Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 3

New podcast: Out with the Old, in with the Unknown

As we cross the threshold of a new year, can we embrace what’s ahead — with all its messiness and challenge — and offer ourselves and our world compassion and kindness rather than make one more meaningless resolution to “fix” what we think is wrong with us?

Listen below, and don’t forget to subscribe!

 

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A World of Endless Thresholds

We stand on the cusp of a new year, another threshold, which, oddly enough, tends to get us thinking not about where we are standing at that moment but about where we’ve been or where we might be going. Caught between regret and fear, we often miss the wonder of what is right there in the liminal space of the threshold moment. We cling to the figurative doorframe of our lives hoping we won’t have to step into the unknown, but there is no way around it. We can either go kicking and screaming or embrace it and walk through with grace and trust.

The poet and artist Jan Richardson, writing in her “Blessing for Epiphany” — which we will celebrate in just a few days — says: “If you could see / the journey whole / you might never / undertake it; / might never dare / the first step / that propels you / from the place / you have known / toward the place / you know not.”

Such true words. Looking back over our lives, many of us recognize that had we seen the entire path in advance — including the eventual losses, illnesses and other difficulties we all inevitably face — we might have hunkered down and refused to budge. But in hindsight, we can reflect on the difficult moments and marvel at the strength and faith that got us through things we would otherwise consider unimaginable. Often, we also marvel at how those moments shaped us, and our lives, in ways we would not want to erase, even if we wish we could erase the painful parts.

As we prepare for the arrival of the Magi at the crèche in Bethlehem, we often forget what was required of them. They did not have a GPS or comfy hotels or any guarantees they’d find what they were after. But they had a star and a belief in something so powerful that it literally moved them into the unknown. If they had been able to foresee the dangers they would face along the way, they might have come up with any number of reasons to stay put, but they trusted the movement of the Spirit and approached the threshold with curiosity and wonder. Epiphany moments don’t happen in the regrets over the past or worries over the future; they happen in the now.

In her book, “Open the Door,” writer Joyce Rupp says: “Threshold experiences contain tremendous energy. They hold the power to unglue and shake us deeply, to enfold us with a seemingly empty darkness that makes us yearn for relief. They can set an imprisoned spirit free, nurse a wounded heart back to health, and bring peace to a desolate mind.”

As we cross the threshold into a new year filled with things we can’t possibly see from our current vantage point, we have a choice about how we approach what’s ahead. Most of us — because we are human, after all — can’t help but go forward with some trepidation. We may not know the specifics, but we know life is usually not easy. In some ways, that in itself can be freeing. It’s a given that some days will be challenging, so how do we navigate this grand adventure? Step by step.

“There is nothing / for it / but to go / and by our going / take the vows / the pilgrim takes: / to be faithful to / the next step; / to rely on more / than the map; / to heed the signposts / of intuition and dream; / to follow the star / that only you / will recognize,” writes Richardson.

We can only recognize our star if we ground ourselves in God and prayer. There, in the landscape of our souls, the signposts will come into focus, showing us the thresholds we are meant to cross, not with fear and hesitance but with faith and hope, even if they unglue us along the way.

This column originally appeared in the Dec. 26, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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Called Into the Unknown

My reflection from today’s Gospel (Luke 1:39-45) in Give Us This Day:

As I prepare for an upcoming trip, I’m torn between catching a flight or hopping in the car for a five-hour drive. They’ll take about the same time once you factor in airport time, so I’ve got two good choices. Mary did not have that luxury.

In today’s Gospel, we hear that Mary “set out in haste” to visit and support her cousin Elizabeth, who is herself far into an unlikely pregnancy. That word “haste” almost makes it seem as though this was a quick jaunt, maybe just a few hours by donkey.

Alas, there was nothing quick or easy about what Mary chose to do. It was a dangerous trip, across one hundred miles of rough terrain. She went anyway, trusting that all would be well, and that this visitation was necessary, not just for the physical support it would provide but for the spiritual strength it would foster between the two women and the unborn sons who would go on to change the world.

When Mary arrives, Elizabeth says: “Blessed are you who believe that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” How often does God speak to us, but we are too afraid to follow the call? It is easier for us to stay firmly rooted in the comfort of the familiar rather than risk a journey into the unknown.

