I have a lot of posts started, but this one, from two years ago during Advent, caught my eye a few days ago. It is every bit as timely now as it was then, right down to the reference to famine in North Korea (to say nothing of humanitarian crises in other parts of the world),…
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Small 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 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 MoreAdvent Wednesdays: Light
Today I want to point you to a post by another blogger: Advent: On Seeing Light And Poverty. It’s been nearly two weeks, and I’m still turning this post over in my mind. Light is a central theme of Christianity: light of the world, Christ our light, light to the nations. When we pray for…
Read MoreA Conversation in the Truck
My husband has been driving the same miniature pickup–stick shift, no CD player, no airbags–as long as I’ve known him. We spent our first date, on a November night that sparkled with frost, driving around talking in the darkness of the warm cab. These days, Alex rides shotgun in that cab more than I do.…
Read MoreFirst World Problems
I was pulling into Macy’s yesterday afternoon when a story came on NPR about the food supply, or more accurately the lack thereof, in North Korea. When I think of North Korea, I think of world security, nuclear weapons and a hostile dictator–but I’ve never thought of starvation. Until now. “I saw one family, a…
Read MoreWhat Happened After Venus Crossed the Sun
Alex and I had a date last night. At 4:30 we all loaded into the van and went down to the university to meet Christian, who took the younger three (even the baby!) back home so the two of us could have some quality time with several hundred other people crowded onto a rooftop with…
Read MoreLooking For A Line
I wasn’t there. I was supervising the little ones at Children’s Liturgy. But Alex, my thoughtful, empathetic Alex, was riveted to the missionary’s story of life in Haiti, of poverty so intense that children eat “cookies” made of clay. When church was over, we drove home to a building that would house dozens of people…
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Kathleen M. Basi 