Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 19

First World problems and simple pleasures

About one week ago, our dishwasher died. Well, it didn’t die completely; it just shut down mid-cycle no matter how many times we tried to make it work. And, boy, did we try. We spent a ridiculous amount of time running the normal cycle, hearing the telltale ding of an error and then re-running cycles — sometimes four or five in a row — in an effort to get the dishes clean, if not dry. Finally, we surrendered, accepting the fact that for the foreseeable future we had no dishwasher, thanks to a dearth of appointments with our warranty company. And so, this weekend, Dennis headed to the store to buy a drain rack so we could start doing dishes the old-fashioned way.

One of our three children marveled at this strange contraption, wondering how it “worked.” Another saw me with my hands in sudsy water and asked if she might try since it looked so “fun.” I flashed back to my own young childhood, when our home had no dishwasher at all, and I was the nightly dryer of dishes, standing beside my mother begrudgingly with towel in hand.

But, as I soaked the dishes, up to my elbows in warmth and bubbles, looking out the kitchen window at the lush green of our slightly-out-of-control backyard plants, I felt…what was it? Peace. Maybe even joy. Definitely satisfaction. This long-lost simple pleasure, this chore, was, in reality, a welcome break from the chaos of life, giving me reason to pause, to stand in one place with nowhere to go and to meditatively move my hands in circles as I scrubbed the plates and pots.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says, in Peace Is Every Step: “The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles! If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert.”

In my own book, Everyday Divine, I recommend turning everyday chores into prayers: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay-at-home mom, CEO, teacher, plumber, student, or retiree, certain things simply have to be done: washing dishes, making beds, mowing lawns, wiping counters. This is the most logical place to begin adding everyday prayer into your life. Why not make the most of all that time spent doing necessary tasks?”

It took the inconvenience of a broken dishwasher to remind me of my own instructions. As it turns out, St. Teresa of Avila was right: “God moves among the pots and pans.” Especially when warm, soapy water is involved.

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St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us

My reflection on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene in the July issue of Give Us This Day:

St. Mary Magdalene has a feast! A new addition to the Church’s liturgical calendar as of only last year, our first reaction to the celebration might be, “What took them so long?” How is it possible that the “Apostle to the Apostles” was last in line when it came to official recognition of key witnesses to the resurrection? It’s a good question, because clearly Jesus Christ saw fit to put Mary Magdalene first. While the others were locked away in fear, she was at the tomb looking for the Lord, and she was not disappointed. Shocked? Certainly. Confused? At first. But disappointed? Never. Because she trusted in the Lord from day one and did not waver. Not once.

Poor Mary Magdalene has the reputation as the bad girl of Christian Scripture. Our image of her is plagued by our human attempts to express her failings, wrongly casting her at various times throughout Church history as the woman caught in adultery (John 8) and as the penitent woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair (Luke 7). Why do those story lines define Mary Magdalene when the heart of her story lies in her faithfulness, not in her sinfulness?

Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber describes Mary Magdalene as “the patron saint of just showing up.” That is the part of Mary Magdalene’s story that is critical to us.

From the moment Jesus cured Mary and cast out the demons that haunted her (Luke 8:2), she turned her life over to him completely. She followed him—literally and spiritually. She was there at the cross, watching the suffering, never giving a second thought to her own welfare and safety. She was there at the empty tomb—looking, searching, following always.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” asks the mysterious gardener. And then Jesus speaks her name and she recognizes him, not because of some sort of magic trick, a spiritual sleight of hand, but because she believed so completely that she could hear his voice speaking to her heart. Immediately, she went and announced it to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord,” again not fearing for her own reputation upon saying the impossible, the unimaginable. Because she lived for him not for herself.

When Pope Francis announced that the memorial of Mary Magdalene would be elevated to the level of feast (along with the rest of the apostles) he called her a “true and authentic evangelizer” and said that her tears at the empty tomb can serve as a reminder to all of us that “sometimes in our lives, tears are the lenses we need to see Jesus.”

Mary Magdalene knew darkness and doubt, she knew what it meant to be bound by infirmity and what it meant to be healed and loved unconditionally by God. In that transformation she was reborn.

