Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 83

Suffering, Freedom and Sin (TLL Review and Excerpt)

This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes is written not only for use with children, but to help form the faith of the adults who work with them. Today’s excerpt, from Chapter 2: Blessed Are They Who Mourn (Suffering, Freedom, and Sin), comes from the section for children.

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God created each and every one of us as good people. But he also gave us free will. This means we always have a choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing. He did this because he wanted a family of people who would choose to love, just as he loves. This is what it means to be made “in God’s image”: not that we look like him, but that we can choose to act like him.

But of course, if we can choose to love, we can also choose not to love. It’s called original sin. And when we choose to sin, we cause suffering for others. The more we choose to sin, the more suffering we cause.

Just Live It:

Start a “gratitude journal.” … Encourage your children to be grateful for their favorite “special classes” at school or a sibling’s hug upon arriving home. But don’t stop there. …Look for the silver lining in your …daily frustrations and, if nothing else, thank God for the ways it could have been worse and wasn’t.

(from This Little Light of Mine, Chapter 2)

For this week’s review and giveaway, please visit Joy!

Guest Post: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Week 2, This Little Light Blog Tour)

I met Barbara Shoeneberger through the blogosphere, as we both participate in a weekly Catholic carnival. She has approached her chronic health issues with a beautiful attitude of faith. I hope her thoughts today will illuminate the sufferings in your lives as well.

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Nobody gets through this life without mourning. Mourning implies loss of something we value.  Whether it is a dear one, a body part, a capability diminished or extinguished by age, infirmity, or accident; a job, financial security, or innocence; loss can pierce the heart, grind away the stomach, or leave one in a state of emotional and physical collapse.  With loss of what we value comes suffering unique to each person in expression and duration.

Often we are tempted to question God when suffering deeply: “Why me?” That is our first mistake, albeit a natural one. God permits us to suffer for reasons we cannot always see at the time, but by faith we know that He only wills our good. In fact, one of the best ways to suffer well and eventually joyfully, is to seek an ever deepening faith in God. “Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

Next we can begin to look for God’s blessings in the heart of our misery. This is essential to avoid getting stuck in suffering. The finishing phrase of this Beatitude: “…for they shall be comforted,” contains the key. The Greek word for “comforted” is the same origin for the word “Comforter” that Jesus uses in John 14:26 when he tells the apostles, ” But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things…”.

Holy Spirit (Photo credit: Glass.Mouse)

When we are mourning or suffering, our Father sends us the Holy Spirit to teach us and to show us that He is with us. The Holy Spirit not only enters into the receptive heart Himself, but He comes also by others to help us find peace. We are comforted in our anguish by kind words and sometimes the simple silent being of a friend sitting with us, touching our hands, fixing a meal or doing a chore we can’t do. He puts new people and information into our lives to help us and show us ways to be in a changed existence. Often we describe these people as “Godsends” and indeed they are.

Suffering with joy is my motto for the rest of my life. When we pray “Thy will be done” in the Our Father we are affirming our submission to the good that God desires to do for us. I am joyful in suffering because I have seen how God is reshaping me, redirecting my life, changing my focus from myself to Him. That doesn’t mean that I am not in pain or that I don’t have moments of doubt or panic or rebellion or that I won’t have to start all over again at times because I’ve started to focus on myself and my misery. I just know now that He has a purpose for me, that I am to be faithful to that purpose, that I am not alone, and that I must take life one day at a time. It is enough for me.

O Lord, thank you for the hardship in my life. Thank you for the people you have sent to help me in my difficulties. Thank you for helping me grow in faith, hope, and charity, and for making it possible for me to help others. Please teach me what You want me to know. Give me the grace to understand what You want from me and the strength to do it. Give me submission of heart and will to execute Your plans for me for the good of all.

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Barb Schoeneberger blogs at Suffering with Joy. She serves on the Catholic Writers Guild Seal of Approval committee, provides copy editing and proofreading services to writers, and is working on a book on sin.

