Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 30

Lent: It’s not all about giving up chocolate and beer

So, I walked into my bathroom last night and found this message on my make-up mirror: “You’re beautiful!” I smiled because this wasn’t just any random note, this was the work of the Masked Lenten Post-It Bandit. Okay, that’s not what she calls herself, but that’s how I’m starting to think of her.

As part of her Lenten plan, Olivia has decided to leave positive Post-it notes in unexpected places, public and private. I spied her leaving one on the kneeler in church on Ash Wednesday. I hope a little kid finds that one at Mass this weekend.

Of course, all of this is just a reminder that Lent is not just about giving things up; it’s about giving, in whatever ways we can. We can put a twist on our Lenten sacrifices. I know that in addition to her Post-it plan, Olivia is also making a wall of people and things for which she is thankful. I’m happy to report that she snapped my photo on Ash Wednesday. I love her creative ways of approaching this season.

Are you doing anything out of the norm as part of your Lenten plan? If so, feel free to share it here.

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My CRS Rice Bowl has arrived! Lent now feels official.

Every year our family looks forward to participating in the CRS Rice Bowl program, but for the past couple of years our local parish hasn’t made the cardboard bowls and accompanying calendar available to parishioners. So I have to get creative to get my Rice Bowl. One year I called CRS directly and had some shipped to our home in record time. This year I found a friend (Thanks, Theresa!) in a nearby parish and had her bring some Rice Bowls across county lines. Contraband Rice Bowls. That’s how we roll at the Poust House.

Why do I try so hard to get a Rice Bowl when it would be easier to throw a check in the almsgiving collection on Holy Thursday in my home parish? Because Rice Bowl supports the amazing programs of Catholic Relief Services around the world while it educates my family about how much we have, how little others have, and how easy it is for us to make a difference. On top of that, we get great meatless recipes for Lent and a helpful calendar to remind us to keep refocusing our attention on the important stuff over the course of these 40 days. 

This year CRS is making the Rice Bowl even more enticing and more accessible. In addition to the app, which you can download HERE, CRS is posting powerful videos about the meaning of Lent (click HERE for those). You can also follow CRS Rice Bowl on Facebook and Twitter (@CRSRiceBowl), where you’ll get daily reminders to motivate you throughout Lent.

So even if you can’t find someone to sneak a Rice Bowl into your house, or even if you got a Rice Bowl but lost it in the clutter on your counter, you can still participate in this program that has become synonymous with Lent in Catholic households. Get the app, go to the website, follow CRS on social media. It’s never been easier to participate in Rice Bowl. As it says on the top of the Rice Bowl, “What you give up for Lent changes lives?” Collect your spare change, your money saved from buying meat or chocolate or beer, or whatever you gave up this season, and you can make such  difference.

If you gave just $1 per day to the Rice Bowl you could provide one month of food for a family, or two years of seeds for a farmer, or three months of clean water for four families. That’s not a lot of money for most of us, $1 dollar a day, but it in places like Tanzania or Nicaragua or Lebanon or even some neighborhoods right here in my home diocese of Albany, it can change a life.

Here’s one of my favorite CRS “What is Lent?” videos, featuring Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York talking about Lent, Rome, getting lost, and coming home — some of my favorite topics. It’s so worth a few minutes of your time.

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You Can’t Fail Lent: 5 tips learned the hard way

My Lenten post over at HuffPost Religion:

Lent is one of those seasons that always begins with the best of intentions and rapidly goes downhill, at least that’s how it usually plays out for me. I plan to pray more, eat less, and find creative ways to make my favorite time in the Church year more meaningful. Unfortunately, the ashes hardly have time to settle into the wrinkles on my forehead before I’m feeling like I’ve already failed.

But Lent is a journey, not a pass-fail test. Trust me, if it were at all possible to fail Lent, I would have long ago been expelled from this spiritual school. Fortunately, the goal here is not a perfect score at the end of 40 days. In fact, let’s throw out the word “goal” and focus instead on practice — spiritual practice.