Each one of us is given the same opportunity, the same mercy, the same unearned gift of salvation. Today Mary Magdalene reminds us that we do not need to be perfect; we only need to be faithful.

Run, and tell the others.

Subscribe to Give Us This Day from Liturgical Press HERE.

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Taking a vacation from technology

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this week when a headline made me pause—and click: “I almost let my journalism job destroy my marriage. Don’t make the same mistake,” it read. Although I’m no longer a journalist and I don’t think my marriage is on the verge of destruction due to my job, I do think my joy, my spiritual health and my life in general are teetering close to the brink because of the always-connected mentality of the modern world. And I know I’m not alone.

In the story on the Poytner website, one man makes this-not-so-startling discovery:

“You asked us to write down everything we did from the time we reached the parking lot until we left for home,” the editor said. “But by the time I got to the parking lot, I’d already been working for two hours.

“My day starts when I wake up and check my email.”

“He’s right, of course. Employees in news organizations (and, to be sure, many other businesses) frequently start working hours before they leave home. They also work while traveling to and from the office and they work some more after they return home, sometimes for hours.”

Although work is the main culprit here, it’s not the only problem. At night, after the dinner dishes are cleared, I’m usually working on my laptop, Dennis is reading on his iPad, and each child is on a device, usually working on homework in the school season or, during these summer months, Snapchatting with friends, prepping for college visits or keeping up with the day’s news. For myself, the full-time tether to work borders on obsession. It is the first thought in my head when I wake up, even if it happens to be 3 a.m. It is the last thing I think about before I drift off to sleep, and, when I try to meditate, my work To Do list ends up becoming my mantra.

Some of it is the nature of the job, but most of it is the nature of me — combined with the nature of the world we live in. Bad combo. Gone are the days when you put a file in your desk drawer, turned out the office light and put your work to bed for the day. Now your files are in the Cloud, your office is in your hand, and, rather than turn out the light, you simply switch to “Night Mode” to give your poor eyes some relief as you read work emails in bed.

With increasing regularity, I suggest to Dennis that we sell everything and move off the grid, although since I have never been a camper, this is probably not a good model if survival is my goal. But there is a grain of truth in that statement. It seems the only way to disconnect anymore is to do it dramatically, in a wholesale way that means leaving society as we know it, and there’s something wrong with that. We have to regain our collective balance when it comes to the technology that makes life easier, and often more fun, and the technology that makes us a prisoner in our own lives.

Toward the end of the Poytner story, the author poses this question and answer:

“Practically speaking, how can I decide when it’s time to stop working and call it a day?

“For starters, don’t wait until everything is finished—because it’s never finished. Right?”

What are you trying to finish right now? Has your phone become your significant other? How can you break the cycle? Summer is the time to find out. You don’t have to go off the grid for good, but what about for a week or even one day?

Try tying your technology fast to the Sabbath, and make every Sunday a technology-free day. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a call from a child needing a ride home from a friend’s house, just that you’re not going to get sucked into the work email vortex when you end the call. Step away from your device and give yourself a rest. The life you save may be your own.

This column originally appeared in the July 6, 2017, issue of Catholic New York. 

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Christmas in July. Sort of.

My newest book of spiritual reflections is now available from Liturgical Press. It’s never too early to start planning for Christmas, right? You can get Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas: Waiting in Joyful Hope 2017-18  for only 99 cents per copy at the Liturgical Press site, even cheaper if you buy in bulk, as many parishes do. It’s also available on Amazon for $2 per copy, if you prefer to go the Prime route.

Here’s the description from the back of the book:

Prepare spiritually for the coming of Christ with this popular, easy-to-use annual guide. During the especially busy Advent and Christmas seasons, this book offers brief, down-to-earth reflections that bring prayer and Scripture into everyday life in a thought-provoking and lasting way. Through Mary DeTurris Poust’s insightful reflections on Scripture readings from the daily Mass, readers will grow in their understanding of the word of God. This book will help busy people achieve their goal of enriching their personal prayer life during the seasons of Advent and Christmas.

Thank you to the folks at Liturgical Press for inviting me back for another round after writing the Lent 2016 booklet. For those who like to plan for liturgical seasons years in advance, I’m also on tap to write the Lenten book of reflections for 2019.

