Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 54

God Is Not A Trained Monkey (or: recognizing the voice of God)

Two vignettes:

Photo by WELS.net, via Flickr

One: A priest I know once talked about throwing open the Bible and taking whatever your eye (or finger) lands on first as a sign from God. He called it Bible abuse. A provocative statement, given that probably every one of us has done that at some point.

Two: Long ago I read about a person who invited a couple of missionaries over for dinner. They would not eat from the dishes being passed around the table until they had prayed over each one and received Heavenly “clearance” to proceed. At first, the author was offended. Then he decided this was a sign of their total dependence on God to tell them what was and was not safe.

To me, these two examples illuminate how easy it is to twist faith and try to turn God into a trained monkey that performs on command. We’ve been trained, by a fascination with larger-than-life stories of faith, to expect big and dramatic communications from God–and to esteem blind, uninformed faith in defiance of reason.

And I realized that fascination with these kind of stories encourage the mindset that led to my struggles with anxiety in the first place.

There are certain catch phrases in religious conversation: God’s will and radical faith, for instance. In my brain, over the course of years, that twisted into: if you aren’t willing to leap off a proverbial high bridge, trusting God to catch you, your faith is not good enough. Never mind what you know about gravity. Having faith means being willing to do what doesn’t make sense to you, because God’s way is not your way.

It’s that whole billboard thing again: the expectation that God is going to arrange a message so clear, so obviously aimed right at you, that you can’t possibly mistake His meaning.

God certainly can and sometimes does work that way, but if you expect all divine communication to consist of a “billboard,” you’re going to spend most of your life thinking God has nothing to say at all.

In this weekend’s readings, both Elijah and Jesus went looking for God in solitude. In quiet, in the absence of stimulation and demands on their attention. In extended stillness.

Hearing the voice of God is a skill that takes practice, and if you neglect that practice even briefly, you start to lose it. If I say that modern life is not conducive to hearing God, it sounds so trite as to render the words useless, but that doesn’t make them any less true. How many people fill every waking moment with noise–and sleeping moments, too, for that matter? The radio has to be on in the car, exercise must be accessorized by ear buds, and white noise generators are supposed to facilitate sleep.

Photo by albedo20, via Flickr

There’s a reason people throughout history have gone on silent retreats and even lived as hermits. It’s silence where you learn to recognize God’s tiny whispering sound in the midst of the earthquakes and thunderstorms that make up life. It’s in the emptiness that the puzzle pieces begin to click. And it’s when you start to be comfortable in the void that you start to realize it’s not a void at all, but a wonderful sense of peace, and the beginning of a new way to know God.

I do believe there are times when God speaks in a thunderclap or a burning bush–proverbial or otherwise. The vast majority of the time, though, God’s voice speaks from within, through the utterly ordinary stuff of life. But you only recognize it if you’ve invested the time to listen to the silence that makes the connection in the first place.

St. Louis Adventures

Because I’m crazy busy this week, I’m apparently doing photo posts all week. We took a trip to St. Louis this week to take the kids to the City Museum and the Arch.

One: The Approach

There is no way to adequately describe the City Museum, which must be the most inadequately-named fun house on the planet. Here’s what you see when you get ready to go inside. Notice the Ferris wheel on the roof and the school bus hanging off the side.

 

Two: The Roof

 

Three: More Rooftop adventures

Because those aren’t adventuresome enough, there’s a dome you can climb up the inside of:

(You lose all perspective, but Christian took this last shot with the telephoto lens. We were really, really high off the ground.)

Four: even more rooftop adventures

Climbing out in a Christmas-ornament-shaped contraption of heavy wire, twelve stories above the city? What’s not to like?

Five: the outdoor junglegym

I am only sharing outdoor pictures. Have you noticed that? The museum has four stories of indoor stuff-to-do, too, but it defies photography. You can’t even describe it. They make unbelievable use of space in this place. “Skateboard” half-pipes with mazes under them connected to stuff behind the walls. Slides and climbing wire contraptions that you can follow from floor one to floor four and back without ever stepping out on solid flooring, some of it looking like it was rebuilt from leftover factory equipment (this place used to be a factory). Two indoor treehouses. Tunnels in the subfloors. A kids’ trapeze show. It goes on and on. It’s so packed, the eye and brain can barely process it, let alone a camera. Hence, the outdoor pictures. Remember the school bus? Here’s the view out the window.