Here are five tips for shifting your Lenten journey from total spiritual makeover to subtle interior transformation:

Read more HERE.

 

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A new twist on the Ash Wednesday #ashtag

If you scroll through Facebook or Twitter today (if you haven’t given up social media for Lent), you’ll find a minor debate on the blogosphere over whether Ash Wednesday selfies are appropriate or in direct opposition to today’s Gospel reading about not standing on street corners so everyone can see how holy you are. Of course, we could ask the same question about the very act of walking around in public with ashes on your forehead, with or without a selfie, but that’s a blog post for another day. As for Ash Wednesday selfies, my husband, Dennis, and I have come up with a really great twist on the current trend toward the #ashtag. (Updated to show our double selfie because what’s good for the students is good for the teachers!)

Because it is mid-winter break here in upstate New York, our ninth-grade faith formation class is not in session today. For probably at least 50 percent of our 24 students, however, Ash Wednesday would be a day off anyway since going to church isn’t really part of their thing. Because Dennis and I had to miss a class last week due to three simultaneous kids’ events in three different places, we bumped our faith formation session to Ash Wednesday and told the kids that no matter where they attend Mass — in our home parish of St. Thomas or at a church in Orlando or at grandma’s parish in New York City — to take a selfie wearing their ashes and text it to me with a one- or two-word description of what they will be giving up/doing for Lent.

My daughter (and student) informed me that there was no way these teens were going to publicly post a selfie with an #ashtag, so we had to find a way around that. Hence, the texting option. But plenty of other Catholic groups and individuals will be snapping and posting Ash Wednesday self-portraits using hashtags. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is using #ashtag. Busted Halo is using #showusyourash. I’m sure there are many other variations.

Some argue it’s a crass–and self-indulgent way– to mark Ash Wednesday, but if we can get a few young people to go to church when they otherwise might have skipped it, then it’s well worth taking a few hits from the naysayers.

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Happy Valentine’s Day: Love is ON the air

Yesterday I was doing one of my regular appearances on the Morning Air Show on Relevant Radio and was scheduled to talk about Valentine’s Day, marriage, and true love, when a surprise “mystery caller” phoned in and asked me to be his Valentine. If you go to the 29-minute mark on the recording below, you’ll be able to hear the 30-minute spontaneous segment Dennis and I did with host . So much fun. Plus I got a Valentine’s dinner date out of it!

P.S. The photo to the left is actually our own love lock. (Ours is the small one in the center.) You can find it locked to the stair railing in the tunnel leading up to St. Peter in Chains in Rome. I’m happy to take you there to see it.

 

http://relevantradio.streamguys.us/MA%20Archive/MA20150213c.mp3

 

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Give your Valentine more than flowers and chocolate

So everyone is talking about romance and love as Valentine’s Day approaches, but what about the other 364 days a year? Are we making time for romance — or at least the occasional night out without the kids — in our marriage on a regular basis? In honor of this holiday (which I don’t particularly like, by the way), here’s a column I wrote in the spring (obvious by the fact that there is no picnicking in Albany at this time of year!). It seemed like a good day to share it again. Here you go. And Happy Valentine’s Day!

Prescription for a better marriage? Start dating.

About eight or nine years ago, my aunt gave me a lovely picnic basket backpack, complete with cloth napkins, plastic wine glasses, everything you’d need for a romantic al fresco meal in a park or on a beach. And every year since then I have considered donating it to a school garage sale because, quite frankly, romantic picnics just weren’t on our “to do” list.

But something stopped me from throwing that backpack into the Hefty bags along with old puzzles and board games bound for the bargain bin. I had a tiny glimmer of hope that some day we would dust off that backpack and take it for a spin.

