Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 59

Parenting In Fear

Last week I read a news story that really disturbed me. It was about a woman who was arrested after leaving her kids in a vehicle while she shopped for a phone. The story is really short (you can read it here), and there aren’t many details given. But here were the things that I thought as I read it:

1. She obviously didn’t go anywhere out of sight of the kids, because the story says as soon as the officers approached the car she came out.

2. In April in Connecticut, it is unlikely to be dangerously hot in a car.

Perhaps there is more to the story. She was reported to be “uncooperative.” Maybe she was belligerent and if she’d been rational and calm, they wouldn’t have arrested her. Maybe in the course of the confrontation, she revealed other things that showed her to be an unfit parent. I don’t know. But purely on what was reported, this story disturbs me.

I’ve debated for a week whether to blog about it because I’m afraid. I’m afraid that if I say publicly, “This is an overreaction. This is not child endangerment. What did this woman do to deserve being arrested and having her children taken away from her?” that it puts me at risk of having someone knock on my door and say, “If that’s how you feel, maybe we need to take your kids from you.”

And this, at heart, is what I find so disturbing. I shouldn’t have to live with that fear.

We live in a society that is becoming steadily more judgmental about parenting decisions. In the back of our minds, we’re always aware that if we misstep in public, or if someone disagrees with a choice we make, we could be reported to the authorities. There’s always that threat of having our children taken away. Case in point: a blog reader told me once that she let her child play outside with another kid, and DFS came by and did an investigation because they thought she was endangering/neglecting her child.

Making parenting choices based on the fear of what other people think is not a recipe for good parenting.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think child protective services are the enemy. There are a lot of children who need much more and better than what they’re given. And there is such a thing as endangering a child by leaving them in the car. But there’s got to be room to weigh individual circumstance. There’s a big difference between someone who runs an errand at a strip mall, within sight of the car, for ten minutes when it’s 50 degrees outside, and someone who goes into the Mall of America for an hour or three when it’s 85 or 90.

Most parents weigh their decisions carefully, taking into account a wide range of factors unknown to anyone on the outside.

It makes sense to me that police officers would come up to a car when they realized there were kids in it and no adult. It does not make sense to me that when the mother immediately appeared–making it clear that she did have her eye on the children–they would arrest her for not having her eye on them.

Like I said, there could be more to the story. But this is what has been bothering me for the last week. What do you think? Have you ever made a parenting choice based not on what you thought was the right thing, but on the fear of being judged unfit by others?

A Story For A Dark And Stormy Night

Photo by twcollins, via Flickr

Sunday nights when I have novels critique group, I usually don’t sleep well anyway. But when the tornado sirens begin wailing at 10:50 p.m., Christian launches from bed and into motion. I am a complete wimp about tornadoes, and as I’m scrambling for my glasses in the darkness I’m also thinking how grateful I am that he woke up at all. My husband has been known to sleep through the sirens.

Our marital ESP seems to be back online: without discussion we head for opposite bedrooms: him to the front and me to the back. “Alex–Nicholas–up. Now. Basement. Tornado.”

They’re old enough now to know the drill. We meet Christian in the hallway carrying one child on each hip. I take Michael and we hurry to the basement. Michael and Nicholas cling to me in the corner by the deep freeze while Christian comforts Julianna on the couch beside it and Alex pretends not to be scared. I’m pretending too, sweetheart. But I always pretend better when I have someone to take care of.

“You guys did a good job,” I say. “We all got down here in less than a minute.”

We listen to the sirens for a couple minutes, waiting for the long fall to silence that tells us it’s safe to venture upstairs for the iPad and check the weather report. Usually I turn the radio on upstairs and crank the volume before I go down, but tonight we just reacted.

As Christian navigates the weather sites, I ask, “Shall I tell a walking in the woods story?”

The response isn’t enthusiastic, but I can feel the lift in my children’s emotions.

Photo by Dave Roberts, via Flickr

“Once upon a time, there were four children named Alex, Julianna, Nicholas and Michael who decided they wanted to take a walk in the woods.” The story always starts the same. “So they ran down the steep hill and waded through the tall grass to the edge of the woods. And there they found…” Now I stumble. I don’t know which story to tell. I’m not in a popcorn-with-Stanley-the-deer kind of mood, truth be told. “They found a pond. And as they stood looking down into the pond, they saw a goldfish named….”

