Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 30

A Julianna Story

Out for a stroll with Jesus at Garden of the Gods, Shawnee National Forest, Southern Illinois

Last Sunday after church, the kids begged to go get some doughnuts after Mass. But by the time we got over there, we were missing our girl-child. This is highly unusual, you understand. Miss J does not suffer the Lent-long abstinence from sweets with joy and gladness. So for her to be missing was a bit concerning.

Christian left me with the boys and went to find her.

Which he did.

Out at the van. Standing beside it, waiting for everyone to catch up with her. And this is how it played out:

Julianna: “Dad! I am, not, happy with you!”

Christian: “Why not?”

Julianna: “Because you, did not, stay with me!”

Christian: “I’m not happy with you because you walked outside without us.”

Julianna: “That’s okay. Jesus was with me.”

(Pause for the heart-catch.)

Yes, I think this girl’s ready for her First Communion.

Mercy Heroes (a Mercy on a Monday post)

Shortly after noon on Holy Thursday, I was in my van, ferrying four fifth graders from the parochial school to the Food Bank to spend a couple of hours sorting bulk grocery items into family-sized bags. A great field trip to start off the Triduum celebration, especially for someone who’d been trying to spend Lent focused on “mercy.”

Although, to be wholly truthful? My in-flight entertainment consisted of death threats and body humor. So I couldn’t quite get that “I’m doing something holy” vibe going.

Which, come to think of it, isn’t all bad.

The thing about good deeds—and probably the reason certain Christian denominations are so suspicious of considering “works” a vital component of salvation—is that when you do good things, you tend to get really, really self-aware about it. You get this warm glow of self-congratulatory satisfaction, as if you can actually feel your halo expanding.

Well, anyway, I do.

And that’s problematic for growth in holiness. It seems to me that the people who are truly merciful are the ones who would say, “What, this? This is no big deal. It’s just what I do.”

To give a different example: I get up every day and I exercise and I write and I cook meals…a lot of meals. I don’t need affirmation or congratulations, I don’t get all goosebump-y with pride about it, it’s just what I do. It’s who I am; what else would I do?

There are people who are like that with good deeds. It genuinely doesn’t occur to them that someone might compliment, praise, or affirm them for the mercy they show to others. They run the Giving Tree at Christmas, they buy a sandwich for the guy on the corner, they talk to emotionally needy/annoying people without betraying the least hint of impatience. They offer words of wisdom without any of the ego that raises others’ defenses. They don’t speak ill of anyone. Ever. At all. (Can you sense my awe?)

And they seem unconscious that any one of these individual attributes is amazing, and bringing all of them together is downright heroic.

In case I am being at all unclear, I am not one of those people.

My experience of Holy Thursday at the Food Bank was, if not self-congratulatory, at least a little giddy at the fact that I was, y’know, separating miniature chocolate chip cookies into bags for two hours. In the company of fifth grade boys, no less. It felt good to be involved. But still, I couldn’t help thinking, “chocolate chip cookies? I mean, does anybody really need  these? This isn’t big enough! It isn’t grand enough! I should be down there in the trenches, washing the face of Jesus, not sitting (well, all right, standing) safely in the volunteer room of the Food Bank, with zero chance of having to interact with a real live person in need.”

And then I thought, “But this is a whole lot easier.”

Clearly, the distance between me and the Mercy Hero I described above is vast.

But I think the key is practice. Like anything else that begins with great concentration and difficulty and painful self-awareness (learning Spanish from an audio course comes to mind), the more a thing is practiced, the more automatic it becomes. I’m sure the first time I blew in a flute I was feeling very self-aware. But now, thirty-odd years and two degrees later, it’s closer than second nature. I choose to place my hope in this little truism I picked up I don’t know where and with which I now drive flute students absolutely mad: practice makes permanent. Not perfect. Permanent.

Make mercy permanent in me, God.

Spring Break

As we get ready to enter Triduum weekend, followed here by Spring Break, I’m ready for a blogging break. I’ll be back when my kids go back to school early in April. Happy Triduum, and Happy Easter!

