Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 14

Miscarriage: love and loss 23 years later

My annual tribute to the baby I lost 23 years ago today, the baby I call Grace:

For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 23 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I race through my life at breakneck speed, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

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Doubting Thomas: possibly the best title

Doubting Thomas. That title is a reminder, if ever there was one, that nicknames stick, even if the nickname isn’t necessarily warranted or fair. Sure, today’s Gospel tells us in black and white that Thomas the Apostle said he would not believe in the risen Lord unless he could see and touch the marks from the nails of the crucifixion and the wound where the soldier’s lance had pierced Jesus’ side. But what we tend to gloss over is that all the other apostles had already been treated to that visible proof the first time Jesus was in their midst. Jesus’ core group wasn’t exactly packed with quick believers. Remember how they initially doubted Mary Magdalene’s news of the resurrection. Remember how afterward, in the scene just before today’s Gospel, Jesus appeared to them, showed them his hands and his side—and then they rejoiced.

So why did poor Thomas get hung out to dry? In some ways, despite his title as the doubter in the crowd, he is the one who offers the rest of us hope. We hear Thomas’s story and realize that it is possible to doubt one minute and then say without hesitation, “My Lord and my God.” It is possible to make mistakes and be saved, to lose faith—however briefly and for however long—and find that Jesus is still there, in our midst, waiting for us to recognize him and accept the peace he offers.

Mary DeTurris Poust, “Possibly the Best Title,” from the July 2021 issue of Give Us This Day www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2021). Used with permission.

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Confessions of a rosary convert

Rosary-challenged. That’s how I’ve described myself for most of my life. Don’t get me wrong. I have more sets of rosary beads than I can count, tucked away in my nightstand and desk drawers, in multiple purses and hanging on my bedpost. When I’m in a panic, the Rosary spills from my lips without warning. I once embarrassed my daughters by reciting the Rosary at full volume on a crowded plane to Rome when we hit a scary patch of turbulence. I reserve the right, as a Catholic girl named Mary, to call on the Rosary at will, even if the prayer is not in my regular repertoire.

No matter how much I wanted to love the Rosary, I struggled with it. To me, silent contemplation felt like home, where the Rosary felt more like an emergency stop on a dark highway.

A few weeks ago, however, in the middle of the night when I could not sleep, I blindly felt around my nightstand drawer for the strand of purple beads I knew was hiding in the corner. I pulled it close and began to pray. I fell asleep somewhere during the first decade and woke up to find the rosary beads tangled in the bedsheets. The next night, I pulled out the beads again and started praying, knowing I’d likely fall asleep before I could finish five decades or maybe even one. And so it continued, night after night.

I no longer find it strange to search for my beads before bed each night and slip them under my pillow. I have to admit that while I find my conversion somewhat fascinating at this later stage in life, I don’t find it completely surprising. Whenever I talk about the many prayer options in our Catholic tradition, I urge people to remain open to methods that don’t seem to suit them. The Liturgy of the Hours that was so out of sync with life as the parent of small children may provide the perfect rhythm for a life in retirement. The silence that seems deafening in one phase of life can feel like a soothing balm at another.

At night, as I move the beads through my fingers and silently say the words to prayers that are as familiar as my own name, I wonder what caused this shift. Certainly, it did not come from me, and so I welcome it as a gift of the Spirit, an unexpected grace. I don’t know if it will last forever, but for as long as it is here, I will embrace it, open to whatever grows out of this new love for an ancient tradition.

Since taking up the Rosary daily, I am much more aware of just how many rosary beads are constantly visible in my home and office—hanging from the statue of the Blessed Mother on my dresser, strung from the Mexican mirror in my kitchen, sitting on the shelf of my office bookcase. I’ve got a glow-in-the-dark single decade in a purse pocket and rose-scented beads blessed by the pope, a brown knotted strand purchased and blessed in Assisi when I led a pilgrimage in 2014, clear crystal beads given to me by my fifth-grade religion class, and wooden beads my husband laid on the open tomb of St. Catherine of Siena on her feast day and our wedding anniversary when he was in Rome.