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My Merton Fourth-and-Walnut Moment

Tonight I had my Thomas Merton Fourth & Walnut moment. I watched this crowd dancing in the plaza on Atwells in Providence while we ate dinner, and all I could feel was love for all of them, and joy. This is the best of who are. All together. No differences. Strangers dancing as partners in the middle of an open square. #hope

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The art of life, and the life of art

When I was young, I bought into the notion that I was not good at art, that we were not good at art, as if it were possible to classify an entire gene pool as bad at any particular thing. But the truth is that I was writing songs and my own version of poetry long before I hit high school. And although I didn’t think of it as such at the time, it was art, even if it was not the still-life-on-canvas type of art we might imagine when we hear the word.

At one point in the late 1980s, when my mother was dying of cancer and I spent long hours on days off keeping her company at home or while chemo dripped slowly into her veins, I began working my way through a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” In the midst of the misery and mystery of terminal illness, I made a happy discovery: I wasn’t half bad at art. I began sketching and stretching to see how far I could go. Not long after, my mother died, and those idle hours disappeared, and rather than make art, I got on with the art of making a living. For many years, bridging three decades, I was a writer. Plain and simple. I reveled in that life and that title, and I understood the incredible gift of having a job that is also the thing you love to do most, the thing that feeds your soul. Writing and prayer are the two things that do that for me. Prayer is my inhale, writing my exhale.

Fast forward to today, when my work life, which is now far more practical than creative, takes me from dawn to dusk and then some. At any hour of any given day, I am thinking about my day job, even if I am not actually doing my day job. And while that may sound like passion and commitment, it is really a curse, because I allow it to eat up every ounce of my energy and creativity, leaving me feeling depleted and withered. There is no time to write, I say, because I must always do this other work. And so, my writing life has dried up and, alo

ng with it, my prayer life, because the two have always been interconnected. Pray, write, inhale, exhale.

I contemplate all of this as I watch graduation photos scroll by on my Facebook feed and as my own children wrapped up their school years, inching closer to adulthood and “real” life. I want to urge them to do what they love. Or, even better, do what they must, do the thing that they cannot imagine not doing, even if it is not what they think the world expects. Try, fail, try again, expect to be disappointed and to disappoint, but carry on anyway with the thing that breathes life into your spirit, whether it’s full time or in the spare hours you carve out. And whatever you do, don’t buy into anyone else’s definition of what you are good at, or not.

A few months ago, I signed up for semi-private classes with a local artist. As I dipped the brush into my acrylics, I could hear echoes from my childhood telling me I had no business putting a paintbrush to canvas. I swatted the thoughts away, even as I looked disapprovingly at my mediocre painting, wanting to quit for fear the echo might be right. Instead, I poured on another layer of paint, added a heart, brushed in some wings and felt my lungs fill with air.

Pray, paint, sing, write, inhale, exhale. Do what you love, do what you must because “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Mt 6:21)

This column first appeared in the June 8, 2017, issue of Catholic New York. 

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Take a weekend to nourish body, mind, and spirit

I’m guessing you could use a few days of peace and quiet, maybe in a gorgeous spot, where you have nothing to do but stare out a lake and let someone else do the cooking. Sound about right? If so, mark your calendars. I’ll be leading a retreat — Stillpoint: Creating Calm amid Life’s Chaos — at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, New York, over the weekend of Sept. 8-10, 2017. You spiritual getaway will include collage-as-prayer, journaling, silent breakfasts, meditation in motion, and prayer practices to help you discover the divine in the everyday, the miracles in the mundane. Plus, you’ll get delicious meals and free time to rest or hike or paddle a kayak across a crystal clear lake. I’ll provide the program; Pyramid will provide the spectacular setting, and you can do as much or as little as you want. The goal is to nourish yourself — body, mind, and spirit.

I fell in love with Pyramid Life Center in 2008, when I attended my first silent retreat there. I went alone, with a whole lot of doubt packed into my overnight bag. But what unfolded there over the next two days was magical, and, when Sunday came, I didn’t want it to end. It’s a special place, and I’m excited to share it with you. If you’d like to read about that first visit, you can do so HERE. If you’d like a visual of where you’ll be headed, take a look at this — it’s from the very same weekend of the year in 2013. So, weather permitting, you could be in for this eyeful of gorgeous:

As for our retreat, it won’t be completely silent, but it will have some healthy doses of quiet mixed in with lots of opportunities for praying in all different ways. Here are some highlights:

— Silence in the early morning through breakfast.