Today was that day. Dennis and I met at Washington Park in Albany, across from his office at the New York State Catholic Conference, spread out a picnic blanket and ate a romantic lunch amid the sounds of giggling toddlers, buzzing bees and a distant lawnmower. Granted we had chocolate milk in the wine glasses since this was a workday lunch, but it was one of the best dates ever.

Why am I telling you this seemingly insignificant story? Because it is anything but insignificant. For 19 years of marriage, Dennis and I have all but ignored one very important element of our marriage: each other. Well, each other in a fun, relaxed, sometimes playful and romantic sense. We do everything together, I mean, everything, even a lot of our work, but we never seemed to be able to make the time for a date.

To make matters worse, in 19 years of marriage, we have not gone on a single vacation alone. We never even had a real honeymoon, just two nights away sandwiched in between job interviews and an apartment hunt. Last fall we finally made our first maiden voyage as a couple, but even then, it was a work trip.

We recently decided to look at our standard operating procedure and tweak the routine. We talked about how we want our marriage to look tomorrow and 20 years from now, and we realized that we needed what amounted to a marriage makeover. We had forgotten how to be a couple in the most basic sense, something that’s all too common among long-married husbands and wives. We assumed we needed to take care of everyone else first and neglected our couple-ness, but if we don’t take care of our love before all else, we’ll find ourselves looking at each other across the breakfast table one day, wondering who that stranger is staring back at us.

All of this was confirmed when I read a book Dennis received from a priest he met in Rome this past April, Marriage Insurance: 12 Rules to Live By, by Father Francis “Rocky” Hoffman. The book offers 12 steps to a happier life together: weekly dates, annual vacations, regular “business” meetings, Sunday Mass, monthly confession, and daily prayer as a couple are among the steps. But at the heart of it all is one key instruction: “Spend time together.”

“That sounds easy, doesn’t it? And it is. But it’s the foundation of everything else,” Father Rocky writes. “Spend time together. Don’t drift apart until you’re living separate lives. If all you do to improve your marriage is spend time together, you’ll be making a big difference.”

Not time together paying the bills, not time together planning the kids’ extracurricular activities, but time together holding hands and doing the things that drew you together in the first place.

For the past few months, Dennis and I have kept up a weekly date night and a daily prayer routine, and what a difference it’s made. But the big news is that in October we will fulfill our dream of that never-taken honeymoon when Dennis joins me on the 13-day pilgrimage I’ll be leading through Italy. That’s amore!

When was the last time you went on a date with your mate? Get out your calendar, put something down in ink, and see what you’ve been missing.

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The soul finds what the soul needs

I always say that every book I write, every retreat I lead, every workshop I present takes me to the next place I need to go on my spiritual journey. I never seem to realize that going in because I’m a little thick, and God needs to get my attention, and not always subtly. But I recognize it in hindsight, so I guess that’s something.

The past few weeks were no exception. As I prepared my presentations for the Christian Mothers’ Retreat in Syracuse, I found myself struggling to write the talks I needed to write and crying at times as I practiced the presentations on my favorite theme: “Broken, Beautiful and Beloved: Learning to See Ourselves Through God’s Eyes.” Because of some personal struggles, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d even get through the talks, but I just kept writing and reflecting and praying, hoping that at some point the Holy Spirit would kick in and I’d be OK.

As I spoke to the 20 women early on a Saturday morning and listened to their stories, I realized that I needed that retreat more than they did. Once again, I was exactly where I needed to be.

It’s amazing how the soul finds what the soul needs.

I experienced an even more profound example a few weeks earlier at a silent retreat, this time as an attendee, not as the leader. On the second morning, I wandered down to the dining room before 7 a.m., not realizing breakfast would not be served for another two hours. So I grabbed a mug of coffee and stared out the window at the peaceful, frozen landscape. In the yard, amid the many barren trees and evergreens, was one lone tree still covered entirely in leaves—dead, brown leaves, hanging ever so delicately yet ever so resiliently from its sprawling limbs.