The Perfect Moment

There’s a hum of anticipation in the air tonight. It’s been building all day, as anticipation only can in a household of two too-busy adults and four, well, children. (That word: children, just seems woefully insufficient to describe all the beautiful and not-so-beautiful chaos that ensues in their presence. I feel like I need a different word, like maniacs or destructicons, but those, too, only tell half the story.)

In any case, we didn’t start the day planning to have a date-night-at-home. But as I was pushing past the frozen seafood case at Aldi, I saw two lobster tails slashed to half price–$9.99. instead of $19.99. I would never ordinarily impulse buy something like that, but something stopped the cart, pulled me backward, and into the cart it went. And half an hour later, at Gerbes, when I found filet mignon in the manager’s special case, I knew it was one of those lovely, unexpected gifts from above.

We’ve never tried this before. We’ve never even done a candlelight dinner at home since…well, since Alex was a baby, at least. After nap we take the kids for frozen yogurt at Red Mango (holy cow, you need to try that place!), and then we manage to survive a family trip to Staples, despite the yes-no-ing and the I-want-in-I-want-out-I-want-to-push-don’t-you-dare-push dynamics.

Back at home, I snack on celery and carrot while feeding the kids. Then Christian takes them upstairs for baths while I begin putting things together. Caesar salad (hold on the croutons till the last minute). Skillet on the stove for the filets. Water and wine in a pot to steam lobster. China and crystal on the table. Candles. Candles? Wait a minute, all we have are purple & pink tea lights for the Advent wreath. Didn’t we have candlesticks once upon a time? I haven’t seen candlesticks in ages.

I listen to the soundtrack of family life echo off the upstairs walls: Lean your head back. Michael, get away from the toilet! Alex, will you GET MOVING?

At last I’m as ready as I can be. I go upstairs and help move the kids through the last of the bedtime routine. We read, we pray, we tuck children in, with admonitions to the boys to STAY IN BED tonight. We give Michael two long drinks of water. And then comes the perfect moment.

The quiet–oh, the quiet! Candlelit quiet, quiet gleaming through fine crystal. The peace of sitting together, in our own kitchen, and eating dinner without leaping up and down a dozen times to fetch the sprinkles or pick up spoons hurled to the floor or cut up meat or arbitrate territorial disputes. Lobster and steak never tasted so heavenly.

Afterward, we put on some classic music and sit together on the couch in the darkness, talking, not talking, listening, enjoying. We dance, as we did on our wedding night, to What A Wonderful World. And I wonder why we waited eight years to do this. And I make a silent promise to myself that it won’t be nearly that long before we do it again.

Sunday Snippets

Spring is here at last! Hope it’s going to stay. It’s been a beautiful day in my hometown, and as evening comes on it’s time to link up with RAnn’s Sunday Snippets. Here’s my world in a whirlwind:

On Monday, I complained. And explained my blog tour.

Tuesday I kicked off my blog tour for This Little Light of Mine with a guest post from a Benedictine sister, talking about how community life teaches one poverty of spirit, and Wednesday I featured our very own RAnn’s review of my book, along with an excerpt.

Friday was 7 Quick Takes: The Disorganization Edition. Which is what we’ve been addressing all day today.

7QT: The Disorganization Edition

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Michael weaned this week. Or, I weaned him. Holy Saturday he was sixteen months, and nursing was beginning to feel like a chore. But I knew there was no going back, so I kept putting off making the decision. But Mondays I go to Jazzercise at 5:45, and Christian always has Michael dressed and eating breakfast when I get home at 7. So when Tuesday morning rolled around and I came home from voting at 6:50 a.m. to find Michael happily running around the upstairs, wanting nothing more than a cuddle, I realized the time had come. As one of my critique partners said, I am a nursing mother emeritus. I’m one part sad, one part relieved. The story of parenthood.