— Mindfulness practice with your morning meals

— Cutting and pasting to create a spiritual collage or vision board

— Several spiritual talks…on the cravings that get in the way of our relationship with God, on weaving prayer into everyday life, on spiritual friendship, on embracing our own brokenness and learning to love ourselves as God loves us.

— Opportunities to pray together and apart in different formats

— Poetry, music, journaling, nature, creativity

— Disconnecting from email, texting, social media

The cost is $150 for the entire weekend, including the program, accommodations, meals and activities. Pyramid is a rustic retreat center. Think: camp. It’s part of its charm.

To register, click HERE and sign up through Pyramid’s online form. Once we have our final group, I’ll send out a supply list, but just to give you some ideas… Plan to bring a journal, scissors, a glue stick, some old magazines. If you’re a photographer, bring your camera (or your phone in airplane mode) and use it as a way to pray visually. If you draw, bring a sketch pad. Whatever gives you peace and helps you connect with God. We’ll talk more about it in the days ahead. I can’t wait to see you there

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Alleluia, Alleluia. He is risen: Knowing with our hearts what our heads can’t comprehend

“For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” I take such comfort in these closing words of today’s Gospel. Because even amid the joy and celebration — the Alleluias sung at full volume and the flowers so fragrant I could swoon from the scent — there is a little piece of me that still doesn’t understand, that probably will never understand the resurrection, at least not this side of heaven.

I think we believe that we should understand, and maybe we even nod our head and say, “Amen, amen,” as if it’s all perfectly clear, and yet the truth is that none of it is clear, none of it makes sense from our human perspective. We have to take it on faith; there’s no other way. That means believing in something we do not fully understand with our heads but know without question in the depths of our heart. Like Mary of Magdala, we run to the Lord and then cry out in confusion when we don’t find him where he is supposed to be, when we don’t hear his answer to our prayers.

Today, on Easter, we rejoice in Christ’s victory over the cross and joyfully embrace the unearned gift of Jesus’ resurrection and our salvation, letting our confusion and doubt slip below the surface as the waters of new life wash over us. Intellectual understanding is not necessary after all. We are pilgrims on a journey with no end.

This reflection first appeared in the April issue of Give Us This Day.

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Finding grace, even in the shadow of the cross

I’ve been in desperate need of some grace these days. So much so, that I pulled a tarnished silver necklace bearing the word “GRACE” out of my jewelry box and looked up a DIY silver cleaning recipe that verged on chemistry experiment to polish it up. It was as if that tangible, visible sign of grace hanging from around my neck might get me the real deal, or at least a little closer to it.

Grace is one of those elusive things. We kind of get it in an indefinable sort of way, and yet it can be so hard to grasp, like trying to catch a cloud. We know we need grace to get through this life, to get through this day, but it can be easy to miss, even when it’s right there in front of us. We have to want it and watch for it. But how do you watch for something when you’re not quite sure what you should be looking for?

Back when I was writing “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Catholic Catechism,” I struggled to define grace in a way that would make sense to people, especially people who may have never contemplated that word or what it might mean in their lives. To make matters worse, we Catholics get into categorizing kinds of grace: sanctifying or deifying, habitual, sacramental, and even special graces and states of grace. If we’re not careful, we can begin to believe that grace is so complex and lofty it’s off limits to just-struggling-to-get-through-every-day kind of people. The reality is, it’s ours for the taking.

Grace is a gift we get for no other reason than simply showing up in this life and turning toward God. The catechism defines grace as the “free and undeserved help that God gives us.” Or, to put it another way—with a rock-star spin: “What once was hurt, what once was friction, what left a mark, no longer stings. Because grace makes beauty out of ugly things. Grace finds beauty in everything. Grace finds goodness in everything.” That’s a line from the U2 song “Grace,” and it really is a perfect description— so simple and yet so beautiful, like that silver necklace sent years ago by a long-distance friend, and which now hangs from my neck once again.