And while my many beads are beautiful, each in their own way, it is the prayers themselves that hold the real beauty and power. Even if I had no beads at all and had to count on my fingers, the Our Fathers and Hail Marys would sparkle like diamonds in the darkness and light my way.

This column originally appeared in the July 1, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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The journey is the goal

Last week I was working out in a corner of our backyard where I decided to create a meditation garden. The area, which had once been home to a swing set, had become overrun with weeds and was, for the most part, lost space. I came up with the idea for the garden last year when pandemic gave me ample opportunity to work outside.

I figured this year I’d be ahead of the game. It was early in the season. How bad could it be? Bad. I spent three hours sitting in the dirt one Saturday morning with a spade and a bucket making very slow progress. Inch by inch, hour by hour, I cleared small patches by hand to make sure I didn’t pull out the rare native trillium or the glistening green leaves of vinca ground cover along with the invasive weeds.

About two hours into the project, when I considered quitting, I remembered that the vision of a peaceful meditation garden was nice, but the greater goal was to allow the journey to become the meditation. Sure, it will be wonderful to one day sit on a meditation bench surrounded by carefully placed stepping stones and intentionally planted flowers, but the real lessons of the meditation garden—as in so many aspects of life—are learned along the way, in the weeds, so to speak.

Meditation garden in progress.

Weeding, like raking leaves or shoveling snow, is one of those exercises in futility. You do it knowing you’ll need to do it again, probably sooner rather than later. The repetitive motion and beauty of the natural world suspend you in time in a way. You are there, working, but you are also everywhere—talking silently to God, letting your mind wander where it will, mentally working out problems you haven’t been able to solve, breathing deep and listening hard for the still small voice that is rustling nearby.

From my seat right now, I can see my progress on the garden and the work that remains. There is satisfaction in the accomplishment, but, more than that, there is excitement over the possibilities. I’m no longer hung up on the Instagram-worthy final product but joyful over what I might discover along the way, whether that’s the mundane miracle of a small toad hopping away from the shadow of my hand and surprising me for a brief moment, or a deep sense of God’s presence, reassuring me that, as St. Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

When we think about Scripture, it is often on the journey that the great spiritual lessons occur—drawing water from a well, on a trek up a mountain, on a boat waiting to pull up a net full of fish, on the road to Emmaus. Our faith story is full of Aha! moments that occurred amid the ordinary tasks of everyday life. When we rush through those tasks to get to a goal, we risk missing the lesson, drowning out the voice of the Spirit, trampling over God right there in our midst.

Back when I wrote my book Everyday Divine, I did so not only to share methods of praying in the busyness of our days but to learn for myself how to pray without ceasing through the seeming “drudgery” of life. But the drudgery is precisely where God lives—in the laundry we fold, in the lawns we mow, in the vegetables we chop, in the weeds we pull.

What task or project has you wishing you could leapfrog over it to get to the end result? Can you take a deep breath and make the journey the goal? Can you create a meditation garden right where you are today, even if you never set foot outside?

This column originally appeared in the June 2, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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The rules we live by

As we round the corner on pandemic and see a faint light at the end of our long Covid tunnel, I’ve found myself stuck—physically, due to some minor injuries and illnesses; mentally, due to months of near-isolation coupled with the long upstate New York winter; spiritually, due to an inability or unwillingness to simply sit with God or at least go through the motions of prayer and hope something sticks.

A recent New York Times story talked about “languishing” as a new phenomenon in our post-Covid world: “Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield,” the author wrote.

I have to admit, that description struck a chord, or two. As I looked out my family room window on a sunny-but-freezing late April afternoon, my mind’s eye traveled back to 2017, long before I could blame pandemic for my languishing, when a hauntingly similar feeling sent me running to my favorite retreat spot: the Abbey of the Genesee, just south of Rochester. Desperate for someone or something to shake me out of my malaise, I signed up for spiritual direction and confession and was lucky enough to get a monk who was once a novice under Thomas Merton and later served as spiritual director to Henri Nouwen.

Father John Eudes Bamberger, O.S.C.O., who died last year, saw through my façade and was not content to let me off the hook with a simple diagnosis of “languishing,” or anything else for that matter. He put the ball squarely in my court: look at your choices, look at how you spend your days, and you will discover the “rule” you have chosen to live by. Although I wrote about that conversation in this space at the time, his words keep bubbling to the surface years later. I thought maybe we could all benefit from revisiting his sage advice.