Maybe I Really Am Living With An Angel (A Mercy on a Monday Post)

It was last December when I read the post that kicked off this exploration of mercy. This post, specifically, in which Rory Cooney suggests that we have a bad habit of substituting confession for actual mercy. I thought, “Wait…there’s more to mercy than confession?”

Then I thought, “Maybe I’d better dig into this a little more deeply.”

And here we are. For three months, I’ve deliberately avoided the subject of forgiveness and reconciliation, because I want to get to the heart of what makes “mercy” something we live, not something we do twice a year at a communal penance service.

But Julianna had her second confession a week ago, and I realized I do have something to share about this most familiar aspect of mercy.

Julianna approached her first confession, last November, with the same unbelievable, adorable excitement she approaches everything. But we haven’t gone since. So a week ago I said, “Christian, we’ve got a free day. Let’s all go over to confession this afternoon.”

And only then did it occur to me that Julianna was going to need some serious review. I admit I groaned inside. You just can’t comprehend what a chore it is to teach Julianna anything at all. Plus, Saturday afternoon confession is the real deal, not the tweaked-for-time-management communal penance form they use for First Reconciliation.

And then, of course, there’s the examination of conscience.

I have an allergy to “helping” my kids identify their sins for confession. It seems to me to void the whole thing. How can repentance be authentic if it’s directed from the outside?

And yet I couldn’t think of any way around it. I could just imagine Julianna doing that adorable side-to-side walk into the confessional and regaling Father with stories about how they didn’t have a fire drill or how Sophia the First finds a big giant baby.

So early that afternoon, we sprawled across my bed and talked through the sacrament. I tried to guide her through an examination of conscience without telling her things outright. But to do that, I had to direct her toward the sins I’d seen her commit. So I started thinking about it, and after a blank couple of moments, the truth smacked me in the back of the head:

This girl doesn’t sin.

Yes, all right, she and Michael occasionally fight over a baby doll.

And yes, she’s manipulative and self-centered—the manipulation and self-absorption of young childhood, which isn’t exactly confession material. It’s not a sin until you’re doing it with intent, which she isn’t.

Besides, you can’t think of her conflicts with the world without being reminded of a dozen times she’s tried to comfort someone else who’s upset.

I tucked that little moment of awe in a corner of my heart and went on with the process. And an hour later, on the way to church, I was reviewing the procedure with her again…because that’s what it takes with Julianna…and Christian turned toward me with a bemused look on his face. “You know what?” he said. “It just occurred to me. She doesn’t really…sin!”

As parents, we’re painfully aware of our children’s failings—because we’re constantly correcting them, and all too often because they so closely mirror our own.

I’ve spent so much time focused on alphabetization and reading comprehension and addition/subtraction, it never occurred to me that I truly was living in the presence of something amazing.

Among the Down syndrome community, the fastest way to evoke an eye roll is to tell a family member that their kids are “angels.” Our kids are not perfect. They can be stubborn and manipulative, and exceptionally resistant to learning the skills that allow human beings to live in harmony with each other.

But it occurs to me that perhaps we are too close to our struggles to recognize the gift of mental and emotional simplicity for what it is. It’s hard for a mama who got straight As without really trying to deal with a kid who can’t—not struggles to, can’t—draw the simplest connections between academic concept and reality. It’s hard for a mama who has spent so much time and energy trying to bring the faith down to a practical level to accept the fact that one of her children is never going to “get” the connection.

And yet for the past nine years, Julianna has been quietly living out a much simpler form of mercy, right under my nose. And I never even realized it.

I now realize that I need to spend as much time watching and learning from my child as I do trying to teach her. Because she does “get” it. She “gets” it on a level so fundamental that it went right past me. And in the end, her approach to mercy might well be the one I most need to learn.

(For more “Mercy on a Monday” posts, click here.)

Movie Kids, Recycled Clothing, And Things That Befuddle Me (a 7QT post)

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Have you ever noticed that kids in the movies are never realistic?

