Author Archives: Kathryn Bashaar

Leap of Faith

Leave a reply

SONY DSC

My son and I took my 10-year-old grandson zip-lining last week.  Ben tends to be a bit of a scaredy-cat and we were surprised that he readily agreed to go along with us.  He did great at climbing the first rope ladder and walking across a bridge that swayed between the trees.  But the first time he had to step off a platform into thin air and rely on his tethers to keep him from plummeting to the ground, he froze.  He wanted to do it, he almost did it, and then he stepped back – 7 or 8 times.  It took about 10 minutes of reassurance from his grandmother, his uncle, the guide on the ground and they very patient people waiting behind us before he stepped to the edge, closed his eyes, leaned forward

and finally let go.

For some people, I think faith is like that.  They want to believe.  Many of their friends are believers.  But they hold back.  Saint Augustine’s experience was like that.  Disillusioned with both Manicheism and Platonism, he had slowly become attracted to Christianity.  His mother and many of his close friends urged him to accept Christ.  He had personal access to some of the greatest minds of the early Christian world, such as Simplicianus and Ambrose, and was enlightened by their thinking. Like Ben on that wooden platform in the trees, he was intellectually convinced that he should take the step, and he had caring people around him who urged him on, yet he hesitated.

Augustine movingly describes his conversion moment in Book 8 of his Confessions.  Sitting in a garden, he felt moved to open his Bible and, reading the first verse his eyes fell on, he writes, “by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

Just as Ben wanted a guarantee that he wouldn’t fall, I think Augustine was hoping for certain intellectual proof.  I think we’d all like that.  But that is called knowledge, not faith.  Faith paradoxically requires a surrender of both doubt and certainty.  Faith ultimately asks us to take a leap, just like the leap that Ben had to take up in the trees.

As you can probably guess, once Ben stepped off that first platform, his fears “vanished away” just like Saint Augustine’s doubt, and we spent a wonderful day swinging through the trees.

Saint Augustine Quote of the Week: On Truth

1 Reply

This is as true today as when the great Saint Augustine said it.  Look at how the Left absolutely loves Pope Francis when he is talking about climate change, and economic and social justice, and feel he has let them down when he speaks against abortion and gay marriage.  And the Right is just the opposite;  they love the Pope on issues of sexuality and ignore every word he says about climate change and economic justice.  But any religious leader worth the title must speak the truth not as they see it, but as they believe a higher power sees it.  And people can like it or not.

 

Guest Blogger Anne Gargani Krieger on Pope Francis

Leave a reply

My sister-in-law, Anne Gargani Krieger, attended the World Meeting of Families Sep 26-27  in Philadelphia and saw Pope Francis.  I asked her to write a guest blog post about her experience. This is great, inspirational reading; I hope you enjoy my first guest blogger.  And, can I just say that the Pope quote at the end of her blog is very similar to what Augustine said about the line between good and evil being drawn right through the middle of the human heart.  And I swear Anne & I did NOT plan that.Anne and Tracy in Philly  Here’s Anne’s post.

The Pope and My Glasses

I have gone through most of my life witnessing the happenings in the world around me and silently agreeing with the old saying, “this world is going to hell in a handbasket”.  I certainly have not seen the world through rose-colored glasses, but with glasses that were dark-tinted most of the time.

I was fortunate to be able to spend the weekend of September 26-27 in Philadelphia, PA, attending the World Meeting of Families.  The highlight of this gathering was the attendance of Pope Francis.  On Saturday, Pope Francis spoke at Independence Hall, to millions of people in attendance and watching on television.  My friend and I waited over four hours to catch a glimpse of him going by in his vehicle.  On Sunday, Pope Francis celebrated Mass, again with millions watching and hanging on to his every word.  We watched it on a Jumbotron in downtown Philadelphia, away from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “Rocky steps” where the Mass was being held, yet we were still surrounded by thousands of people.

When I first saw this bus trip advertised in my church’s weekly bulletin, I knew I had to go – in a sense, I felt like I was being pulled to go.  I went into this trip expecting good things to happen, like seeing our Pope, but also expecting bad things to happen — bad things like violence, shoving, swearing, vandalism, and just general chaos and human indignities.  I mean, you HAVE to expect those kinds of things when you get that many people in one place, all passionate about the same thing
.right?

