For the last four or five months, Trump has been calling me 2-3 times a day from a 646 area code. First I answered it, thinking it was my sister because it was a New York call. Then I ignored it. Then I answered and yelled into the phone, just to see if it might provoke some…
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Easy/Hard
Why is it so easy to see or hear one detail and leap to the worst possible conclusion about a person’s motivations? Why is it so easy to give our past hurts permission to control our present reactions, and block out reason when it urges moderation? Why is it so easy to skip over grief…
Read MoreIt’s Just Not That Simple, People!
Sometimes I think you guys must get tired of me saying the same things over and over. Like this: The world isn’t black and white. I know everyone knows this, but people don’t act like they know it. I read an article yesterday called “The Rise of American Authoritarianism,” which addressed the bewilderment so many of…
Read MoreMercy (or the lack of it) on the road to the White House
My title today probably evokes an instant reaction. Everyone is well aware of the nosedive in common courtesy—a baseline standard for treating others with mercy—shown by the candidates in this presidential election. And lest you think I’m aiming this only at one side of the Great Political Divide, let me say that I have only watched…
Read MoreSmall Things, Great Love (Reblog)
The past two weeks. It has almost been too much to bear, all the heartache. All the hatred and the hurting and brokenness everywhere we turn. It is too much. I am tempted to shut it out: turn off the news, avoid the rapid-fire of social media politicking. Sink into my own comfortable life, where…
Read MoreThe Way We Talk To Each Other Matters
In the spring and early summer of 1994, I was a sophomore in college. I spent the late semester gnashing my teeth about who got which solo parts in the orchestra, and my summer working on the farm. I was aware enough of the world to know something awful was going on in a country…
Read More12 Years A Slave
There are times when you walk through the world filled with awe and joy and gratitude, aware of the wonder, the beauty, the innate goodness of all that exists on earth. Other times it’s like a veil is ripped from your eyes, revealing the brokenness of the world in all its heartbreaking clarity. A brokenness…
Read MoreThomas Merton on Politics
Some words of wisdom from Thomas Merton for your Wednesday. I put these quotes together from two different chapters of “New Seeds of Contemplation,” in which he is addressing “The Moral Theology of the Devil” and “The Root of War is Fear.” His context for the latter is the Cold War, but all of these…
Read MoreSome Food For Thought On Election Day
I spent several Thursday mornings this fall attending a class at our local Newman Center. The topic: the history of Catholic social teaching, taught by a Dominican brother. It was illuminating, to say the least. I had hoped to share more of what I learned, but it hasn’t worked out that way. But this morning,…
Read MoreIt’s Not Just What You Say–It’s How You Say It
“There’s a brick wall–go beat your head against it!” That’s how our pastor summed up the Old Testament reading yesterday. God was being frank–Elijah was being sent to give Israel a piece of God’s mind, and they weren’t going to take it well. It applies to us, too; if we are called to speak up…
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Kathleen M. Basi 