Think Hagrid talking to Harry Potter at the beginning of the first movie: “It’s not every day your young man turns eleven, you know.” It’s not what he says, so much, it’s how he says it. He talks to Harry like Harry is about three years old.

The same thing happens to the child Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. I don’t know how old Bruce is supposed to be in that scene, but he looks to be about that same age—nine or ten, maybe even eleven. He’s asking questions about Wayne Tower and the train they’re riding, and the dad gives him an answer in a tone of voice that I didn’t even use on my kids when they *were three years old.

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On the other end of the spectrum are the kids who act like adults. Like the little girl in Black and White, or either of the girls in Infinitely Polar Bear. Or for that matter, the kid in the animated “Son of Batman” that Alex and Christian were watching earlier this week. The kids act like adults…except they’re insufferable. The most precocious kid I have ever met wasn’t that insufferable.

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I think the directors must be going for the proverbial “out of the mouths of babes” thing, but it always pulls me out of the story when a child capable of semi-rational thought is treated like a baby, or when a child acts like an insufferable adult and says things no child ever says. I think, “What is the deal? Haven’t any of these movie makers ever had children?” Surely someone, somewhere in the process—an actor, if no one else–would say, “Ummmm…I don’t think this is terribly realistic.”?

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Then again, maybe I’m the only one who finds this distracting and irritating. Maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive because of the kind of child I was: longing to be taken seriously, and painfully aware of every time an adult talked down to me. (Which was often.)

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While we’re on the topic of movie tropes, I’d really, really love it if movie makers would start showing us GOOD guys who like to listen to classical music again. I’m so tired of the only characters who listen to classical music being bad guys. Come on. It’s like someone in Hollywood has an ax to grind with classical music!

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On a much more positive subject, this winter I made a discovery that rocked my world. I’m sure I’m way behind the curve, but since I’m all about sharing the wealth, here goes anyway.

You know those bins you see sitting in parking lots? They are a way to get rid of clothes you can’t use anymore–WITHOUT SENDING THEM TO THE LANDFILL. Even the ones that are ripped, stained, or otherwise useless! As best I can tell, usagain aims to send usable clothes to secondhand stores, while PlanetAid is actually recycling textiles and sending the proceeds to the developing world. Which means that I no longer have to throw away all those ripped khakis and ripped jeans and ripped uniform pants and threadbare undershirts and hole-y socks and…well, you get the idea!

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The convergence of some recent local events really crystallized for me how thoughtless our consumption is. I was twenty minutes early for school pickup earlier this week and I was shocked to see a dozen cars already sitting in line, with their engines running. People at a different school leave their engines running while they walk their kids inside in the morning. People get in their cars after working out and turn their car on, and THEN grab their phone and check their messages, with the engine running. People sit in the driveway while their kids are having a half-hour music lesson, with the engine running. I just don’t get it. I mean, half an hour? Completely independent of the pollution factor, think how much money they’re wasting! There are times of year when I can see how the extreme heat or cold might explain this phenomenon, but right now it’s 65-75 degrees outside, and people are still doing it. I’ve been puzzling over this for years, and I still haven’t come up with a rational explanation. I’m forced to conclude that we, as a culture, just don’t think about the larger ramifications of our own consumption. Or is there something I am missing?

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Birthday Boy, AKA Rod Stewart. (Or Jareth.)

It is Palm Sunday weekend, Nicholas’ birthday weekend, and Monday is World Down Syndrome Day, so we have quite the next few days. So I’m signing off to grocery shop, and Jazzercise, and do a writing workshop, and a birthday party, and a birthday, and… and… and…

Have a good one!

 

(Sharing with 7 Quick Takes at This Ain’t The Lyceum.)

 

Angry Lent

Photo by Samovaari, via Flickr

I’ve been angry a lot lately.