Why yes, those are airplanes suspended above the ground, several stories below. That is the outdoor playground. And here we are inside one of the planes:

And here we are headed back down to find Daddy, Julianna and Michael in the ball pit for lunch:

Six: The Gateway Arch

We opened and almost closed the museum, and Michael did not get a nap that day, so day two was a whole lot more relaxed.

At the top, right by the 630 foot sign.

And at the bottom, watching the tour helicopters land and take off.

Seven: Balloon Creations from the Old Spaghetti Factory

Operation Baby Bird Rescue

Nicholas wanted a picnic. I wanted a low-cal lunch. So we made popcorn, and I took Michael and the blankets outside and spread them underneath the maple tree in the front yard. Michael walked up beside me…and I heard a strange noise. Ceeeehhhr!

How odd, I thought. That sounded like a bird. A mad bird. Under the blanket. But it can’t be. I would have seen it.

I got off the blanket and picked it up. Sure enough, there was a tiny baby bird.

Wait. Not a baby bird. Three baby birds. On my lawn, under the tree. We thought they were dead, or dying. Until the daddy flew around, cussing at us, and the babies reared up squawking, three little mouths wide and red.

(This one is the loud mouth of the bunch.)

We pulled the picnic blankets all the way to the far edge of the shade. The kids wanted to feed the babies popcorn. I told them if we touched the babies, the parents wouldn’t take care of them anymore. (Note! A bird expert told us last night this is a myth. Now you know.) At length, the popcorn vanished and the kids got bored. They ran down the back to play on the neighbors’ swing set.

Almost the instant the last child left, Daddy Cardinal came in.

That made me feel better about the babies’ chance for survival. Still, all afternoon we kept an eye on them, worrying about what to do.

(They’re so tiny, can you even see them in that picture?)

As evening came on, Christian, having enlisted his entire Facebook network for advice, decided to attempt to put them back in the nest.

 

Now, you have to understand how terrified my husband is of heights. The fact that he is sitting on top of an eight-foot ladder, trying to pull down the branch so he can then, somehow, lift the babies back into the nest? How can you not love this guy?

Well, we couldn’t manage to get the babies back in the nest. And honestly, we were afraid if we moved them around, the parents might have trouble finding them. So Christian and our neighbor (in the picture) put a cage of chicken wire around them to try to protect them from predators in the night. It took Daddy Bird a couple of tries to figure out how to get in, but he managed eventually. And now the kids have pets. For a short while, anyway.

Operation: Dust Wars

There are days when a blogger has to rack her brains for something worth writing about. And then there are days when the kids write…er, act out…the material in real time.

I love those days.

Alex invited his bestie along for a field trip to the farm last week. They explored for a while…

and then, in the old hay barn, now filled with resting equipment, they found their memory of the day.

Presenting…DUST WARS.

Clean up in a bucket? Oh heck. Might as well have a water war, too.

Well, fine, then. Let’s round out the day by burying each other in rocks.

Might as well bury all the boys as none.

And I overheard my father say to my mother, a mother of four girls: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t have four BOYS?”

 

7 Quick Takes

___1___

As of this week, half our children are wearing glasses. Alex joined the club on Monday afternoon. It took a few hours for me to get used to the look, but now I really like what they do for his face. It took him a few days to get accustomed to keeping them on, too, but we seem to be over that hump now.

___2___

Julianna also got new glasses. She’s been wearing them since she was, I don’t know, three?–and we always had to have cables on them to keep her from taking them off.

Cables: the things at the end of the earpiece.

When she was little, the ends of the cables wrapped her entire ear and stuck out the bottom. Not anymore. Lately she’s been conveniently losing them, and I thought maybe those cables were getting uncomfortable. She seems much happier with her cool big-girl glasses.