“Jack!” yells Alex. Of course. Every animal and character in this house has been named Jack since Alex met a boy in preschool by that name.

Julianna clambers down from the couch and comes to sit next to me.

“So Jack the goldfish says, ‘Would you guys like to come swim with me?’ And Julianna says, ‘Yes! I love to swim!’

“So they all jump into the pool, and something magical happens as soon as they touch the water–they all turn into fish! And there’s one green fish with gold fins…”

I look at Julianna, preparing to make her a Tinker Bell fish, but she interrupts me with a loud yell: “SHARK!”

Photo by Willy Volk, via Flickr

“Shark?” I repeat, puzzled. “Julianna turns into a shark?”

“No! Mommy shark!”

“Mommy’s a shark?”

“Yes!”

“O…kay then…this story’s going somewhere different. Mommy is a shark who wants to eat all of you!” I nibble a couple of cheeks as illustration. “And Jack the goldfish says, ‘Stop that!’ and leads them to the bottom of the pond, where they swim through a tiny crack too small for the mommy shark to follow them, and on the other side they find a cave that’s full of beautiful crystals.”

“I think we can go upstairs,” Christian says from the depths of the radar screen on the iPad. “The storm’s moved on to the east.”

“Okay, so….so they swim back out and flip up on land, where they find themselves magically transformed back into children again. And they are tired, so they go upstairs and their mommy tucks them into bed.”

I forgot the standard ending: And they had pasta and brownies and ice cream. But that’s all right. I’m tired. And I’ll be up for another half hour with Michael curled against my chest because the thunder is still rumbling low and the wind is still whistling around the second story of the house, and a half hour after that because my head is full of words crying out to be tapped out before they’re lost–words to form yet another new opening for my novel, but which quickly morph into a blog post.

Soon, though, it won’t be a dark and stormy Sunday night anymore, but Monday morning. And as the sky has purged itself of thunder and wind, I have purged my brain of words, and I sleep at last.

Alex’s Birth Story: a 7QT post

Today is about you, sweetheart.

___1___

Alex’s birth story began with three years of infertility. In the process of overcoming that we started seeing a doctor two hours away, who was so amazing that we decided it was worth staying with him throughout pregnancy and childbirth, despite the distance. So three weeks before the due date, I moved in with my grandmother, who lived very close to the delivery hospital. We walked every day, we went to daily Mass, we talked and she pampered me, despite me feeling there was something very wrong with that setup. :) Christian came every weekend, but it was very stressful. Still, I really value those weeks, as I got to know my grandmother on a much deeper and more beautiful level than I had before.

___2___

Alex’s due date fell somewhere from the 15th to the 19th of April 2005, depending on the ultrasound and the NFP chart. Do you remember what else was going on that week?

At the Catholic hospital, the flags were still at half mast for Pope John Paul II. Tuesday the 19th, Grandma was quilting up at her church when white smoke came on the TV, and I called the parish office and asked them to please let Grandma know I had called, without panicking her, because I was not in labor.

Another day, no labor. Another day, no labor. Another day, real contractions while I was lying in bed, but they stopped when I got up. It was the pregnancy that wouldn’t end. The following weekend, as we approached nearly a week past the latest possible due date, Christian and I agonized about inducing. I really wanted to do a drug-free birth, but this was getting intolerable. I mean, look at me!

___3___

So Sunday night we checked into the hospital for a “soft” induction. They gave me Cervadil to finish ripening the cervix, in hopes that labor would then start on its own. Which is what happened: around 2 a.m. I started having contractions. I hadn’t been able to get to sleep in the hospital bed so I put Christian there and I sat up in the recliner in the LDR. I dozed a bit but basically I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t wake Christian to tell him I was contracting, because they were easy contractions and I figured he needed to sleep. I, of course, hadn’t slept much in the last week, but I wasn’t going to sleep anyway.

___4___

By morning things were cooking along nicely, but I was having nastier and nastier back labor. It was a quiet day in the delivery wing, so I had a nurse who sat and rubbed my lower back almost nonstop for hours. “You’re gonna have this baby by noon,” someone said. My parents got on the road….a decision that turned out to be premature, because around lunchtime I stopped progressing altogether. For three hours I had contractions that did nothing at all. They broke my water to get things moving, but instead the contractions stopped altogether for about forty-five minutes. And when they started again–WHOA, it was ugly. My mother and grandmother had been telling me labor was uncomfortable but not painful, and up to that point I would have agreed with them. But what I felt from 3-4p.m. on April 25, 2005 was definitely pain. It was pain that redefined the worst pain I had ever experienced. After four or five of those I-can’t-stop-yelling contractions, the nurse checked me and I had not dilated at all. Not one teeny, tiny little bit. I could have withstood the pain without drugs if I’d known it was moving, but I knew I couldn’t do this for very long. So I had them put in an epidural, and then I laid back on the bed and went to sleep for a bit.