The thing about practicing NFP is that you get a really deep understanding of yourself–what we talk about as “self-knowledge.” Through years of charting, I’ve discovered that most of the things that seem arbitrary–“sometimes I’m this way, sometimes I’m that way”–are directly tied to cyclic hormonal shifts. I’m very lovey toward my family in Phase II, but my body also holds onto weight, no matter how draconian the calorie slash. I lose weight in Phase III (post-ovulation infertility), but I also have trouble sleeping.

And I get angry easily.

You know that truism,”Pick your battles”? In Phase III, they ALL seem worth picking. Paperwork. The late paycheck. Sports team scheduling. Facebook condescension. Political candidates. Political issues. School rules. You name it, I’ve been mad about it lately.

The one thing I’ve managed not to take so personally is conflict with my husband and my children. How about a very un-Lenten Hallelujah for that?

Having this convergence of “angry” and “Lent”makes me feel like I’m doing Lent all wrong. I made a decision this year not to add a bunch of stuff in, but to really focus in on that whole “mercy” concept a little more deeply. And “angry” and “mercy” are completely at odds with each other. Even as I was blowing up at the school district last week, the “Lent” part of my brain was waving its hands frantically, shouting, No! This is not mercy! Stop! Stop! But the “angry” side was deep in the clutches of progesterone.

No. Let’s be honest. I made a decision to indulge it. I had a choice, and I chose poorly.

But I suppose there is a hidden good in facing a bad case of the “angries” during the heart of Lent. It’s a powerful reminder of the humanness–the beautiful, fragile, broken humanness–that makes this such a crucial season to return to, late winter after late winter.

 

Family Game Night In the Wake of a Successful Writing Contest

Photo by JBLivin, via Flickr

We have a tradition of family game night in our house. Actually, “tradition” is a little strong. We made a commitment to devote Friday nights to this purpose, but our success rate is about 40-50%. (AKA “better than nothing!”)

It’s supposed to be a no-technology night. But the kids have been begging for a “family video game night” for months. Since I never even played video games as a kid, I have always resisted.

Still, this Friday was a big day in my world. I found out I got two requests from literary agents on my novel via Pitch Madness: Mario Kart.

So I was feeling expansive. And a bit curious, too, because I had never actually paid attention to Mario Kart, and so my team— “Rainbow Road”—and my agent bids— “star” and “mega mushroom”—were nothing more than amorphous hovering objects which I know you occasionally are supposed to run over…although what you gain from it I have no idea.

I was also feeling expansive because Alex had been poring over my computer screen after school, looking at the symbols and asking me to explain what a “query” was, and what “three chapters” or “full” or “ten-page critique” meant. It was a rare moment in which our overarching interests aligned.

I decided, Why not have a family video game night?

So Julianna and I sang Aladdin on the Disney Sing It game (I am chagrined to admit that I, the semi-professional singer, only got 3/5 stars…on EASY. Then again, they expected you to sing both parts of the duet, even when they overlapped), and the guys played Wii baseball and tennis, and then we put on Mario Kart. I said, “Hey, show me Rainbow Road, so I know what this thing looks like!”

“Oooooooh, man, you guys’re in TROUBLE!” yelled Alex.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

So Christian and I sat on the couch and watched our three youngest children repeatedly launch themselves off the edge of Rainbow Road and burn up on re-entry. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. It was less funny when Julianna asked me for “help,” and I started burning up myself.

And then, Christian found the Zurg blaster and decided to spice up the game even more by shooting foam balls at the kids and the TV, and…

Why yes, in fact that is a picture tube TV.

Oh, it was a good night. And just as we came round the last bend, Alex cried, “Mom, THAT’S a mega mushroom! Get it! It makes you HUGE!”

Ah, the moments when all disparate pieces of your life converge upon a single point…

It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s Just Not That Simple, People!

Photo by Dean Hochman, via Flickr

Sometimes I think you guys must get tired of me saying the same things over and over. Like this:

The world isn’t black and white.

I know everyone knows this, but people don’t act like they know it.

I read an article yesterday called “The Rise of American Authoritarianism,” which addressed the bewilderment so many of us feel at seeing how the election has gone this year. Much of the article made sense. Frightening sense.