___3___

In the past week we have had two special guests for dinner. A week ago we hosted one of our diocesan seminarians (happy birthday, G.!), and then on Monday a priest from the Ivory Coast whom we’ve known for years, but only in the summertime. He comes almost every year to cover our pastor’s month-long vacation. It’s hard for the kids to appreciate what an opportunity it is to have someone with such a different background at the dinner table. We tried to involve them in the conversation by getting out the globe and showing them all the places Fr. E. talked about. We have a lot of international priests come through town because of an exchange program at the university, and I love that the kids have at least the potential to find out what life and the Church are like in other parts of the world. It will be interesting to see what they remember when they grow up. (Probably nothing; these conversations are way over their head. But hopefully they’ll at least come away with an appreciation for the diversity of the human experience, and how good we have it.)

___4___

One of the writing projects I’ve been working on since coming home from NPM is finishing up a set of flute duets for a friend who asked me to write them for her faculty recital. Last night I went to play through them and see how they worked with another flute friend, who was having her sizeable studio play at a local retirement community. It was fun to play together, but even more I was floored by how awesome this particular friend is. Most of us tend to think we can’t do service to the elderly or the underprivileged because hey, we’re just _____s, after all. I mean, how could a music teacher pull off service? Well, she’s managed to do tremendous things–fundraisers, volunteer performances–and I feel privileged to know someone with such a heart for service and a creative mind to figure out how to use the gifts she’s been given.

___5___

Julianna came with me last night to listen to the students perform as well as her mommy. When we emerged from the stairwell into the common area, the gathered residents lit up and started waving at her. Lately Julianna has been a little slow to warm up to people, especially the elderly, so all I could coax out of her was a big smile and a wave.

___6___

Image by “Caveman Chuck” Coker, via Flickr

For some reason, on the way home I got to thinking about the epic summer vacations I used to take with my grandparents and my parents. They were RV vacations and they lasted two to three weeks. I took probably five–no, six of those vacations by the time I graduated high school–two headed east and the rest headed for the west coast. Grandpa used to have us up in the cab with him, taking turns “navigating” but in reality learning to read a map. It was a big privilege because let’s face it, that was the only part of the camper that was air conditioned.

That got me thinking about watching my parents plan their trips. They spread maps out on the kitchen table and drew marker lines once they figured it out. They planned everything so carefully. This is a lost art in the age of phone-based GPS, I’m afraid. There’s a lot to like about not having all that paper to fold and unfold, but there’s something about looking at the whole thing that gives you a sense of space and distance that is missing on tiny screens. I have to close my eyes and envision something bigger to feel like I really know the whole picture.

___7___

And now, just for fun: a farm story in two pictures: my childhood relationship with chickens.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Did I shock you? Sorry. I’m a farm girl.

New Music Available: A Walk In The Woods and How Great Thou Art

My second collection of pieces for flute and piano is now available from GIA Publications. In our house it is known as “The Stanley book” because the opening piece, “Stanislaus,” is inspired by a character in stories we used to (and occasionally still do) tell the kids at bedtime.

 

Also newly available is a Gospel arrangement of Stuart Hine’s How Great Thou Art, available as part of World Library Publications’ WLP Choral Series:

How Great Thou Art is available in octavo and click and print formats.

 

How To Fight

We really don’t take enough pictures together.

If my husband is upset, he cannot eat. But he can always, always sleep.

If I am upset, I can always eat. But I cannot sleep.

Therein lies the challenge for us in conflict resolution.

Before we got married we were required to attend Engaged Encounter. One of the resource couples that weekend laid out some “rules for fighting.” They included things like “hold hands” and “stick to the subject” (a tricky one, because human beings are notoriously inconsistent in the standards we hold for ourselves versus others, and I routinely get called down by my husband when I point out what I perceive as such) and, of course, the practical application of Ephesians 4:26: Don’t go to bed angry.

I think that rule is a stroke of brilliance. Except it doesn’t work. At least not for us.

The way I look at it, every marital disagreement takes the shape of a mountain. The climb gets steeper and more treacherous until you reach the summit, but once you get there it’s all downhill.