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Yesterday was an up-and-down day. Down: At 3:10 a.m., Nicholas came in wanting to snuggle, and by the time I got him back in bed I was wide awake, itching to work on my novel, knowing if I got up I’d regret it all day. Up: First thing in the morning Michael had his second-ever toileting success. Followed by another after the morning nap. Sleep deprivation notwithstanding, I was feeling pretty happy with life until: Nicholas took a spectacular dive off the barstool. He didn’t even put a hand out. He hit the laminate hard, directly on his head, and he would not calm down. And his eyes were opening and closing and rolling slowly–enough that this mama of four, who’s had her share of child head bumps, was concerned enough to call the doctor. (These things always happen at bedtime, you know, so it’s hard to tell how much of it is tiredness and how much is injury!) So we ended up having an unexpected nap time/writing time doctor visit. (He’s fine, by the way. I figured he was, but better safe than sorry.)

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Alex with Nicholas at the Lantern Festival last August

Tuesday Alex did Chinese lettering in art class. They had two closely-related phrases to choose from: “May grace and peace follow you wherever you are,” or “May grace and peace be with you in all seasons.” Alex chose the first. His reasoning? “Because what if you’re in another dimension where there are no seasons?”

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Holy Saturday, Alex lost his shoe. At first, we blamed Michael, since he’s been thieving shoes from family members and visitors alike and walking them all over the house, either on his own feet or on his hands, depending on the mood. But we tore the house apart for two days, and that shoe was nowhere. Finally Christian said, “Please tell me you looked in the recycling box before we got rid of it on Saturday.”

“Oh, no!” I said. “Of course I didn’t. We didn’t even know the shoe was missing yet then!” That big, open box, with lots of other boxes inside, was sitting right in front of the shoe cubby. So I’m sure the recycling workers got a nice new blue tennis shoe out of their work that day. Not that it will do them much good.

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Well, that was the last straw. Easter weekend Christian cleaned out the cubby/mud room. Thursday I did the pantry and the medicine cabinet. And we have a list of cleaning/organization projects for this weekend. I don’t have a great deal of hope–after all, we have six people in our house, and the smallest one is hell-bent on destroying everything within reach–but I’ve got to try!

(If anyone EVER NEEDS AN IDEA FOR A GIFT FOR US, hire one of those “here’s how you organize your house for maximum efficiency” services!)

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Speaking of Michael. Wednesday night the woman watching the kids during choir practice greeted me with a shake of the head when I came to pick up the kids. “All he wanted all night was to climb on that table,” she said. (A coffee table.) “And then he wanted to stand up!”

“Yup,” I said, because I’d pulled him off the train table six times during my lessons that afternoon.

“I don’t know how you keep up with him,” she said.

Uh, I don’t. See #s 4 and 5.

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You know good things can come out of the worst situations, and this week I realized how grateful I am that I struggled so long with carpal tunnel & tendinitis in college–because that’s how I connected with my massage therapist. He teaches me how to take care of myself. I have long harbored a niggling fear that the ongoing issues my parents dealt with in my childhood are waiting to crop up in mine. One of them–chronic headaches–did, but I now know maintenance stretches to prevent them. We had a conversation about another one this week, and I learned that what I always thought was a solely medical problem very likely has a preventable musculo-skeletal cause, one I can easily prevent. It was a blessed day when my flute friend sent me his way. I’ve always known it, but as I get older the knowledge takes on new significance.

Okay: bathrooms, you will be spotless by lunchtime. You are warned.

Poor In Spirit? (TLL Review & Excerpt)

This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes is written for use with children, but it’s also at least as much aimed at forming the faith of the adults who work with them. Today’s excerpt, from Chapter 1: Blessed Are the Poor In Spirit, comes from the section for adults.

Humility is not tolerating circumstances we can’t change while complaining about them through gritted teeth. It is an act of will, a choice to be at peace when our gut reaction is to choke on helpless rage. It means accepting what we don’t want to accept, being gracious when we want to complain, and trusting that God has a plan, even if it makes no sense to us.

And at these times, Jesus says, we’re blessed?