The problem I had came relatively early on, when the author talked about how social scientists had identified people with “authoritarian” tendencies. They asked four questions about parenting philosophy:

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?

Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

I wanted to pull my hair out. Really? You’re going to force people to answer that as an “either/or”? I mean, no doubt there are people out there who would choose one or the other. But surely the vast majority of us recognize that good parenting means developing all of those qualities.

I mean, self-reliance is a critical thing to learn, and I’m all for getting kids to understand why a certain choice is necessary in a given situation. (Critical thinking, you know.)

On the other hand, when kids grow up and have, y’know, a BOSS, they’re going to have to do as they’re told, because they’re told to do it. Period. Parents do their children a grave disservice if they never teach them that obedience is, in fact, a vital interpersonal skill.

Likewise, how in the world can you rate “considerate” and “well-behaved” as an either/or? They are, by definition, intimately entwined.

The answer to every one of these questions, in other words, is “both”!

Now, I can’t deny that the conclusions the research drew from these either/or questions predicted people’s likelihood to jump on a certain bandwagon. What I can tell you is that if the researchers had asked me those questions, they would have gotten several earfuls on the topic, and a flat refusal to be boxed into a black and white answer when clearly, it was NOT a question that had one. (I’ve only been “push-polled” once, and I ended up snapping at them that since they were clearly trying to change my mind with half-truths, I was hanging up. Interestingly, I’ve never received another push-poll call. I really wish they’d try again. I’m so much better prepared now.)

We have got to stop treating the world as if it’s black and white! I know it’s a crazy busy world, full of distraction and frantic running from point A to point B, and we’re all desperate for someone to boil down the complexity into terms we can process quickly, without expending lots of mental and emotional energy to discover that there is no simple answer.

But we are leaping joyfully into the maw of people who manipulate us, who seek to whip us into a frenzy by screaming, for example, that Obama’s going to party hearty instead of attending Nancy Reagan’s funeral. (Incidentally, please do click that link.)

It does not speak well of us as human beings.

It especially does not speak well of those of us who claim to be Christians.

We must think critically. We must accept the complexity of the world, in all its exhausting reality, and question everything that seeks to reduce things to black and white.

It is not that simple. It’s never going to be. And the more we try to pretend otherwise, the more angry and nasty our public interactions will be.

I want better than that. Don’t you?

On the Proper Etiquette of Text Messages

Photo by DaveLawley, via Flickr

I am the weirdo in the room who doesn’t use a mobile phone. The sound quality is reason enough—I don’t like having to work so hard to understand what people say. And I find it cumbersome to have to punch in every letter—plus extra for capitals and punctuation—one-fingered.

I am not a complete Luddite. I blog (obviously). I use Facebook. I shop on iTunes and Amazon and all my files are online. I know how to use a smart phone–my husband has one, and I certainly recognize the value of the technology. I just don’t want one. I have a prepaid “dumb” phone whose number I don’t give out unless my kids are in your care. It’s a conscious choice to approach life from a different perspective, where the default is, “If I’m away from home, it’s for a reason; you can wait to talk to me later, because right now I’m focused on living. And I can wait to talk to you later, for the same reason.”

What I’m trying to avoid. Image by d26b73, via Flickr

I want to be able to go out to the Pinnacles and be totally off the grid, away from the possibility of online distraction, so that I can focus my mental and spiritual energy on simply being. And I don’t want to become one of those people who bury themselves in their phones instead of engaging with the world.

So I have a unique—dare I say objective?—perspective on the way this technology is used: familiar, but on the outside. And because the smart phone in our house is primarily a work phone, I feel I have a particularly good grasp on the way people outside a work setting USE THEM WRONG.

I therefore present:

Kate’s Rules For Proper Use Of Text Messaging

1. If it’s after 9:30 p.m.: DO NOT TEXT. Not unless you know for sure that everyone you’re sending to is a night owl. Morning people know better than to call/text people before a certain hour. Night owls need to show the same courtesy. Just because you are allowed to turn your phone off when you go to bed doesn’t mean everyone is. Sometimes it’s, y’know, a work phone. The kind where you have to be available if the campus police have an incident at one in the morning.