If we were to break down our days into hours, our lives into seasons, what would emerge as the things we have chosen to give the most time and, therefore, the most importance in our lives? It’s not a pretty picture when I start to imagine what my “rule” would look like. There would be way too much scrolling through social media, way too much coffee, way too much mindless eating and mindless talking, way too much complaining about not having enough time even as I waste hour upon hour doing things that bring no positive benefits and most likely diminish the quality of my life and, by extension, my family’s life.

When I went to confession with Father John Eudes, he told me that, for my penance, I was to spend 30 minutes “in the presence of God” every night for six weeks. Why this seemingly harsh assignment? Because the wise old monk recognized that what I needed more than anything else was time away from all the nonsense, time to reflect on my choices, time with the only One who could pull me out of my malaise and set me back on the right course.

As I recover from an eye infection that has sidelined me for days, I can’t help but think that this brief illness has forced me to do what I was unwilling to do for myself: step away from my work, step away from the screen and simply be for a few precious, albeit somewhat painful, days.

Although it couldn’t hold a candle to a silent retreat at the abbey, the brief span of quiet at home allowed me to hear the still small voice urging me to get back to the nightly practice in the presence of God and to write a “rule” for my life that will nourish my soul rather than siphon off joy, to choose flourishing over languishing.

This column originally appeared in the May 5, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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Life Lines podcast: grief and grace

After a few months MIA, the Line Lines podcast is back. On the eve of the 33rd anniversary of my mother’s death, I’m talking about grief and grace, sorrow and subconscious memories that wake us up even when we’re unaware. The body, mind and heart remember. Always. Listen here:

For more Life Lines episodes, click HERE.

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Responding with heart means jumping in with trust

I love how Peter tends to respond to Jesus with such pure emotion. As in today’s scene, when he leaps out of his boat and races through the water toward Jesus; as on the Mount of the Transfiguration when he wants to erect three tents; as he answers without hesitation that he believes Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God”; as he tries to convince Jesus that his Passion doesn’t need to happen, causing our Lord to say, “Get behind me Satan”; as at the Last Supper when he wants Jesus to wash not only his feet but head and hands; as in the Garden at Gethsemane when he cuts off the ear of a servant; as he warms his hand by the fire and denies even knowing Jesus.

Peter does not just act when it comes to Jesus; he reacts, usually from the depth of his emotion. What if we did the same, responding to Jesus not from our head but from our heart? Sure, we’d get it wrong sometimes, as Peter often did, but mostly we’d get it right. How can we be so sure? Because when we respond to God from our heart, we connect on the deepest level, and, from that place, we grow and transform into who God created us to be.

Today, jump out of whatever safe boat you’re paddling through the chaos of life. Run toward Jesus, water splashing, arms flailing, heart pounding, spirit soaring. He’s waiting for you on the shore.

Mary DeTurris Poust, “Right from the Heart,” from the April 2021 issue of Give Us This Day www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2021). Used with permission.

Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

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Getting past the ‘veil’ of judgment

One of the great joys—and occasional challenges—of being a writer is getting letters from readers via email, social media and even snail mail. Those messages often lift my spirits and encourage me to carry on with my writing when everything else tells me it’s time to pack it in. No matter how often I hear from readers, it is always an unexpected gift when I open up my computer and see a note from a stranger who was touched in some way by something I wrote.

Not everything is a bed of roses, of course. I do hear from folks who take issue with this or that and some who write to me almost daily as they read through a reflection book and send comments and critiques all along the way. Even those make me smile, because I am making that person think, and that’s never a bad thing. Every once in a while, however, something unusual and anonymous shows up in the mail, signaling from the packaging alone that concern is warranted.

Last week, it was just such a snail mail package that caught my attention. It arrived in my office mailbox, a manila folder fashioned into an envelope and taped up with no return address. It was puffy and said to handle with care. I was intrigued—and a little afraid. I opened it gingerly and saw a long hand-written letter with no signature and a lace chapel veil—mocha-colored with a burgundy bow, wrapped in plastic.