My friend Cathy A., whom I have never met in person, had become such a close virtual friend, a soul sister, really, that she knew instinctively when I needed some grace, even if it had to be mailed directly to my house in a padded envelope. That’s how grace works—not literally, but spiritually—arriving when we least expect it, in surprising packages, from far-off places or maybe from right next door. It’s there, if we keep our hearts open, coming at us from all directions, lifting us up and carrying us forward.

Grace does not punish or seek an eye for an eye. Grace does not exist in a what-goes-around-comes-around reality. Grace supersedes all of those human constraints and goes straight for the heart. Grace heals, grace saves, grace loves—always.

As we journey through these last days of Holy Week, we know all too well that we must go through absolute darkness and desperation to get to the ultimate light and salvation of Easter. But even in darkness there is grace, maybe especially in darkness. Even in the cross of Good Friday, even in the cross that casts a shadow across your life today, whatever it may be.

Before I wrapped up this column, I signed on to Twitter and saw this tweet from Pope Francis: “If we learn to read everything in light of the Holy Spirit, we realize that everything is grace!” Maybe grace isn’t so elusive after all. Maybe it’s right there in front of you. Grab it now before it slips away.

This column first appeared in the April 13, 2017, issue of Catholic New York.

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Finding the blessing in a toilet in need of scrubbing

Most weekends I don’t look forward to the long list of things that need to get done. After a busy week at work and nights spent driving to and from appointments and classes and more, I want to do nothing. Plain and simple. And so I procrastinate and grumble and eventually do my chores begrudgingly, always thinking that as soon as I’m done — if only that magic moment would get here sooner – or ever! — I will finally have a few minutes to really enjoy my weekend. 

But yesterday something interesting happened. As I drove home from the grocery store, rounding the bend with my house in sight, I had an epiphany of sorts, an Aha! moment out of the blue. Suddenly I felt awash in gratitude. I started ticking off all the things for which I should be grateful. Not the usual things, like vacations or job promotions or celebrations, but mundane things, the stuff that surrounds me most of the time, the things I typically take for granted, or, more likely, complain about. My blessings flashed before my eyes one after another, and even after I got out of the car and dragged the grocery bags into the house, I was still buzzing with the beautiful reality of my privileged life.

Here’s the Cliff Notes version of that gratitude list:

— For the privilege of spending my Saturday morning cleaning toilets and sinks, mirrors and showers in our three bathroom. What a blessing it is to have the energy and time to do the work required, and to have the bathrooms that make life so much easier for a family of five (even if one is away from home most of the time).

— For the privilege of going to the store on a Saturday afternoon to pick up some groceries, most of them not necessities (real maple syrup, anyone?) and some of them complete indulgences (hazelnut coffee). What a blessing it is to not only have the money to buy what I want but to have the car to drive to the store, the ability and agility to get around quickly, and the option of choosing between three large supermarkets in my town, all loaded down with everything from soup to nuts — and patio furniture, just in case you need to pick that up with a gallon of milk.

— For the privilege of running up and down the basement steps throughout the day in order to do load after load of laundry. What a blessing it is to have a powerful, oversized washer and dryer that lets me clean our clothes any time of the day or night, and, while I’m at it, for my family’s clothes that often feels overwhelming when it is overflowing the hampers but is anything but when we need a warm sweater or a comfy pair of leggings or a dress shirt for a business meeting.

— For a trip to the local soft serve ice cream shop with my girls, even if we had to eat it in the car bundled up in coats thanks to the dreary weather. What a blessing it is to be able to drop everything at a moment’s notice and take my family out for a taste of summer on an otherwise wintery day.

I could go on and on. So many blessings disguised as chores or burdens or just another item on my “To Do” list. To people who don’t have the means or the transportation or the energy or the time or the ability, the many things that get in the way of what I imagine could be a happier life are the very things that make my life so very easy to manage and, as a result, happier, if only I’d take the time to notice. The blessings are there. Always. We don’t get to happiness after the laundry and the shopping and the toilets; happiness is right there in the middle of it all. How is it that I always seem to forget that?

#EverydayDivine #MeditationInMotion #Mindfuless #Gratitude #Blessed #MiraclesInTheMundane

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