Well, yes. …. Being poor in spirit, learning to accept humbling circumstances without angst, rescues us from self-righteousness and pride. It’s easy to be thankful when I’m on top of the world…at least, for  a while. But soon … I start to forget that everything I have, right down to the very breath of life, is a gift from God. … I act as if I have all the answers. And from there, it’s a short step to judging everyone else’s circumstances based on my own. In other words…I start to regard myself as God.

Just Live It:

4. Think of a specific act of self-sacrifice or service you can offer to a specific family member, coworker or associate. Write the person’s name, the act, or a phrase to remember on a piece of paper. String it around your neck, put it in a billfold or a pocket. For instance, if you are prone to self-righteousness and judgment, you might write, “I do not know anyone’s whole story; it is not my place to pass judgment, only to live my life as I believe God is calling me.”

(Excerpts from This Little Light of Mine, Chapter 1)

Today, please visit RAnn’s This, That & The Other Thing for a review  (and giveaway!) of This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes.

Guest Post: Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit (Week 1, This Little Light of Mine Blog Tour)

For our first guest post of the This Little Light of Mine blog tour, I’m excited to host Sr. Mary Jo Polak, OSB. I met her when I began working as director of liturgy & music at our parish, where she had been overseeing liturgy before me. She continued to be involved in the parish while expanding her influence to include counseling spiritual direction. Please welcome Sr. Mary Jo with lots of comment love!

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“Blessed are the poor in spirit. .  .”

The enthusiasm for Pope Francis’ style of being pope goes beyond the Catholic Church. The whole world is watching his break with tradition in choosing to wear simpler robes, pay his own bills, and his history of staying close to the people he serves.  Why?

Although he is a Jesuit, his decision to take the name of Francis, in honor of the Poor Man of Assisi, ties him to the long tradition of poverty embraced as virtue by the Franciscans and other orders of religious men and women. Francis of Assisi embraced physical poverty – living close to nature, sharing and serving the poor, and even begging for their needs. Men and women through the centuries have done likewise; in the United States, we have the wonderful example of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers, who live on the edge, and serve those who are marginalized.

Now, you may have noticed that I have been talking about physical poverty, or at least the efforts at living a simple lifestyle. This beatitude says, “poor in spirit.” You will also notice, if you look at the bottom of this article, that I am not a Franciscan! I am a Benedictine Sister. Most Benedictines are not known for their poverty. (Think huge Benedictine Abbey churches with beautiful artwork.)  But maybe the Rule of Benedict has something to offer when we talk about poverty in spirit.

One of the lynchpins of Benedictine life is that it is communal, family style, nitty-gritty in-your-face living together.  We pray together, we eat together, we work together, we share joys, sorrows and cars.  The community gets our paycheck and we pool our resources.  The bite comes (or the “opportunity for growth”) when the cook works hard to make a supper that we absolutely dislike, and yet we are grateful for her efforts and eat it anyway. The bite comes when you can’t check out that night and run out to a restaurant because (a) you share cars and didn’t put in a request in advance and (b) because it’s really important to spend that supper hour with your sisters.

The keyword is grateful. We learn to be grateful for our sisters and our staff who cook and clean, and by taking our turns in cooking and cleaning we appreciate what others do.  (Does this sound familiar to Moms?) We learn to be grateful that we have food at all, because our prayer, reading and conversations with sisters from around the world remind us that there are people who lack basic necessities.  And we are no better than they; we are not more deserving of blessings than they.  What we have is a gift of our Creator, and this moves us to gratitude.

Common ownership gives another opportunity for growth when we have to ask to use a car, to wait for an empty washing machine, or a turn in the shower.  (Does this sound like anything that happens in your house?)  Community life and family life gives us the chance to exercise another virtue that the physically poor have: patience in waiting. We have to share, which gives us opportunities for generosity, for letting others be first.  Poverty of spirit suggests that we don’t even own ourselves, we are owned by a good and gracious God, who invites us into the non-possessiveness of Love.