Today we look to Mary and Elizabeth and pray that we, too, will be willing to go in haste to wherever God is leading us.

Mary DeTurris Poust, “Called Into the Unknown,” from the December 2024 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024). Used with permission.
Photo by Mary DeTurris Poust

 

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Savoring the Sacred

If you missed the online Advent mini-retreat I offered in collaboration with Give Us This Day, you can watch the replay here. I share tips that are helpful not only during this season of waiting but in the everyday moments of all of life. The one-hour program ends with a guided meditation. Watch at the link below.

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5 Ways to Make Advent More Serene and Less Stressful

We’re only a few days into Advent, and most of us have been bombarded by so much Christmas music and Christmas advertising and Christmas everything that we’re already sick of the season. In a world where the Christmas countdown begins sometime before Halloween, it’s easy to lose sight of the beauty of Advent, and to get so caught up in the material trappings that we can’t see the spiritual forest for the tinsel-covered trees.

We live in a goal-oriented society, and in this case, Christmas is the end zone we’re running toward at breakneck speed, hardly looking at what’s going on along the sidelines. But Advent beckons us to stop the madness, to stop the running, to focus on the journey as much as the destination. Advent offers us serenity amid the insanity, with its beautiful interplay of darkness and light, its Scriptural focus not only on the coming of the Christ child but on the second coming of Jesus, and with its quiet but constant insistence that we prepare — not just for a day but for a lifetime, and the next life one.

How do we translate those transcendent ideas into everyday practices? Here are five easy ways to slow down and savor the season:

1. Create rituals. Simple daily rituals can serve as spiritual anchors whenever the secular version of the holiday season begins to suck you in and stress you out. These rituals can be as elaborate or as easy as you choose to make them. If fashioning a Jesse tree out of branches and homemade ornaments depicting scenes from Scripture will make you more stressed, find something simpler, perhaps a traditional paper Advent calendar with little doors that reveal the signs and symbols of the season. And there’s always the Advent wreath, a peaceful, prayerful way to mark the days leading up to Christmas. The glow of its candles, increasing with each week, serves as a visible reminder of the light that comes into our world at Christmas and overcomes the darkness for all time.

2. Practice patience. Advent is about waiting, a concept that’s becoming increasingly unpopular in our world of instant gratification and constant connectedness. We want what we want and we want it now. Advent reminds us that waiting can be a good thing, a time to prepare ourselves, a time to rediscover what’s important, a time to serve those who are not as fortunate. When you are waiting in an endless line at the mall or circling a parking lot fighting for a space, try to be intentional about the way you approach and accept the situation. What if you pray for the woman who just stole your spot? What if you smile at the man who runs back to grab an extra item off the rack while you stand in the check-out line gritting your teeth?

3. Seek out silence. Here’s another challenge for those of us used to the constant buzz of the world around us, whether it’s the TV at home, the radio in the car or the Muzak at the mall. We don’t like silence. It makes us uncomfortable. It feels unproductive. Shouldn’t we be doing something during this quiet time? Not necessarily. Take just five minutes each day to sit in silence. Turn off cell phones, TVs, computer bells and whistles, anything that will distract you, and just be. Chances are that after only one week of daily silence, you’ll be a lot better at #2 on this list. Silence breeds interior peace and exterior calm. Try it and see how five minutes a day can change your Christmas season and your life.

4. Rethink gift-giving. Advertisers tell us we need stuff, lots of stuff to be happy, and our loved ones need lots of stuff, too, preferably wrapped in shiny paper and bows. Before you know it, the shopping and spending and running and wrapping has us wishing the Christmas would just get here already and be over and done. Take back the gift-giving part of this season. Tell family and friends to cut back on the gifts they plan to give you and yours. Give from the heart rather than the wallet. Instead of a gift card, find some one-of-a-kind gift that will surprise and satisfy — if it’s locally made, even better. Rather than an extra video game or doll, give a child a “date” with mom or dad, a special day where they get to go somewhere or do something with a parent without distractions like Facebook or work phone calls or TV. Even gift cards can become heartfelt when done right, say with an offer to tag along on the shopping spree and buy lunch for the two of you.