As I sat there, mesmerized by this tree and its odd determination to fight nature, a breeze kicked up and the leaves started to flutter, at first just the tiniest bit and then more and more intensely. Because the leaves were so dry and light they fluttered in a way that was unlike the hardy, green leaves of spring and summer. Their twisting and turning made the entire tree appear to be covered in small brown butterflies, flapping their wings quickly and in unison.

I couldn’t help but smile, especially considering the fact that the previous night’s talk had been about reconciliation and butterflies and new life. Each of us was given a small foam butterfly as a visible sign of the interior freedom that is ours when we forgive others, forgive ourselves and let go of our burdens in confession.

Suddenly that tree and its dead branches became a symbol of hope and a reminder that even when our soul is entrenched in the deepest winter, the Spirit is fluttering through our darkness offering light and new life.

Sometimes the Spirit gets a little help from the saints as well. When I initially headed to Syracuse for the mothers’ retreat, I prayed to St. Thérese of Lisieux, something I’d never done before. For some reason, she popped into my head. I asked for a sign that she’d taken up my intention and, as we all know, roses are the typical sign people report receiving after praying to the Little Flower. A few hours later, I set down my bags in my room at the retreat house and opened the closet to hang up my clothes. There I was greeted by four enormous bouquets of red velvet roses.

The Spirit will always take us where we need to go, even if we can’t imagine how we’ll get there or what we’ll find. If we’re willing to follow, to trust that maybe we have a lesson to learn along the way, we just might discover roses in a closet or butterflies in winter.

 

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Surprise! It’s Pope Francis. Yeah, that happens.

Pope Francis makes an impromptu visit to an immigrant settlement on the outskirts of Rome. This video is so beautiful it made me cry.

Click the link below to watch for yourself. My favorite part was when he asked if they spoke Spanish and they all prayed the Our Father together.

Post by Tv2000.

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Day one of a virtual retreat for couples. Join us!

It’s not too late! If you start right now, you and your spouse can participate in a virtual seven-day marriage retreat that will take you right up to Valentine’s Day. Well, technically it will take you to Friday the 13th, but let’s not go there.

The National Marriage Week Retreat with Pope Francis: Keeping Love Alive is being sponsored by For Your Marriage, an initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to strengthen marriages. Here’s the description of what’s to come in the days ahead:

“Looking for a way to enrich your marriage? Take our seven day virtual retreat based on Pope Francis’s advice about marriage and family life! Each day for seven days, set aside some time for prayer. Read about the theme for the day, reflect on a real-life marriage scenario, and think about ways to strengthen your own marriage. End each mini-retreat by praying a prayer for married couples. If possible, do the retreat together with your spouse!”

Dennis and I are starting the retreat tonight. Why not join us and check back in at the end of the week to compare notes. Tonight’s theme: “Marriage is the Icon of God’s Love.” Click HERE to get the retreat reading, reflection, prayer, and practice. By Valentine’s Day you and your spouse should be ready for a real celebration of your love.

 

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Wisdom Wednesday: Putting back the pieces

Some food for thought on this Wisdom Wednesday from Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home, a beautiful book by potter and author Sue Bender. Not surprisingly, it’s about brokenness, my favorite topic of late:

“We start out whole. Complete. Along the way, we may feel that something is wrong, or missing. We aren’t the way we’d like to be or the way we think we should be. A crossroads, a new stage in life, a turning point, a crisis, when we feel we may crack, or we do crack, can be a difficult, frightening time. 

“And, sometimes we deliberately crack our own bowl. 

“With time and great care and tender patience, we can reexamine the pieces, knowing that when we are ready, a solution will come. We can glue the pieces back together. 

“This bowl looks far more interesting, more beautiful than before it broke. The pieces are the same, but it’s a different bowl than when I started.”

Can you uncover the gold and silver buried in your life right now and use it to put your pieces back together so that you become more interesting, more beautiful than before you were broken? It’s possible. There is gold and silver everywhere.

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