  Jesus, gentle friend and companion of the poor and outcast,

Help us to hold loosely to the possessions of this world

and be aware that all we have comes from you.

Give us the grace to be grateful, patient, and sharing people.

Blessed be God, for showing us how to be poor in spirit

through the life of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns, forever and ever, Amen.

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Sr. Mary Jo Polak is a Benedictine Sister of Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, SD, where she work as Public Relations Director, and also in Campus Ministry at Mount Marty College.

I Hate Spring Break, So It’s Time To Look Forward

Spring Break simply Will.Not.End. For that matter, neither will winter. Today’s forecast calls for snow. (As we used to say when I was a kid: “It’s spring! April Fools!”)

Julianna returned to school this morning, but Alex remains at home for one more day, because the Catholic school takes Easter Monday off. Not one in our house was happy to uncover that blip on the calendar. Even Alex was looking forward to Monday. When he found out the public schools were in session, he flung his arms into folded position and himself onto the couch and yelled, “It’s NOT FAIR that Julianna gets to go back to school!”

This Spring Break, my children learned to fight. It was a horrible Holy Week. I spent the week negotiating cease-fires that held for thirty seconds, sending kids to rooms, lecturing about love…while simultaneously trying to keep up the usual work of preventing Michael from tearing the house apart stick by stick.

We were jailed by snow for a couple of days and by rain and cold the rest of the week. And then came the evening Triduum services. I got through Holy Thursday with enough grace to be able to write about it; by the time we finished leading music on Good Friday, I was numb from repeating to myself, “This surely has to be the worst of it. By next year Michael will be more independent, and Nicholas will be 5. Surely this was the worst of it. Surely it will be better next year.”

Saturday night Alex and I attended Easter Vigil–Alex’s first. My first in six years. We stayed through the baptisms and then went home. (Hey, give me a break. We had to be back at church 7:45 a.m.)

The Vigil was beautiful, although Alex spent the Exsultet whispering, “Mommy, look at the wax on my candle! Look, the flame is blue! Look at it dripping! That is SO AWESOME!” With difficulty I bit my tongue and allowed him to enjoy the experience at his own level. He watched the full-immersion adult baptisms and thought that was SO AWESOME, too.

Easter weekend we celebrated with far too many high-calorie foods:

Sausage Pie (8416 in a 9×13)

and this parfait concoction made of leftover-cake, pudding, ice cream sauces and mini candy bars. I have no idea what the calorie count on this is. I’m ballparking it at 5-600.

Now it’s time to look ahead. For the next several weeks, Tuesdays and Wednesdays will be a blog tour for my new book, This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes. Every Tuesday I’ll be hosting guest posters, who will break open the topics addressed in each chapter of the book. Wednesdays I’ll be linking to posts by reviewers, many of whom (though not all) will be doing book giveaways.

I’m excited about this new book. Although it is marketed toward those working with children, I wrote it at least as much for adults. As time passes I become more and more convinced that the only way kids will really make the faith their own is if it is lived out in a practical, real-world way. It’s not enough to teach vague, general platitudes like “be kind” and “help others.” Faith is only going to grow if it’s part of the minutiae of everyday life: nitty-gritty, hands-in-the-dirt, roots digging into the soil of the soul and making your insides squirm as you come to recognize what all those pie-in-the-sky pious statements actually require in our relationships and choices. And no adult can make that happen for a child unless it’s happening simultaneously within the adult, too.

So This Little Light takes all those general statements, like “Blessed are those who mourn” and “Thou shalt not kill,” and turns the question around: “Yeah, so? What does that have to do with me, right here, right now? What do I have to do about it?” And it does this separately for adults and children, because let’s face it, grownups have different problems and challenges than kids do.

So that’s the next few weeks. I hope you’ll join us!

Sunday Snippets, Easter version!