I’ve never worn a chapel veil. I was born the month before Vatican II officially opened and was a CCD child of the late ’60s and ’70s. I sang in my parish folk group, made felt banners and homemade hosts for sunrise Masses. I sang Kumbaya, and not ironically. So, the gift of the chapel veil was interesting to me, and also touching. That someone would purchase and mail me this lovely gift was so sweet. I tried it on and thought that if I ever went back to Italy, I would pack it in my suitcase and take it for a spin over there, because I couldn’t see myself wearing it to church here.

Veiled selfie at work

Which made me think back to the letter writer’s comments about when she first started wearing the veil her mother gave her. She felt self-conscious and possibly judged, fearing what fellow parishioners might think. But she continued to wear it and found the benefits outweighed the stares. The veil cut down on distractions and helped her to focus, she explained. The veil offered a little protection when she’d had a late night caring for her babies and looked worn out. The veil made her feel feminine and special.

I thought how sad it is that we are so quick to judge one another, that someone wearing a veil knows the eyes on her will likely make a snap decision about who she is and how she worships. And the truth is, I’d probably be one of those people. But we are one, whether we wear a chapel veil or sport Birkenstocks, kneel to receive Communion or accept the host in our hands, find our connection to God in the words of a novena or in the glories of nature.

I am so grateful to my anonymous friend for sending me the chapel veil. She brought joy to my heart with her generosity and reminded me that the many traditions of our faith pave a wide path to heaven, giving us so many ways to bridge the divide between here and there.

She closed her letter with one of my favorite quotes from Dostoevsky: “Beauty will save the world.” Seek out beauty each day and you will find God all around you, maybe even in an unusual envelope in your mailbox.

This column originally appeared in the April 8, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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A prayer for bold and wild faith

Happy Easter Tuesday!

In today’s Gospel, we are reminded that Mary of Magdala was the first to witness the Risen Lord, and the first to preach the Good News of the Resurrection. In Mary Magdalene we see a woman who never ran, never wavered; who stood at the foot of the cross when all but one of the Apostles were nowhere to be found; who stood at the tomb when the Apostles thought there was no reason to hope; who stood before the Apostles and preached the impossible to a group of men who thought she was just an emotional woman having a hallucination.

In Mary Magdalene we see utter love and devotion in the face of utter doubt and betrayal; we see bold and wild faith in the face of cowering fear and logic. Mary of Magdala is so often overlooked or, worse, derided and yet she went on to become the Apostles to the Apostles, preaching the Good News to those who would go on to preach it to others. That is a true disciple. Would the Good News ever have made it to the rest of the world if not for this woman of courage and conviction?

We pray today for the kind of bold and wild faith that will move our hearts to act even when our heads tell us to fear. We pray for the kind devotion and love that will transforms our lives from the inside out and inspire us to preach with our very lives even if we cannot preach with our words. We pray to recognize Jesus standing before us in the garden of our lives.

When we are wavering, when we are doubting, when we want to weep, let us look to Mary Magdalene for the strength to hold firm and to speak truth.

St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us. And may the Risen Lord fillus with new life and light to sustain us in the days and months ahead.

The Lord is Risen, alleluia, alleluia.

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Manic Monday: Holy Week Edition

It’s been a while since I checked in here on a Monday, so I thought Holy Week would be a good time to do it. I hope you are all healthy and happy and enjoying the occasional bouts of spring — at least here in upstate New York — that give us hope that winter really is going to end, and soon. It feels like a figurative end to winter as well, as more and more folks get their vaccines and the hope of returning to in-person gatherings seems like a not-too-distant reality. I held back on saying a return to “normal,” because I don’t think we should return to normal. I hope and pray that this pandemic has taught us what’s important and what’s unnecessary and what is simply holding us back from true happiness in this life. Let’s not forget the hard lessons we’ve learned over the past year. I say that for myself as much as for anyone else because it’s easy to backtrack and return to old — and not necessarily positive — habits. Path of least resistance and all. So here’s to holding onto the pandemic lessons that opened our eyes and hearts and letting go of the pandemic fears and anxiety. That being said, WEAR A MASK until we are totally out of the woods. On to our Manic Monday rundown…

Soundtrack: These days I toggle back and forth between Taylor Swift’s latest albums (Folklore and Evermore), the yoga class playlists I create on Spotify — you can follow my Spotify channel HERE — and my latest Audible purchase, in this case Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by Irish poet John O’Donohue. I have been totally enthralled with the gorgeous readings of poets O’Donohue and David Whyte. My previous Audible listen had been Being Ram Dass, which was pretty good although I will admit that I made it through “only” 15 of the 18 hours. I had to surrender at that point.