___5___

My doctor came over at 6p.m. when he finished seeing patients for the day. He fanned through the day’s worth of monitor readings, asked a couple of questions, walked in and out, talked to the nurses, examined me–in six hours of hard labor, I had managed to go from 7 to 8 cm dilated. He wouldn’t meet our eyes. Christian was panicking. I had to tell him to listen to the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor. “The worst it’s going to be is a C section,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m okay with that. The baby’s fine.”

The baby was not exactly fine, as it turned out; his heartbeat was no longer ramping up when contractions happened, which meant he wasn’t yet in distress but he was starting to conserve energy. The placenta was giving out. “We need to get this baby out,” the doctor said. And so off to the OR we went, at which point we discovered the reason why I couldn’t cross that transition point: Alex was 10 pounds, 6 ounces, with a head the size of a 2-month-old’s. His head couldn’t engage on the cervix.

Every baby has a cone head, but I mean, seriously. Look at that thing.

___6___

When it was all over, I just wanted to sleep. “Go with the baby,” I said to Christian, but he said, “No! I’m’ staying with you.”

“But I just want to sleeeeeeepppp…”

“Don’t go to sleep! Stay with me!” he said. I knew he thought I was going to die.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I haven’t slept in two days. Go be with the baby.”

So he followed the crib down the hall past the waiting room, where my family was gathered. They leaped up and called out to him, and he fell apart in my dad’s arms. That still makes me all weepy inside.

___7___

But when it was all over, we had this adorable sweetheart:

Who today, has grown into this humongous sweetheart:

Happy birthday, Alex. I love you.

What Do They Hear?

It happens more often than I’d like to admit: Someone comes up to me and compliments my children, and I feel compelled to explain why they’re wrong.

“Your children are so well behaved at church!”

Well, they’re sneaky about their church misbehavior, I’ll grant you that.

“Julianna’s doing so well!”

She is doing well at __, but she’s really struggling with ___.

“Nicholas is such a delightful child!”

Sure he is, when he’s not __, __, or __.

Now why do I do that? My primary objective as a parent is to raise decent human beings, human beings who evoke exactly those sort of compliments. It makes no sense to undercut any attempt at affirmation.

I am not very good at self-censoring. I am good at self-analysis: at acknowledging the bad and the ugly along with the good. And while that is a positive trait for my own growth as a decent human being–because you have to acknowledge your failings before you can fix them–I’m beginning to realize this is problematic where my kids are concerned.

What is the soundtrack of their lives? Is it affirming or hypercritical?

What do they hear me say about them to other people?

What do they think their mother thinks about them?

Do they think I only see their warts?

Do they think I am never satisfied, that nothing they could possibly do will ever be good enough?

These are the questions I’ve been asking myself the past few days. Each of my children has a behavioral quirk or two that make life difficult (what kid doesn’t?). Michael is discovering the dual concepts of “I want” and “I can be really persistent in deafening protest.” Nicholas is, well, Nicholas. Julianna considers herself deeply victimized any time she’s not watching Tinker Bell, and her performance is Academy Award worthy. And Alex has discovered the long-suffering tween sigh at an age that seems ridiculously early to me.

Any one of these quirks, on its own, I can manage. Even chuckle at, in some cases. When they line up, I lose my sense of humor. They no longer seem like quirks, but ****they multiply exponentially. They block out awareness of the bigger picture.

Don’t get me wrong: I look for opportunities to affirm my children in the moment. I think carefully about how I say things to them. But when I’m talking to adults I tend to be more frank.

I remember how demoralizing it is to stand off to the side of someone else’s offhand comments. When my kids were tinies, it was okay to talk around them, as if they weren’t there. As they grow into their own emotional journeys, that’s no longer appropriate. That’s a tough adjustment to make, but it’s time to do it.