5. Start close to home. You can’t change the culture, but you can change the way you participate in it. Rather than scold society for the ways it doesn’t live up to the spiritual aspects of this holiday season, do what you can to refocus on Jesus and the Advent journey within your own four walls among your own family. Light a candle and pray before dinner each night. Express gratitude to and for each other. Give your loved ones the gift of your time and your presence. Find a charity that could use some help, whether it’s through donations or volunteer hours. Begin to set your own life to a sacred rhythm, and before you know it people around you will want a piece of what you’ve found. That’s how the culture changes: one heart, one home at a time.

This column originally appeared on the HuffPost religion page on Dec. 2, 2014.

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Waiting Without Hope

When I was approaching my 60th birthday a couple of years ago, I decided to have two words from my favorite psalm tattooed on my left arm. “Be still,” it says, with the image of a lotus blossom emerging from it. The gorgeous lotus blossoms that sit atop lily ponds must push up through thick mud before emerging into the light and opening to the world. The imprint on my arm is a visible reminder of the spiritual journey I am on, and as I continue to age and expand and grow, I find it’s a journey many people my age — in particular women — are embracing with a kind of curiosity and tentative joy that is downright inspiring.

It’s not always easy to remain curious and joyful when the body is slowing down or maybe even breaking down, when the world around us is full of suffering and uncertainty and downright madness. But if we are willing to approach all that is before us as a lesson to be learned, not in a punitive way but in a heart-opening way, we find a path that is not necessarily easy but calls us forward just the same. It is an approach that reminds me of a T.S. Eliot poem I often use when leading retreats.

In “East Coker,” part of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” the poet writes:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you/Which shall be the darkness of God…I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope/For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love/For love would be love of the wrong thing; this is yet faith/But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

My tattoo.

On the surface, this poem might feel depressing, but on closer inspection these words show us a way to rise up through the mud of this world to the Light that draws us up and out and forward no matter who we are or what we’re facing. To “wait without hope” is not despair, just the opposite. It is to know that when we show up in prayer filled with hope, it is often a hope of our own creation, to suit our own agenda, and achieve a certain outcome. We will be hopeful if all the external criteria are met. When we wait without hope, however, we are fully present before God, allowing God to be God rather than trying to take on that role ourselves, which is what humanity has been trying to do ever since Eve was blamed for the fall.

Our entire spiritual journey is, in a sense, an effort to “get ourselves back to the garden,” as singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote so many years ago. Often, we attempt to do that by trying to force our way through rather than letting the way appear before us according to God’s plans. Especially during difficult times, whether in our personal lives or in the larger world, it can be near-impossible to trust that God has a plan greater than ours and that, in the end, this world is temporary. Our faith gives us the practice of “memento mori,” which means: “Remember you must die.” It’s not meant to be scary or ghoulish, even if it is often accompanied by the image of a skull. It’s meant to ground us in our spiritual reality when this world tries to convince us that what we see in front of us is all that matters.

It seems fitting as we move through the steely gray of late fall, with its chill and encroaching darkness, to wonder how we will ever again find the light to lead us home. As we journey toward Advent, we know from years past that there is a well-worn spiritual path for us to follow, one of expectant waiting, where the light grows day by day, week by week and, with it, our hope.

Mary DeTurris Poust will be leading a free online Advent mini retreat on Friday, Dec. 6, 2-3 p.m. Register here.
This column originally appeared in the Nov. 27, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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The thing with feathers

It was a beautiful October morning, and I was seated in a jam-packed St. Peter’s Square waiting for Pope Francis to begin Mass on the Feast of the Guardian Angels. As I sat between my husband and son — surrounded by other pilgrims from our diocese who had joined me on this 12-day trip — I gasped as a single and perfectly curled white feather drifted with seeming purpose right down in front of me, landing at my feet. I stared at it for a minute before picking it up and clutching it to me as though I’d just been given a precious gemstone. As far as I was concerned, I had.