2. If it’s longer than two short sentences: DO NOT TEXT. That is an email, not a text message.

3. If you don’t need an answer this instant, DO NOT TEXT. Send an email. A text message compels people to answer right now, even if they’re in the middle of something more important. They can’t ignore it, because it will keep beeping at them until they respond. And if they choose to open the message and not respond immediately, they’re likely to forget to respond at all. An email, on the other hand, would be in their inbox unread until it’s a good time to reply. See how much more courteous that is?

4. If you’re trying to work out meeting up with someone, DO NOT TEXT. Put the phone to your ear and have a conversation. With, you know, words coming out of your mouth. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and energy to go back and forth 10 times by text when a phone conversation will work out things so much more efficiently.

Lesson concluded. Any questions?

Mercy (or the lack of it) on the road to the White House

My title today probably evokes an instant reaction. Everyone is well aware of the nosedive in common courtesy—a baseline standard for treating others with mercy—shown by the candidates in this presidential election.

And lest you think I’m aiming this only at one side of the Great Political Divide, let me say that I have only watched one debate this year. The Democratic candidates had me cringing and writhing so acutely, I had to turn off the TV after 45 minutes. (I haven’t had the emotional strength to attempt a Republican debate.)

Civility doesn’t garner hits; respect gets you ignored. It says a lot, none of it complimentary, about the kind of people who aspire to high leadership roles in this day and age.

But blistering the candidates for their lack of civility (i.e., baseline mercy) is an easy idol we throw up in order to avoid confronting a much more unpleasant reality:

We’re not treating them with civility (i.e. mercy), either.

A few days ago someone on my Facebook feed pleaded with us to ask ourselves if we would say the things we’re saying if the person him/herself was standing in the room to hear it.

We all need to take that question to heart…and then take it one step further.

After all, people didn’t start pursuing this brand of politics because they like being horrible to others. They did it because that’s what we respond to. They turned debates into “reality” TV, devoid of substance but rich in the worst of human nature, because that’s what garners ratings. America loves shows in which people’s human dignity is shredded, in which they are called names and kicked off the team/island/show, in which women or men are pitted against each other (and frequently, if the things I hear from people who are addicted to these shows, asked to do incredibly degrading things) in order to win the guy/girl–even though the success rate of the relationship is abysmal.

We are the culture, and if our culture is devoid of mercy, it is because we have made it that way.

Photo by Donkey Hotey, via Flickr

This presidential election is what we have asked for, via the choices we’ve made in entertainment, by the things we have chosen to make bestsellers and worldwide sensations. It is a cultural shift that we have caused by filling our Facebook and Twitter feeds with judgment, sweeping generalizations based upon a sliver of the full story and without any attempt to enter into someone else’s chaos, and lack of respect for those who see things differently than we do.

Our politicians don’t seek solutions and compromise anymore because we have quit trying to understand where others are coming from.

Please understand: I am speaking to myself here as much as I am to anyone else. I cannot deny that Donald Trump frightens me as no candidate has ever frightened me before. For the last several days, while this post has been stewing, I have been struggling with that question posed on my Facebook feed. If Trump did somehow appear in my living room, how would I speak to him? I could not in good conscience remain silent, but how could I say to him the things that need to be said and still honor his innate dignity as a human being?

It is not an easy thing to apply mercy in this arena, when all the voices around you are shrieking, interrupting, not listening, and playing fast and loose with the truth.

But we, as Christians, are called to be the yeast that leavens the whole loaf. Even when it seems hopeless. Even when our passions are crying out to the contrary.

I might fail—and fail spectacularly—but that doesn’t absolve me from trying.

Holy Spirit, in this election year, touch us with your grace. Help us to act and speak from the best we have within us, instead of the worst.

*Note: I would love to have conversation on this topic, but please, please, please refrain from turning it into a political debate. This is about mercy, not candidates.