What I would have shared on Facebook, if I wasn’t unplugged for Easter

Here’s what I didn’t share while I was cleaning, cooking, running errands, reading the Passion to the kids, cooking, praying, cooking, and generally not writing this Triduum weekend:

1. Thursday after school, Nicholas held up his blue bear, the one he’s been sleeping with for weeks now, and christened her–yes, her, despite being a baby blue bear–”Lissa Glissa.” “Where’d you hear that name?” I asked, figuring it came from a girl at school.

“I made it up,” he said.

Considering my idea of a creative name for a bear is “Tony Bear” because it comes from St. Anthony hospital, I stand in awe of my third born’s naming skills. He’s officially naming all my fiction characters from here on out. :)

2. I thought surely by now Michael had discovered every possible way to wreak mayhem on the church sound system. But I was wrong. Holy Thursday night, we were “not choir,” as we say in our house–just an ordinary pew-sitting family sitting behind the choir. As we headed back to our seats after Communion, Michael caught sight of the organ: all fired up, lots of stops lit, and–gasp!–unoccupied! He made a bee line for it. Unfortunately for him, Mommy was on task. “Oh, no you don’t!” I said, catching the eyes of several people who sit behind us when we “are choir,” quite a few of whom were chuckling. They all know how close a call that was.

3. After Good Friday service, in which we “were choir,” a parishioner caught my arm. “Your daughter brought tears to my eyes,” she said. “After the service was over, she went back up to the cross and kissed the foot of it.”

4. Alex and Cousin E. disappeared into the playroom at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm and came out with a drawing of a treehouse they want to build there. It’s just a platform going all the way around the trunk, but, “Uh, guys,” I said, “I can’t build that.”

Alex looked crushed. Grandpa said, “Let me see that.” He pursed his lips, thought a bit, and then said, “Alex, tell your mom she’s selling you short. I think we can build this.”

And there was great rejoicing.

5. Auntie A. did Julianna’s nails:

Julianna kept changing her mind about what color she wanted. She ended up with this:

Three different colors. :)

 6. Easter morning, Alex shot out of bed at 6:15 a.m., anxious to see what pile of sugared bliss had been delivered by the Easter bunny overnight. But he had to wait until everyone else was ready. Unfortunately the occupants of the front bedroom are not as steeped in the traditions as he is. Alex was forced to wait while everyone else poked around getting toileted, teeth brushed and dressed for church. “Poor Alex,” I said. “It’s rough being the fastest one to get ready when nobody else really ‘gets’ what’s waiting downstairs.”

“Especially when Julianna’s in there showing her NAILS to Michael!” said Alex with a wry smile.

I looked into the bathroom and sure enough, there was Julianna naming the colors on every finger and toe to Michael as he pretended to brush his teeth.

Incidentally, Julianna later asked me if she could bring her nails to church with her. :)

7. We “were choir” on Sunday, and I sang the psalm–a Gospel setting of Ps. 118. Lots of energy. When I came down out of the sanctuary I heard my daughter, who was sitting with my cousin’s family, shout, “Yay! Great job, Mommy!” And when she saw me coming she threw her arms out wide, her little feet wiggling: “Mommy, I wah HUG!”

It killed me to content myself with blowing her a kiss as I went by.

8. Easter Sunday morning is a crazy Mass day at our parish, with simultaneous Masses going on across the hall from each other every hour and a half. We “were choir” and were trying to keep Mass as close to an hour as we could with the extra rites & sacraments. The pastor finished the sprinkling rite after verse 2 of a 3-verse song we had practiced with 3 separate soloists, so Christian and I attempted to communicate via sign language and facial expressions to decide if we were going to finish the song or cheat the final soloist of his verse. I issued two contradictory sets of instructions to the choir based on what I thought my husband was telling me–but apparently I was wrong, because he plunged into the third verse without the soloist, who had to scramble to catch up. My choir members were laughing at us.

From this snafu I can only draw one conclusion: we need a date night. We haven’t been out together since Valentine’s weekend, and clearly we have lost our marital ESP.

But I love you madly anyway, babe. Even if we do look a little frazzled and windblown after “being choir.”

The Crosses We Choose

Reflections on the Stations of the Cross
Jesus is taken from the cross
and laid in the tomb

Photo by Contemplative Imagine, via Flickr

All through Lent, the thirteenth station has stymied me. As I looked brainstormed topics, it stuck out from the others, not because the application was so obvious as to be trite, but because I came up blank.

I questioned why this bit of stage directions is even included. It doesn’t really seem to have a purpose, now that Jesus is dead, does it?