I’m not one to find meaning in every little thing that happens, but every once in a while, something stops me. This feather certainly did. It felt like it was meant to make me pause, pay attention. And although I don’t often feel my mother’s presence around me — in the 36 years she’s been gone I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt her nearness — on that day in that gorgeous square, she was there. I tucked the feather in my bag and put it out of my head for the next few hours. But then. Then, then, then! As I walked down the streets of Rome, I spotted another perfect white feather floating right wear I put my foot down. And another and another. I’m not talking the run-of-the-mill pigeon feathers that are all over Rome. These were perfectly white, perfectly shaped, perfectly curled, and no one but me seemed to be noticing them. I lost count when it went over 40 in the next few days. Finally, as we stood outside the duomo in Orvieto, a tiny white feather descended, and my husband caught it and handed it to me.

Right about now, you might be thinking I’ve lost my mind but hear me out. Two of my favorite talented spiritual women writers — Emily Dickinson and St. Hildegard of Bingen — had profound things to say about feathers. Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops – at all.” And Hildegard famously said: “I am but a feather on the breath of God.”

Both women remind us that these delicate, fragile, seemingly insignificant natural wonders have something powerful to teach us about trust and surrender, hope and joy. To be a feather on the “breath of God” is to be carried to places we haven’t intended to go but trust in God’s reasons. The tune we sing without words is that deep communication that happens when we let go of the rote prayers that are as familiar to us as our own name and enter into an interior conversation with God in a way that can be all at once beautiful and scary, energizing and paralyzing.

As I tossed all of this around in my heart and soul as we pounded the cobblestone streets of Italy to pray before the remains of saints, we came to St. Mary Major, where our wise Rome guide, Jan, talked to us about the relics housed there: wood believed to be part of the manger in Bethlehem, and relics of St. Matthew and St. Jerome. One of our pilgrims looked at him skeptically and said, “But how do they know that?” Jan went on to say that they do research and can date objects. The he posed a question: “At a certain point, the rest is what? Faith.” He added: “Faith is a decision; you make a decision to believe.”

Like that feather falling from the sky, Jan’s words pulled me up short. I took out my iPhone and jotted them down so I wouldn’t forget. Yes, “hope is the thing with feathers,” but faith is the thing that gives those wings the power to soar.

This column originally appeared in the October 24, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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New podcast episode: Feel the fear and do it anyway

Fear seems to be ever-present in our world these days, but we don’t have to live there. When we move forward in the face of fear, we discover unexpected gifts and growth.

Listen below, and don’t forget to subscribe!

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Don’t shut down wonder

When I initially developed the Stillpoint Retreat, which I have led at Pyramid Life Center for six years and counting, my hope was to give people a space where they could not only settle into the stillness and silence of that spectacularly beautiful location but share their faith journey with other seekers. At Stillpoint, we ask questions, talk about challenges, tell of the mystical moments that happen amid our mundane lives, and find new ways to enter more deeply into relationship with God.

Each year, as I plan the talks I will give on retreat and create practices for our group, I go where the Spirit leads, which is always exactly where we are meant to be and not always where I set out to go. That is part of the beauty of any retreat and of the spiritual life in general. If we are so set on where we think we need to be going and what we think we need to be doing, to the point that nothing else is considered, we are following our own spiritual plan, not necessarily God’s plan for us. We often have to get out of our own way and open ourselves up to possibility in order to see the next step on the path.

In this year’s retreat, the ­presentations and practices spanned the Catholic treasury of prayer. We practiced lectio divina (sacred reading) but also visio divina (sacred seeing), using icons, images and even nature. We dug down deep into silent contemplative prayer, something that harkens back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and used methods based on Centering Prayer, which comes out of “The Cloud of Unknowing,” a 14th century anonymous book and, in more recent years, the work of Trappist Father Thomas Keating. We shared how adoration is its own form of contemplation, one that puts us directly before Jesus in the Eucharist, adding a singular beauty and power to this style of prayer. We wrote poetry and created spiritual collages; we did yoga and went for meditative walks or paddles; we ate silent breakfast and sat in silent prayer as community.

But sometimes fear wins out. One person, ahead of the retreat, questioned how this could be a Catholic retreat if it included optional yoga (stretching). And then one person, new to Pyramid, questioned why this retreat was “so Catholic” and said that she didn’t know any Catholics who were talking about adoration, Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, or Thomas Merton — a mainstay of the Stillpoint community since my Pyramid experience was forged on the spiritual ground of Merton in the Mountains under the guidance of the wonderful and brilliant Walt Chura.