So glad that RAnn is hosting Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival this weekend despite the holy day! Here are my contributions:

My Catholic posts are these:

Paradox and Contradiction

Triduum With Littles: A Mommy Processes the Heart of Holy Thursday

If you’re interested in more personal reflections, here’s one on Nicholas’ birthday and a photo post.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Triduum With Littles: A Mommy Processes The Heart Of Holy Thursday

Pope Francis waves to crowds (Photo credit: Christus Vincit)

Triduum with young children is not a blissful devotional experience. But we do it anyway, because it’s important.

Michael is a wiggleworm during church at all times, but at bedtime, after immunization shots, it increases exponentially. I kept having to take him to the back so he could run back and forth, put his arms up to be picked up only to squirm back to the floor (rinse & repeat). Then he grabbed my face between his hands and started playing Eskimo kiss. It was less charming than it sounds, considering his version involves crashing foreheads and a runny nose.

But somewhere amid toddler wrestling and trying to show the 6- and 4- year-olds what’s so special about this particular day and why we go to Mass at night, something occurred to me that had I had never processed before:

Jesus washed Judas’ feet.

Now that has some pretty profound implications. And it seems to underscore the point about humility that our new Pope keeps making. Francis is rocking the whole world. No limo? No papal palace? Working the graveyard shift at McDonald’s? You can hardly catch your breath between stories. I can’t help thinking this man knows exactly what the Spirit is calling him to do with his pontificate, and that is to wake up a Church that’s been so myopically focused on liturgy wars and the blame game (re sex scandals) that we’ve let ourselves ignore the call to live the Gospel, which is the reason we exist in the first place.

And that brings me back to the washing of the feet. Because Pope Francis did something really big yesterday. He washed the feet of girls.

Now, if you’re not Catholic or if you are not passionate about matters liturgical, you might shrug and say, “So what?” Certainly that was me until a few years ago, when I discovered that this is, indeed, a hot-button liturgical issue. Some insist that only men may have their feet washed, because the Apostles were men. So for the Pope to go to a prison and wash feet of both sexes is a big deal.

Maybe he’s making a larger statement about gender roles, maybe not. To me Pope Francis’ actions keep reiterating, gently and yet firmly, that the things we’re spending so much time and emotional energy on, things that cause so much division and bad feelings, really are incidental. That if we’d spend more time on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy we’d probably stop bickering about whether Tridentine or Novus Ordo is better, or whether organ music is a funeral dirge or guitar music is sacrilegious.

I’m going to get myself in so much trouble with this post. But there comes a moment amid wrestling babies and trying to pass the faith to small people–for whom the faith has to be distilled to its core essence–it’s hard not to confront how petty our biggest internal arguments really are. On both sides.

After the Lord’s Prayer, Christian took Michael to the back of church. We didn’t see them again until after Mass. In the midst of trying to keep Alex focused and negotiate a truce between Nicholas, who was putting his legs on top of Julianna, and Julianna, who wanted to pull her skirt up and show everyone her purple My Little Pony underwear and receive her First Communion two years early…amid all that, I didn’t have any attention to spare for Christian and Michael’s Holy Thursday moment. Apparently, Michael self-destructed at being ripped from his beloved Mommy’s arms (Christian says I’m like chocolate to Michael ). He fussed and cried all the way through the Sign of Peace, the Lamb of God, and Communion as Christian went up the main aisle to receive. He had his head down on Christian’s shoulder and just kept crying. Until the deacon made the cross blessing over him…and he stopped crying instantly. That was it. It was the end of the drama. “You know,” Christian said, “every once in a while you just need one of those reminders that this is all real.” I’m not sure, but I think my non-demonstrative husband might actually have choked up telling that story.

So yes, Triduum with small children is, ahem, less than choice soul food. But it also strips away the non-essentials. And perhaps that’s what I most need right now, anyway.

Related articles

Pope & Foot Washing of Females (Yes, that is the issue) (oswaldsobrino.com)
Breaking News: Pope Washing the Feet of Women at Holy Thursday Mass (millennialjournal.com)
Pope washes women’s feet in break with church law – AngolaPress (portalangop.co.ao)