Except, perhaps, as a reminder that most of our crosses aren’t meant to be carried forever. There are crosses, after all, and then there are crosses. Illness, the heartbreak of family members who make poor choices–these are things we can’t control.

But a lot of my crosses, at least, I bring on myself. An inability or unwillingness to see any potential for life to be structured differently than it is, even when life falls into an avalanche of “should,” must,” and “guilt.” An almost neurotic tendency to drag up the mistakes of the past–especially the really unimportant ones, the ones that never hurt anything except my pride. To dredge up, chew on, swallow and regurgitate the offenses and slights of the past, and then do it all again, as if my soul is a bovine stomach and re-digesting them might give me superpowers or at least super insight.

I hung myself on these crosses long ago, crosses God never asked me to bear and upon which I keep crucifying myself for some reason only God knows. Let’s face it: in many cases–not all, but many–even the really big unresolved wounds in our lives remain so because we choose not to resolve them. We choose to keep hanging there, suffering, instead of coming down from the cross and stepping into a terrifying unknown that might lead to the soul-rest we so desperately crave even as we run away from it.

Which brings me to the last station. You notice Jesus didn’t breathe his last, wait one minute and then leap off the cross singing. He was wrapped up, buried, and left in a tomb, with no expectation of a future. For me, Holy Saturday occupies a place all its own in this yearly observance. The heart-wringing drama of Holy Thursday and Good Friday is past, and the trembling potential of the Easter vigil has yet to erupt.

There’s an emptiness to this day, as if the soul needs space to absorb all that came before, all the penance and fasting and self-examination that, if it was done well, has scrubbed the soul raw. The season of Lent leaves us emotionally drained, and poised between Good Friday and Easter Sunday stands this day of rest.

Photo by Paul Moody, via Flickr

It’s a beautiful thing, rest. Body rest, soul rest, work rest. A gift too easily undervalued. I don’t need to explain it. You all know what drives you and what areas of your life suffer from being driven. For myself, this post marks the beginning of a weekend of rest. I will leave the computer dark this weekend, however much it beckons, and I will give my soul the chance to live with the emptiness until it burst into bloom once more.

Family Dynamics and Parental Guilt

I’m supposed to be writing about being taken down from the cross this morning, but my heart is full of my children.

Nicholas had his kindergarten screening last week, and the mediocrity of the scores…well, to be honest, I freaked out. Nicholas is exceptionally bright, and because he learned so many things alongside Julianna, I assumed he was doing fine. It turns he doesn’t know rhymes and he’s not clear on the sounds associated with letters.

The last few days, I’ve been suffering from a potent case of parental guilt. I know Nicholas doesn’t get from me what Alex did, or what Julianna got from her procession of therapists and teachers.

At the same time, I realized how much of the energy I have to focus on my third child is devoted to problem solving his behavior. When he’s in those moods–and he’s been in one again lately–he can suck me dry in half an hour.

Then I began to think about how differently my children experience the world, simply because of the dynamics of the family in which they live.

As a baby, Alex had my full attention. I’d waited so long for him, I wasn’t going to miss a moment. He was genuinely attachment parented; I napped with him, he napped on my lap while I was on the computer. We talked about developmental concepts all the time: every chance I got, I was pointing out things about the world around him.

Along came Julianna: initially medically fragile, full of new challenges, just when I had arrogantly assumed I had this parenthood thing under control.

Alex helped with therapy sessions–some of the cutest videos we have are of him encouraging her to walk to him. He grew up knowing he had a responsibility toward her, because she would always be vulnerable. That resonated deeply and still does in his beautiful, sensitive heart. When I told him we were having her repeat first grade, he almost cried for fear that she would be picked on.

And then came Nicholas: strong-willed and self-absorbed. He can be the most delightful child you ever met–and he frequently is, even to me. But it takes only a breath to flip his angel/devil switch. Ten times a day I repeat to myself that strong-willed is a positive characteristic after it’s has been formed properly. But it’s no comfort when my emotional reserves are in the red and I’m need yet another creative response to self-centered, uncooperative behavior.

Nicholas goes around picking fights with Julianna all the time. He surely knows that with her, not every yes means yes, and not every no means no. I mean, he’s seen that in action countless times when we interact with her. Yet he’ll say to her, “I want to do my homework (his kindergarten book). Do you want me to do my homework?” Then he’ll come shrieking to me shouting, “JULIANNA WON’T LET ME DO MY HOMEWORK!”