I would rather stay up until three in the morning and work over a disagreement from every angle until it’s resolved. But Christian is not built that way. As conflict escalates, he retreats. Shuts down. I’m more like the Energizer bunny. I just keep going…and going…and going. The harder I push, the worse we both feel.

Image via Wiki Commons

I have yet to master the art of going to sleep angry, but even I can see how smoothly and quickly our conflicts are resolved at 5:35 a.m., compared to trying to do it at 10:30 at night. I’ve only managed to make myself postpone the argument until morning once or twice. Those were not restful nights.

But then, neither is it a restful night when I try to force conflict resolution on my own terms. Even when we do try to haggle it out before bed, real resolution still doesn’t come until 5:35 a.m.

Fighting sucks.

The only real solution is to avoid getting into fights in the first place. That means a full-on, intentional commitment to communication–no easy thing. By the time we get to the end of the day, with work commitments done and lessons taught and Down syndrome or NFP conference calls finished and four kids to bed–well, by then we’re shot. We can’t even think what we ought to be talking about, much less summon the energy to do it. We’d rather just veg in front of the TV. Besides, there are all those red-sleeved DVDs coming in the mail. If we’re going to fork over all that dough on a monthly basis, by golly, we’re going to get our money’s worth.

But when we are taking time to talk to each other regularly–over lunch hour by phone, around the heads of the kids while preparing dinner, or on the couch after bedtime–we rarely fight. We still have conflicts, but we can resolve them calmly, like rational people who love each other and are willing to compromise for the good of the other.

It’s living parallel lives in the same house for weeks on end that leads to trouble. It’s far easier to slip into that habit than it is to establish a routine of making time for each other. But the payoff is worth it.

It reminds me of a paradoxical lesson I learned in grad school about playing the flute: if it’s hard to get a good sound, you’re doing something wrong–but in order to achieve that ease, you have to work harder.

A Letter From The Tooth Fairy

I suppose I need to start with this Facebook status last week:

One of my friends shared that she dealt with the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus with a letter. Shelley has graciously agreed to share it with us! Here goes:

 

Shelley adds: The second envelope mentioned toward the end had a check in it, memo: final payment from the Tooth Fairy. We slipped both envelopes under her pillow so she had them to open in the morning. I opened the communication by asking her 1: So what do you think about your letter? 2: Does it make you think about anything else? What about the Easter Bunny? Santa? She was never disappointed or upset and can’t wait to help out at Christmas!

Sunday Snippets

Joining up with the gang over at RAnn’s This, That & The Other Thing for Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival. Our question of the week is: do you use Facebook, and do you use it to promote your blog?

My answer: yes and yes, although I do much more on FB than just my blog publicity. The conventional wisdom for writers (is there such a thing where internet is concerned?) says to use whichever platforms you’re going to use well, and don’t spread yourself too thin. Facebook is my “thing.” I don’t get Twitter. I just can’t make it work. FB, though, has been a real blessing to me as it has allowed me to develop relationships with people I might never have met otherwise. I have an author/composer page, but I do a lot more with my personal one. I didn’t intend it to be that way when I set it up, but that’s how it’s turned out.

I’ve been spotty the last several weeks (er, months?), so here are the highlights:

Where I Spent Last Week, And What I Learned From It

Kids Who Write Songs, NPM Memories, and Other Quick Takes–I include this b/c it contains what little “unpacking” I did of my faith/musical experience at the National Association of Pastoral Musicians convention.

A bit farther back was Birth Control Really Isn’t Health Care In The First Place, followed up by What It’s Like To Practice Natural Family Planning.

And for those who follow the anxiety posts, here’s another: Learning To Deal.

There’s more, but I think that’s quite enough. Time to see what others have to say!

Kids Who Write Songs, NPM memories, and other QTs

___1___

Let’s start with a story about this boy: Alex loves to rewrite songs. And oh lordy, sometimes it’s hard for an occasional songwriter to listen to it! Last night in the car, he decided to rewrite Rudolph with shades of the Lego movie: “Big Mr. Buz-niss MA-AN, had a bi-ig crane ro-BOT!”

“ALEX!” I shrieked. “Stop! Stop! Stop! I can’t take it anymore! You have to put the STRONG syllables on the STRONG beats!”