Instead, what I experienced was a unification of people from all walks of life, all colors, all languages, all levels of wealth, all ages, all sexual orientations — unification in a spirit of faith, hope, love, and feeling of “we are all in this together”.  We came together as one group, one brotherhood, one sisterhood, no – one humanhood, in the city of brotherly love.  We all knew the Mass, the songs, the prayers — even if we did not all say the same words.  The highlight of the weekend for me was the sign-of-peace during Mass.  I not only shook hands with people that did not speak my language, but I looked into their eyes and we embraced.   I will forever carry with me the feeling I had in those few moment.

I witnessed no violence, no fighting, no chaos — even in such a huge crowd.  I came home from the weekend feeling alive, inspired by Pope Francis’ words about the family, and very much blessed.

And then, less than a week after the Pope left America, our country experienced yet another tragic gun massacre of innocent people at the Umpqua Community College in Oregon.  The gunman was specifically targeting Christians in his death mission. My heart broke for the family and friends of those murdered.  Yet, this time, my mental reaction was different.  I knew this situation wasn’t the norm.  That the good people in the world will always outnumber the bad people; that love will always conquer evil.  That we all sin, but we sin in different degrees, and that one person’s or group’s horrific actions cannot reflect upon an entire humanity.

As Pope Francis said at the joint meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C. recently:  “There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”

I need to work on guarding that temptation for sure, and I will be doing it in glasses that are now a tint rosier, thanks to Pope Francis’ visit to America.

ON TURNING 60

2 Replies

I wasn’t looking forward to turning 60 and I had this notion, early in the year, to celebrate my 6 decades by doing something that I liked to do in each decade, making a donation representative of each decade and getting back in touch with someone from each decade of my life.  That didn’t get very far, because my actual current life had an annoying habit of interfering.

So, when I thought about turning 60 at all, I still mostly hated it.  There are so many things that I miss about being young.  I miss having smooth skin, and thick, shiny hair.  I miss daily sex.  I miss being able to wear high heels for more than 5 minutes without my feet killing me. I miss my grandparents.  I miss turning cartwheels.

But now that the 60th birthday has come and gone, what I mostly feel is grateful. 60 years were not promised to me on the day I was born.  In 1955, children still occasionally died of measles, chicken pox, mumps, polio.  My best friend and I went through a hitchhiking phase in the 70s.  That could have ended badly.  My bout with breast cancer in 2011 could have ended a whole lot worse than it did.  I grew up during the Cold War, which could have ended VERY badly.

But I survived to live a very ordinary and very blessed life.  I made my career in information management during the adolescence of the Information Age:  I typed my first programs on punch cards, and now manage information living in a vast global cloud.  I’ve been to Paris, New York, London, and Rome, dipped my toes in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Mediterranean.  I’ve lived in the richest, mightiest nation the world has ever seen, at what was probably the pinnacle of its power and glory.  I wrote a book.  I danced with an Isley Brother (true story).

I have lived to see my children’s children.

I have loved the same man for 37 years. We’ve passed through the stage of joyful lust, the years of blissful, exhausted parenting, and the tensions and adjustments of midlife.  Now we are two survivors, with a one heart attack, one mastectomy and a lifetime of memories between us.

At 60, I know most of my life story.  I can relax a little.  There’s a happy balance between having enough time to want more and being content with what I’ve already had.  After the hot, exhausted hell of menopause, I have renewed energy, but also a new respect for my limits and peace with the many, many mistakes I’ve had time to make in 60 years.  I am a little less eager to please, a little more willing to tell hard truths, but also way more compassionate and tender with the weaknesses of others.  I am completely at ease with other people, can talk to almost anyone, but am perfectly content with my own company, too.

Just as I was not promised the first 60 years, I am not guaranteed another 60 months, 60 days or even 60 seconds.  But, if I’ve learned anything in my 31,536,000 minutes on this planet, it is that, as Peggy Freydberg says (in a poem written when she was over 90 years old!):

We shape the world towards joy

with our dreams of it

For whatever time is left to me, I’m grateful for love and curious about what will happen tomorrow.