Or, on the way home from Saturday evening Mass, everyone is anticipating popcorn, and out of the back seat, interrupting parental conversation, Nicholas shouts, “JULIANNA SAID I CAN’T HAVE ANY POPCORN!”

I know Julianna said no such thing. She just answered with a yes or no, without really processing the question. But Nicholas feels a need to create drama.

It’s hard to feel overshadowed in your family. He’s not being treated unjustly, despite what he thinks, but he craves attention.

I think he’s most jealous of the attention Michael gets. I am endeavoring to enjoy the heck out of Michael’s littleness. I am already in pre-emptive mourning for the day when he decides he’s too big to be chewed on and tickled.

Michael has speech problems and it causes him to shriek in a long, protracted frequency that short-circuits my emotional energy almost instantaneously. But he’s quicksilver: it’s there, then it’s gone. He’s still easy to distract: It’s Nicholas’ turn to carry my workout mat, but you can my shoes.

Michael wakes up in the morning happy. Sometimes there’s a five-minute window of whining, but if I snuggle him for a couple of minutes and then start tickling, he erupts in the most adorable giggle, pure joy. His laugh is soul food, and he loves to feed people.  He thinks everything is funny. And even when he’s not actually smiling, his eyes are. He’ll do this pouty face where he drops his eyes and won’t meet your gaze, because otherwise you’ll see the sparkle of laughter in them.

I’m a baby person. I’m not a toddler/preschool person, and so my interactions with Michael are, I have to admit, more joy-filled. Nicholas is more boy than intellectual, despite being sharp as a tack, but he must be aware of the difference at a subconscious level.

Talk about feeling guilty.

The irony is that I expend far more emotional energy on Nicholas than any of my other children. Someday perhaps he’ll realize that mommy was not prejudiced against him. That she was always weighing fairness: who gets what, when and in what order. But that doesn’t help in the here and now.

Perhaps the real story of parenthood is the struggle to stay aloft on the tightrope between doing the best I can and you’d better find more, because that’s just not good enough.

Things I Don’t Understand: The Vehicular Edition (a 7QT post)

Things I don’t understand:

___1___

Seen at the medical park: a Porsche SUV. I didn’t even know they made such a thing. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?

___2___

Seen at the parks & rec building: a sedan in pretty newish condition, boasting a Reagan-Bush 1984 bumper sticker. Really?

___3___

Seen at Nicholas’ preschool: a mom who parked, dropped off her child, came back to the car, and started the engine so she could sit and burn fuel while she used her phone. I can’t tell you how often I see people sit in the grocery store parking lot with the car running while their other half goes inside. It makes me want to beat on their window and give them a piece of my mind.

___4___

Waste in the pickup line: This year, Alex’s parochial school instituted a new pickup procedure–a complex map of one-way traffic winding around the school, with each grade level at a different spot along the way. I had serious reservations, but it really does work pretty smoothly. The teachers are all outside and they are energetic in waving at drivers to make sure you pull all the way forward, thus ensuring the maximum number of cars can be picking up simultaneously.

I bring this up because on Tuesdays I’m now picking Julianna up in her pickup line at the public school. It’s more compact, with all the grade levels in one spot, but the loading zone is long enough for at least five and perhaps as many as seven cars at a time–except there are rarely more than two in it, because NO ONE PULLS ALL THE WAY FORWARD. The lead car always stops at the prime spot by the door, thus forcing everyone else to sit, burning gasoline, behind them.

Now, I know it must annoy everyone that the line moves at such a glacial pace–I sat out on the street this week for almost ten minutes with my engine off, waiting just to get into the lot, as I watched this unfold. So why would the people farther back in the line keep doing the same thing?

___5___

Litter: I took the boys on a mammoth bicycle ride to the park this week, most of which was along a park trail. But in the one mile connection point between the trail and home, we stopped and picked up all this:

There was more, but with the picnic lunch remains in there we ran out of room.

I have two things to say about this: 1. I think McDonald’s, Coke, Budweiser and Red Bull need to invest in some “don’t litter” public service announcements, since their products constitute an overabundance of the offending trash. And 2. I simply do not understand how people can throw things out their window. I mean, where do they think it’s going to go? Do they really think the earth is just magically going to absorb it and nothing will be harmed? How hard is it to find a trash can?