Dead silence. Then: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Christian roared with laughter. “Alex, I’m sorry, you have a mother who’s a spaz about music and words, and she’s freaking out!”

Deep breaths, Kate. Deep breaths.

___2___

I have another Alex story. You have no idea…never mind, I take that back; anyone with multiple kids in the house knows exactly what I’m listening to this summer.

Mommy Alex told me I can’t change my Batman plane back!

Legos are meant to make NEW things, not keep the old ones!

But I want my LEEEEEGO plane!

But E. made this!

But it’s myyyyyyyyyy Batman plane!

Shut UP!

At lunchtime yesterday, Alex sighed with vast contentment. “I love summer.”

Me, running around doing the short-order cook thing: “Uh, okay, why’s that?”

“Because I lllllllooooooove spending time with my family.”

Face palm.

___3___

You can really see just how small she is in this shot. These two are only two years apart.

Last weekend as the choir circled up I had one of those moments when you really process things you see every day. In this case, Julianna’s size. I know she’s tiny, but looking at her on Sunday I realized just how small. She and Nicholas have always been mistaken for twins, but now Nicholas is bigger. Julianna is still marginally taller but Nicholas outweighs her by almost ten pounds. And she’s so much smaller than other kids her age.

___4___

Julianna’s view of the world is so streamlined, so simple and apparently un-nuanced, that sometimes I’m startled when she shows understanding of something her brothers don’t get at all. For instance: she knows when it’s Wednesday. She asks me every single Wednesday can we go to church? She doesn’t ask it any other day. Only Wednesdays.

Now, if you ask the boys what day of the week it is they’ll look at you blankly. Julianna, however, knows Wednesday means either “church school” (religious ed class) or choir practice, and those are highlights for her. And somehow, she knows when it’s Wednesday.

There’s much more going on in that little brain than it appears…but perhaps she processes things differently and that’s why we don’t recognize how much is going on.

___5___

A few snippets of my week at NPM convention. First: I spent hours trying to figure out the route to drive in to downtown St. Louis, and where the best/safest/cheapest place to park would be. When I got there Monday morning, the garage I chose was closed for renovation. Sigh. So I ended up parking on a surface lot across the street. And every day the same youngish man was on duty to come over and collect my $5 for the day. (Yeah, it was a good lot.) He was so nice, and I couldn’t help thinking how nice it was to build relationships, however fleeting, with people.

___6___

Photo by Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton, via Flickr

Wednesday evening I played flute for a concert of music written by women composers, sponsored by WLP. The seven of us who were performing arrived at the Shrine of St. Joseph, site of one of the miracles for St. Peter Claver’s canonization, shortly after 5p.m.. It was a gorgeous day for July, and the man who let us in opened the huge church doors to let the cool breeze air out the building.

Almost immediately three little African American boys, kids who live in the neighborhood, I presume, appeared on the church steps, obviously not sure if they were allowed to come inside. The man went to greet them, invited them in, and for the entire hour that we were practicing, he was shepherding them from one part of the church to the next, explaining the imagery and the statues and who knows what else. I was too busy preparing for the concert to get emotional, but I’ve thought of that several times a day ever since. That memory will remain one of the highlights of a wonderful week.

___7___

The Shrine of St. Joseph was a really lovely space to play flute. My first test note went reverberating around the high ceilings for most of a second before it faded. But it’s not as big and live as the Cathedral in St. Louis. Last summer, Christian and I went to Mass there, and the sheer reverb in that space clarified something for me about musical styles.

It makes perfect sense that the history of sacred music in Europe developed as it did; the music was created for the spaces where it was to be used: ethereal chant; soaring, exquisite motets, stirring organ-accompanied hymnody. That music is uniquely suited to those spaces, and I really question whether guitar/pop-influenced music could be used successfully there.

But it also made it clear to me the flaw in the argument that nothing other than chant, motets, and organ-accompanied hymnody is appropriate for worship. That music developed as a practical matter, not because there is something inherently more holy about it. More reasons to appreciate the greatness of the Holy Spirit, who inSpires people to write music of all styles to nourish the people of God in the many and varied places they gather.