Bookshelf: I just finished Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott, which at times made me laugh out loud and at other times made me long for the Anne Lamott whose writing I fell in love with years ago. This one felt a little rushed, like she needed to get a COVID-related book out there before it was too late. I would have preferred a more thoughtful book that did not need to respond to COVID but responded instead to the human condition that exists with or without a pandemic. Maybe I was just cranky when I read it. Still worth your time, for sure, especially if you are a Lamott fan. I guess I just expect more from one of my writing heroes. I am currently reading a bunch of yoga-related books, including Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity by Tracee Stanley. This is a book that’s as beautiful to look at and hold as it is to read. And, of course, I’ve been reading along with my own book of Lenten reflections, Not By Bread Alone. It’s always interesting to me to see what I wrote more than a year ago and how it applies to life today.

Palm Sunday dinner

Menu: We opted to do a big Palm Sunday dinner yesterday since ham is not something our girls will eat — one vegetarian and one who eats only poultry. It was nice to set the dining room table on a non-holiday and break out the good china. Alongside our ham was homemade mac and cheese and roasted asparagus. We’ll be doing chicken/tofu parm and pasta for Easter dinner, so that’s something delicious to look forward to. Dennis has been cooking up lots of amazing meals lately — Thai chicken, pork chops pizzaiola, turkey dinners on random weekends. We’ve been eating far too well over here, and the scale shows it.

Viewfinder: I’m loving the signs of spring outside my window and the funny furry friends who keep us company every day. I remember at this time last year how consumed I was with the birds at the feeder and the bright green buds pushing up through the earth. Every single thing felt like a sign of hope in the midst of fear. This year it feels like a sign of hope that we have made it through the worst of the pandemic. I am already getting out onto our deck every time the temps rise and the sun comes out, sipping my coffee or wine (depending on the hour) and listening to the persistent cardinals high up in the trees calling to one another and the less showy but still delightful sparrows and juncos and robins pecking around near the feeder. Life is good. Here are a few shots:

Jake enjoying deck lifeSnowdrops in the yard. First sign of springFred interrupting a Zoom meetingTeaching yoga at Jai

Datebook: The big news at our house is that four out of five Pousts have received our first vaccines, all last week in four different locations. It felt like a great sigh of relief, and I can’t wait until we can get our second round. Easter is just a few days away, so that will be a day to celebrate, especially since we will see Olivia this week for the first time in months. I’ll be at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany on Easter morning for Mass with Bishop Scharfenberger at 11 a.m. Join us if you’re in town! And a few weeks down the road is Chiara’s Confirmation. Since she has chosen my dad as her sponsor (and Helena as her name in honor of my paternal grandmother) I’m hoping my dad and stepmom will be able to visit. We have not seen them since Christmas 2019, which is just crazy. Can’t wait to be together again.

GPS: Other than my excursion up to South Glens Falls to get my vaccine, my beautiful “lava-orange” Sante Fe doesn’t get much of a workout. I head into the office three days a week now and over to Jai Yoga School several times a week to teach or take classes. That’s pretty much the confines of my world at this point. Oh, and physical therapy for a back issue, although I hope that will wrap up this week. Essentially I don’t need a GPS and rarely drive more than six miles at a clip. I’m hoping that as the weather improves and our vaccines kick in that will change. Maybe we’ll even get to go on a vacation this summer, although that’s still a long shot. Here’s hoping, for all of us.

Have a peaceful and prayerful Holy Week. Spend some time in silence in the presence of God, even if you can’t get to a church due to COVID concerns. Just make some time to be present to this special time in our Church year. If you’d like a little Holy Week inspiration, check out this beautiful video message from Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz Weber:

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