Proverbs 31 modernized

Leave a reply

Here is the opening text of an invitation to a women’s Bible study at my church: “Grocery shopping, strolling through a park, grabbing coffee – you are never without His light.” True enough, but these inconsequential examples of women’s activities don’t give me the feeling that this Bible study would have anything whatsoever to do with my life. The text doesn’t even begin to describe the most significant activities of most 21st-century women’s lives. Not only does it leave out the area of women’s lives where we most need God’s light – the care of our husbands, children and often also our elderly parents – it also ignores where most women spend the majority of our hours: paid work.
Many Christian churches, and much Christian literature, tend to have a sentimental attachment to the image of women as gentle creatures who spend most of our days in the quiet of our homes or doing unchallenging activities like strolling contemplatively in parks. This is simply not reality for most of us, and fails to offer us either the contextual spiritual nourishment that we need or the respect and honor our efforts deserve. Worse yet, it fails to give us any compass for living our faith in the 40+ hours per week we spend at paid work. It mistakenly sets our work aside as having no moral or spiritual value.
A few years ago I read a book entitled Life Management for Busy Women: Living Out God’s Plan with Passion and Purpose. It sounded really good, but the author basically hijacked Proverbs 31 to apply only to women with the leisure to spend most of their time making home a comfortable place for their husbands. At best, it completely ignored the reality that most of us are in the work force and at worst it implied that we are morally inferior to our sisters who do not have to work for pay.
That made me so angry. I don’t think Proverbs 31 was written to glorify housework – and it certainly wasn’t written to glorify running out for coffee with your girlfriends. It was written to praise all women who are virtuous and hard-working, who are engaged in activities of significance – whether their work takes place primarily in the home, or whether they work outside the home for pay.
So, I humbly offer this modernized version of Proverbs 31 as nourishment to my all my hard-working sisters – who, yes, LOVE to stroll in parks and go shopping and grab coffee with friends, but also have challenging work to do and deserve to have it acknowledged.

A capable wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not harm,
All the days of her life.
She seeks education and wisdom,
And works with willing hands
She is like the ships of the merchant,
She leaves her home to provide her family with food.
She rises while it is still night
To provide food for her household
And tasks for her workers.
She invests for her family’s future;
With the fruit of her hands she provides for her children’s education and her husband’s old age.
She girds herself with strength,
And makes her mind strong.
She knows her worth in the marketplace
And provides light and warmth for her household.
She puts her mind to the strategies and tactics of business
And her hands to technology
She opens her hand to the poor,
And reaches out her hand to the needy.
She is not afraid for her household in times of illness or unemployment
For her household has stored up a surplus for times of need.                                                                  She stands beside her husband as his equal in both rights and obligations
And offers him her good counsel.
She teaches your children, delivers medicine, wisely manages your surplus, invents great wonders for the good of all, and builds the car that takes you where you need to go.
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she has confidence in her virtue, her competence and her future.
She has learned to be tolerant of those who disagree with her, respectful to those in a position of authority over her, and gentle with those under her authority.
She tirelessly works a long day to care for the ones she loves.
Her daughters see her as an inspiration, and her sons as models for their future partners.
Her husband respects and honors her.
“Many women have done excellently,
But you share with me the hard work of providing for our children.”
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain
But a woman whose faith, character and talents blossom both in the hard soil of the work world and the softer ground of the home, is to be revered.
Give her the honor she is due
And let her works praise her in the city gates.

1960s jump rope rhymes

8 Replies

One of my favorite things to do as a little girl was jump rope.  I could go and go and go, jumping on my own, but the most fun was jumping with other little girls.  Two girls would turn the rope and one or more girls would jump, until they missed and has to take turns turning the rope so the other girls could jump.  We never did anything fancy like Double-Dutch, but I remember some of the rhymes we jumped to



I’m a little Dutch girl dressed in blue

These are the duties that I must do

Salute to the captain, curtsey to the queen

Turn my back on the dirty submarine

I can do the hootchie-kootchie, I can do the twist

I can do the turn-around and I can do the split

 

I’m a little Dutch girl dressed in green

My mother didn’t want me so she sent me to the queen

The queen didn’t want me so she sent me to the king

The king said he’d take me if I’d count to 15

(then you had to jump 15 times without missing)

 

Mable Mable set the table

Don’t forget the red hot pepper

(you had to jump really fast after you said “pepper” until you missed

 

Cinderella dressed in yella

Went downstairs to meet her fella

On the way her girdle busted

How many years was she disgusted?

(then jump as many times as you can without missing)

 

Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’

What the heck have you been drinkin’

Tastes like vinegar, smells like wine

Oh my gosh, it’s turpentine

 

George Washington never told a lie

So he went around the corner (jump out, run around one of the turners and jump back in)

To buy a cherry pie

How many cherries were in that pie?