___6___

If you can’t tell, I am becoming more and more passionate about care of the earth as I get older. People on both sides of the global warming debate get so focused on whether or not it’s happening that the real issue–stewardship of the earth–gets lost in the static. It doesn’t matter if you believe in global warming; you still have a responsibility to be cognizant of how you use the earth. Pollution is bad. There is no justification for a) throwing trash out the window, b) running your car while you play Candy Crush and check email, or c) refusing to pull forward in the pickup line, so that the maximum amount of fossil fuels is burned and the maximum carcinogens are released into the air next to where your children are waiting, breathing it all in.

Can anyone illuminate this? Because I really don’t get it.

End rant.

___7___

Note to Jennifer Fulwiler: I had a scorpion dream the other night. I tried to stomp it and it bit my shoe and I was dancing around trying to shake it off before it climbed up and bit me. Thank you very much. My life is richer now. (Ahem…not! ;) )

To Make Sacred

Reflections on the Stations of the Cross
Jesus Dies

http://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/fotoweb/fwbin/download.dll/45153802.jpg

This Lent I’ve been reading The Last Week, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The authors set out to put the events of Mark’s Gospel into historical context–the geography, the politics, the religious and cultural norms, and most importantly, how those areas intersect. Obviously those factors would influence not only what Jesus said and did, but what the evangelists chose to highlight when writing the Gospels.

Today I’m going to skip the personal experience and simply share something I learned from The Last Week.

The word “sacrifice” has come to be associated so strongly with the crucifixion that it has acquired an almost automatic implication of suffering and/or the idea of one person suffering so that someone else doesn’t have to.

Borg and Crossan point out that this isn’t how people at the time of Christ viewed the concept of “sacrifice.” To sacrifice is to make sacred. Not to make suffer, or to substitute one being’s suffering as atonement for another.

Think of it this way: then, as now, the major ways to build relationship were gifts and shared meals. So a sacrifice, in Jesus’ time, was to make sacred either a gift or a meal in order to honor God.

Photo by wayne marshall, via Flickr

There’s no doubt that Jesus’ death did involve both suffering and a substitution for the sins of others. But we focus so much on those elements, as if the only proper way to honor Christ’s sacrifice–during Lent and Holy Week especially–is to make ourselves feel as guilty and wretched about our failings as we possibly can. As one of my regular readers commented, Lenten reflections tend to focus on blood and gore and how awful we all are.

There’s a place for that, and yet it loses effectiveness with too much repetition. There’s something really profound to me about teasing out the strands and getting to the essence of the feast days we’re preparing to mark. At its core, the cross was Jesus’ gift to humanity.

There’s so much more to think about on this topic–the conjunction of sacred meal, Eucharist and Passover, for instance–but I don’t have it all worked out yet. I just wanted to share this idea as a way to, perhaps, approach the death of Jesus from a slightly different angle. Because sometimes that’s what we need in order to move forward in a faith journey: a new perspective on things we take for granted.

 

Book Tour: A Subtle Grace by Ellen Gable

[image error]1896, Philadelphia.   In this sequel to “In Name Only” (2009 FQP), “A Subtle Grace” continues the story of the wealthy and unconventional O’Donovan Family as they approach the dawn of a new century. At 19, Kathleen (oldest daughter) is unmarried with no prospects. Fearing the lonely fate of an old maid, her impatience leads to an infatuation with the first man who shows interest. The suave, handsome son of the local police chief seems a perfect match. But will her impulsive manner prevent her from recognizing her true beloved? A disturbing turn of events brings a dark shadow that threatens the life-long happiness she desires. Dr. Luke Peterson (the family’s new physician) also makes quite an impression on Kathleen. His affection for her leads him to startling revelations: about Kathleen, about his practice and, most importantly, about himself. Will (oldest son) believes God may be calling him to a religious vocation. Eventually, he discovers the hidden circumstances of his humble beginnings compelling him to embark on a pilgrimage to Rome. (Although “A Subtle Grace” is a sequel, it can be read as a stand alone book.)

 

Ellen Gable (Hrkach) is a bestselling, award-winning author of five books. She is also a freelance writer, publisher, editor, book coach, NFP teacher and President of Catholic Writers Guild. When she’s not writing, Ellen enjoys spending time with her family, watching old movies, playing trivia games and reading on her Kindle. Originally born in New Jersey, USA, the author now calls Canada her home. She and her family reside in rural Pakenham, Ontario, Canada.

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