If one out of 30 people thinks the Stillpoint Retreat is not Catholic enough and one thinks it’s too Catholic, it’s probably exactly where it’s supposed to be. But what struck me even more in both of those instances was the opportunity that’s lost when we make assumptions and close ourselves off to possibility rather than see where the Spirit wants to take us.

When I went on my first silent Merton in the Mountains Retreat at Pyramid 12 years ago, I almost backed out when Walt told me we not only needed to remain silent but were not supposed to read, write or make casual eye contact. I decided to forge ahead, and I am so grateful I did. It opened my eyes to how many obstacles I put between myself and God, and it led me to a part of my spiritual journey I otherwise would have missed.

Don’t shut down wonder. God has so much in store just on the other side of fear. The Spirit is always teaching us, if we are willing to find our still point and just listen.

The next Stillpoint Retreat at Pyramid Life Center will be Sept. 5-7, 2025. What the Events page here for details.
This column originally appeared in the Sept. 12, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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9/11: Remembering like it was yesterday

Here’s the Life Lines column I wrote 23 years ago, in the days following 9/11. So much has changed since that time. Our world has changed. My family has changed. And yet, for me, this column still resonates with things that feel very much in tune with our world right now. Here’s wishing all of you, all of us a future of peace — peace in our hearts, peace in our homes, peace on our planet.

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Noah plopped down on the floor next to me the other day and asked me to read one of his favorite books, “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed,” by Mercer Mayer. As we turned the pages and followed the little boy on his quest to capture the elusive alligator that kept him up at night, I had an eerie feeling that the story was an allegory for what I’d been feeling since that terrible morning a few days before.

The night after the World Trade Center attack, I lay awake in my bed staring at the ceiling, filled with a sense of dread that I could not quite put my finger on. I was scared, but not by the images of horror that had flashed before my eyes for hours that day. Instead my fears seemed frivolous, not at all unlike the little boy’s alligator: Had I left the dryer on in the basement? Was the window over the kitchen sink still open? Were the kids’ pajamas warm enough? I felt a childlike fear of the dark, of things no one else can see, things we parents usually try to hush with a goodnight kiss and a night-light.

When morning finally arrived, I realized that my sleeplessness wasn’t really about what might go wrong within my four walls. It was about what had gone wrong in our world. Long after I had wiped away the tears of sadness that fell as I watched the World Trade Center collapse over and over again on television’s seemingly endless loop of horror, I fought back tears of a different kind — as I rocked Olivia to sleep for her nap, as I kissed Noah good-bye at preschool, as I hugged my husband, Dennis, at the end of a long day. Those were tears borne of fear, tears for tomorrow, tears for a world we don’t yet know. And I didn’t like how they felt.

Despite the fact that I have spent almost two years writing a book on how to help children deal with grief, the events of the past weeks left me in the unusual position of struggling for words. On the day of the attack, when Noah, asked if “bad people” might knock down our house, I reassured him that they would not. When he made a logical leap – at least for a 4-year-old – and worried that they might knock down his grandmother’s apartment building in New York City, I told him he was safe, that no one was going to hurt him or the people he loved. All the while I found myself wondering if I was telling him a lie.

But that kind of thinking leads to hopelessness, and when we lose hope, we leave a void just waiting to be filled by fear and despair and alligators of every kind. Through stories on television and in newspapers, I had seen unbelievable hopefulness in the face of utter destruction. How could I not believe in the power of the human spirit and the ultimate goodness of humanity and a better world for our children?

That night, as a soft rain fell, our house seemed wrapped in a comforting quiet that was interrupted only by the reassuring hum of the dishwasher. With Noah and Olivia asleep in their rooms, I lay down and looked up. For the first time in days I didn’t notice the enveloping darkness but saw instead the tiny glowing stars that dot our bedroom ceiling, a “gift” left behind by the previous owners. As I finally closed my eyes to sleep, I whispered a prayer of hope, a prayer for a world where the only thing our children have to fear are the imaginary monsters hiding under their beds.

Copyright 2001, Mary DeTurris Poust
This column originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Catholic New York

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