(then jump as many times as you can without missing)

 

Operator, operator give me number nine

Sorry, sorry, you have to be on time

(one girl has to jump out and the next girl jump in so that the turners are never turning the rope for nobody; if you don’t jump in on time you have to be a turner and one of the turners gets to be a jumper.  This was most fun played at a school recess with a lot of other girls)

 

Not last night but the night before

24 robbers came knocking at my door

As I ran out, they ran in

I asked them what they wanted and this is what they said

Spanish dancer, do the twist

Spanish dancer, do the kick

Spanish dancer, turn around

Spanish dancer, touch the ground

Spanish dancer, show your shoe

Spanish dancer, 24-skidoo

 

I remember, too, the little rhymes we used to determine who would be “It” in hide-and-seek or various forms of tag.  We all put out Keds-clad feet in a circles and someone counted off pointing to a foot for each word.  The last foot left belonged to the person who would be “It”
.

 

Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.

How many pieces do you wish?

(Whoever’s foot the word “wish” landed on picked a number and the counter spelled it, still counting off, for example
)

T-W-O spells two and that means you will not be it

 

Ocka bocka, soda crocka

Ocka bocka boo

In comes Uncle Sam

And out goes Y-O-U

 

Eeny meeny miney moe

Catch a tiger* by the toe

If he hollers let him go

Eeny meen miney moe

(Sometimes followed by: My mother told me to pick this very best one)

*Some children used the N-word in place of tiger, but the mothers in our neighborhood would angrily correct any child who did that.  The parents in my 1960s neighborhood had the typical prejudices of northern white people of that era, but they did consider the N-word to be vulgar and inappropriate.  The correct terms for the people who picked up our trash and Sammy Davis Jr (pretty much the only African-Americans we ever saw or heard of) were “Negro” or “colored”.

Do you remember jump rope and other rhymes from your childhood?  Help me collect them by posting on my site

An Un-enchanted 1960s Childhood

Leave a reply

Many people remember their childhood as an enchanted time.  I don’t remember mine that way at all.  I remember childhood as mostly happy, but not magical in any way.  I had my share of fanciful notions.  I believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Boogie Man.  I thought the nighttime insect chirpings were the sound the stars made as they shone.  I was afraid of the dark, big dogs, mean teachers and big, mean boys.  But, mostly, my childhood seemed concrete and prosaic.  The predominant feeling was that the world made sense and I could master it.  I was a curious, sensitive, energetic little girl and my childhood was a perfect preparation for a life of action.

Like most children in the 1960s, I spent most of my time outdoors.  From the age of 4, I was allowed the run of our block, and by the time I was 8 I had the run of our neighborhood on my bike.  There were usually other kids to play with, or I would just wander by myself in the woods at the bottom of our hill, feeling like the first person ever to discover the valleys and woodland wildflowers and the little stream.

There were two very large families in our neighborhood and the children of these families dominated and bullied the rest of us.  Social skills were survival skills in that environment, and we learned them pretty quickly.  We learned to decide when to submit, when to fight back, and when to form alliances – and what it felt like both to betray and be betrayed.  I also learned to get on my bike and seek more congenial friends further afield.

We learned co-operation and leadership skills by organizing and playing group games like Red Rover, Statues, Mother May I, Tag, Hide-and-Seek, and Red Light Yellow Light.   We would play until the streetlights came on and we had to report in to our mothers

We were taught at school by dour, no-nonsense, mostly middle-aged, teachers who did not spare the rod.  We learned mostly by rote:  how to spell, how to read, how to do arithmetic, the rules of grammar and later the rules of science.  There was little notion that learning should be fun or entertaining, and group learning would have been considered a form of cheating.  We were well-prepared for a work world that was already rapidly disappearing by the time we reached adulthood: a world where you did what you were told and did the same thing every day for 40 years.

I rarely had trouble sleeping and was hardly ever sick after my tonsils came out.  Middle-class food in the 1960s was pretty plain and unexciting, and I was usually too busy playing to take much time to eat.  So, I wasn’t a big eater, but I was a fast eater.  I didn’t mind being dirty.  It didn’t bother me to go to bed with dust on my legs, dirt under my fingernails, with my arms and legs stinging from cuts and bites.  I was a healthy little animal, nothing enchanted at all, happily fit for a human life.

I’d love to hear from my readers about whether you feel like your childhood felt enchanted.  What era did you grow up in?  How did childhood feel to you.  Leave a reply on the site.