiness in each other’s faces in the name of evangelization. He gave us a call so we could change the world. And if you want to change the world, you have to speak the language of the person you’re trying to talk to.
Obviously inflammatory language works in politics–sort of–at least it works for one side in any election–but look at what else it’s caused. You’re either Democrat or Republican, and woe to you if you choose the wrong side. If you recognize, as many of us do, that both parties have serious problems in their platforms and attitudes, you’re left without any organized power to effect change. You almost have to jump on one bandwagon or the other to have a voice at all. Politicians get nothing accomplished because they refuse to compromise on anything, any time–because the real business of any session is to get elected to the next, not to do anything that will actually make the world better.
In religion, the stakes are even higher. And yet it seems that people of faith can’t see beyond our own little box. We think we’re evangelizing, but really we’re talking to each other, using language and concepts that affirm those who already agree with us, but which are, to those who aren’t part of the club, meaningless at best–and more often than not, push them away.
God won’t measure our response to His call by how successful we are, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to try to succeed. In other words, if we want to fully cooperate with God’s call for us, we can’t just open our mouths and say whatever we want. A friend of mine once told a story about a priest who was going to preach on Pentecost Sunday. People kept asking him what he was going to preach on. “I don’t know,” he said over and over. “I’m not going to prepare–I’m going to let the Holy Spirit tell me when the time comes.” That morning he got up to preach, and as he stood there waiting to be inspired, he heard the Holy Spirit tell him, “You’re lazy.”
Photo by a little ingenuity (:, via Flickr
How we share the message does matter. We have to form ourselves to speak the message given to us in a language others can understand and connect with. We have to learn how to meet people where they are, to focus on what we have in common with them, and build on that to open hearts to the places where we diverge.
And if you’re thinking that means we have to open our own minds and hearts to try to understand people whose outlook, philosophy and beliefs stand utterly at odds with our own–you are right.
July 8, 2012
Sunday Snippets
Tis the 4th of July “weekend” and as I was far from home and computer, I missed last week’s roundup of Catholic bloggers over at This That and the Other Thing. So I’m making up for two weeks today.
I shared a recent Liguorian column, called “Modern Villains,” which talks about the danger of absolutism. If you have comments on that column, you’ll have to leave them here.
“Big Feet,” which is titled poorly enough that no one read it, but it really is a sweet reflection on my big boy.
There was the big high school reunion roundup, and finally…
I’ve been reading up on style and dressing my body type, so I did two weeks of fashion posts, here and here.
July 6, 2012
Fashion, Demystified, Round 2
Last week, I shared some general style tips I’ve gleaned from reading. Now here’s what I found out about dressing the curvy body, AKA hourglass figure. (That would be me.) But if you’re not curvy, read it anyway, because I decided to leave in some of my general notes. Because I’m in a hurry today, that’s why. 
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Dresses: Avoid too loose or too fitted (including cinching the waist) and high necklines. Lower necklines, medium-weight knits, soft fabrics that drape well are good. Show some skin in the legs & neckline. Specific styles:
shift/sheath (simple cut, streamlined, fits close to the body and has more of a waistline).
Empire.
Bias-cut, in other words, cut on the diagonal line of the fabric, which allows the dress to follow the body’s curves.
Wrap or faux wrap in, specifically in nylon jersey fabric or cotton. (Next assignment: figure out what the heck nylon jersey is.)
Belted shirt-dresses and full dresses.
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Tops: Scoopnecks–the wider the better–flatter large busts. V-neck is universally flattering; the deeper the diagonal, the more slimming. Semifitted styles with seams and darts that end below the waist and can be worn out or tucked in. Avoid high, covered-up or button-up necklines; show more skin for balance. Try wrap styles, deep V-necks, small collars, narrow lapels. Minimal flourishes (i.e. ruffles, etc.). Shoulder pads are not my friend.
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Pants & jeans: look for boot cut with a flat front. No super tapered styles or cuffed hems. Stretch jeans with straight or flared legs are my friends. Dark colors make you look slimmer. Jeans should NOT dig in at the waist, and you should NEVER have plumber butt, even if you’re wearing hip huggers.
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Jackets: semifitted, hitting at the point where the hips start to curve out–or just barely covers the butt. Belted styles good. Avoid cropped shapes & styles that button to the neck. One good style is single-breasted with closure right below the bust. Narrow, longer lapels on a one-button jacket deemphasizes curves without hiding them.
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Skirts: pencil skirts hugs curves. A-line flares and slims the hips, hides the thighs. (Hey, look, I’m a poet.) Full skirts have pleads, tucks or draping, and are flattering for most women; pleats that fall from the hip are easier to wear than those that start at the waist. For curvy figure: pencil skirts that don’t hug too tightly, A-lines that fit gently at the hips. Avoid overly tight and full skirts w/too much pleating or draping at the waist. If you have a tummy, choose drop-waist styles; tuck in shirt or use belt to highlight waist. Best length for skirt is right at knee.
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Sweaters: Wide V-neck and cardigans, flat knit, with belt. Avoid fitted, high crewnecks and turltenecks with fitted, foldover necks. Chunky textures add bulk. Other flattering possibilities: soft cowl neck or shawl collar, as long as it’s not bulky; self-belted cardigan. A banded waistline will widen the midsection. (Like a big stripe.) Look for a “handkerchief” hemline–uneven at the bottom. I’ve tried this on. Trust me. Very flattering.
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Oh yes. And have you seen this?
(I know. I should have led with that.) Happy weekend!
Related articles
Dressing the Apple Body Shape (yummistyle.wordpress.com)
How to Dress the Boyish Body Shape (yummistyle.wordpress.com)
Curvy Couture – 10 plus-size springtime styles we love (theinsider.retailmenot.com)
Hourglass Shape:how to Dress It (yummistyle.wordpress.com)
July 4, 2012
Things You Hear While Setting Off Firecrackers
firecracker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Since last year’s Fourth of July post is hard to top, I’m going to simply re-post it. Enjoy!
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Bathroom! Bathroom! (signed after every single pop, squeal, or hiss. Julianna was very scared of the fireworks. In fact, she lost control of her bladder at the main display. In case you’re wondering, Christian was the lucky one holding her at that time.)
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“It looks like a giant turd!” (You know those “snake” firecrackers that grow a snake out one end? Yeah, those.)
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“More pop pop!” (That was Nicholas. Isn’t that just so cute?)
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“And…the grass is burning.”
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My two favorites came in quick succession, and fit under the category “things you DON’T want to hear when shooting off fireworks.”
“Uh-oh, it burned a hole in the pool cover.” (Pause.)
“Why is the pool smoking?”
July 2, 2012
The danger of absolutism
English: Simple drawing of a bar magnet with poles and neutral zone. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“On judgment day, you will answer to FATHER GOD, not mother earth.”
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