Catholic Conference 4 Moms: Wonder and Beauty

Editor's Note: This is one of a series of 5 reflections on the Catholic Conference 4 Moms, an annual online conference hosted by CatholicMom contributor Tami Kiser. This year, the conference theme is "Pass It On: Equipping kids for the journey of faith," and CatholicMom.com is proud to be a conference sponsor. Visit CatholicMosaic.com to sign up for the FREE 5-day conference and enter the door-prize drawing. - Barb

Copyright 2018 Tami Kiser. All rights reserved.[/caption] There’s a lot of ugliness in our world. It’s hard not to see it around us. Sometimes it makes you lose sight of beauty. But beauty is in our world too. We just have to seek it out, appreciate it, and make a place for it in our lives. Keith Kiser has spent most of his adult life seeking out beauty in music, art, and nature, and sharing that with his family and his students. As the father of a large family and headmaster of a Catholic school for several decades, Keith Kiser puts a priority on Beauty in his life. Why? Because it brings him joy and it leads him to God. In his talk on Beauty, Keith shares his own story of experiencing beauty through music and how that led him and his wife to make an intentional choice to include great music and art into their family life when they were just starting out. It may seem like an overwhelming task to add another expectation to our already busy family lives but Keith makes it easier for us by giving us four practical tips on how to bring beauty into the lives of our families.

- Fill Your Home with Beauty:Play great music for your children starting when they’re young,if possible. Fill your home with images of great classic art. It’s inexpensive to get poster prints of famous works of art. If you can afford to get them framed nicely, even better.
- Give them Lessons: Make music, art, and dance lessons a priority for every child for at least a period of time. Luckily, most schools have music and art programs and, often, you can get inexpensive dance lessons from local recreation centers if money is an issue.
- Expose them to Beauty:Take your family to art museums, concerts, and theater productions. Budget-friendly ideas are free outdoor concerts, free museum days, and low-cost Shakespeare in the Park performances.
- Expose them to Beauty in Nature: Go out and explore nature together as a family. Keith points out that beauty in nature reveals to us the glory of God. I would definitely agree with that. Hiking trips, nature walks, even gardening in your own backyard help connect you to our Creator and give you a glimpse of His Majesty. It’s nearly impossible to take in a beautiful landscape, sunset, or night sky and not appreciate the One who made it a little more.

Growing up in a large family myself, I have fond memories of free outdoor symphony concerts and lots of years of going to Shakespeare in the Park. For some reason, that’s not been something that I carried over into my married life though. Keith’s talk whetted my appetite for more art, more music, and more nature in my life. He reminded me that these things bring us closer to God. After all, it’s easy to see the ugliness of our world. Beauty is all around us if we look for it.