Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 36

Are we willing to be marked as Christians?

For weeks now I have been feeling helpless, hopeless, in a constant state of incredulity tinged with despair. So much so I have been completely unable to write about it. No words could express what I was feeling. How, I kept wondering, how was it possible that Christians in Mosul were being killed — their homes marked, their property stolen, their lives threatened, tortured, taken as they tried to flee the insane wrath of the Muslim extremists known as ISIS while the world looked away? Where were our leaders, where was the public outcry, or at the very least celebrities tweeting selfies as they held up signs with appropriate hashtags, perhaps #stopISIS or #savethechristians? Why was there silence in the face of genocide, religious cleansing, what was clearly — at least to those of us willing to watch — the earliest signs of a potential Christian holocaust?

And now suddenly the world has decided to take notice. Secretary of State John Kerry said President Obama acted “expeditiously” in response to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Um, no, he didn’t. There was nothing expeditious about the reaction for the people who have been executed, for the children who have been kidnapped, for the women who have been raped, sold into slavery or killed in brutal fashion, for the fathers who had to watch it happen before being executed themselves. Their blood is on our country’s hands. Because we did nothing. Because we were silent. And silence is compliance. 

If you follow my Facebook author page, you’re probably sick of me posting stories about this by now, but I can’t help it. At the end of my life, I cannot look back at this horror and know that I didn’t do at least some small thing to stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters — and all those who are persecuted, no matter what their religion — in Iraq. That is why last night, I printed out a copy of the Arabic letter N (meaning Nasara or Nazarene) that was used to mark Christian homes in Mosul so ISIS would know where to look for the people they needed to kill. It’s a small gesture, insignificant in terms of helping anyone, but it is a reminder to me that there but for the grace of God go I. It is a sign that those poor people — the ones whose lives were not deemed worthy enough of a mention by almost anyone other than a handful of Catholic bloggers and small (mostly Catholic/Christian) media outlets — are not alone. We stand with them, and we pray for them and with them as they face this unthinkable horror.

With the onset of national media coverage as the killing spreads beyond Christians to other non-Muslim religious minorities, more horrifying stories are coming to light and, with them, horrifying photos. Yesterday, as I read news reports, I happened upon the photo of a man holding up his daughter. It would have been a lovely father-daughter photo in a perfect world, but in this world the little girl had no head. ISIS had beheaded her. I saw a photo of a woman having her throat slit. I saw a photo of a half dozen Yazidi children who managed to escape the terrorists only to die of starvation and thirst on the mountaintop where ISIS stranded them. (Just a few of the thousands who are currently at risk of the same fate). Dennis told me to stop looking at the photos because he saw how upset I was getting, but I couldn’t. I needed to look. If I looked away, I might be able to convince myself things weren’t that bad, and they are that bad and worse.

Now every time one of my daughters comes over and asks for a hug — and it has happened a few times since yesterday afternoon — all I see is that father and daughter, and it makes me hold onto my children and silently thank God for my good fortune and pray for those who are not so lucky. And it makes me repost the stories, the tweets, the pleas for peace and aid so that others can’t look away either.

There is very little we as individual Christians, individual Americans can do to stop the madness, but we cannot look away, we cannot be silent, we cannot let a religious cleansing unfold and do nothing. We cannot turn our backs on genocide, not in Iraq, not anywhere. So let’s mark our homes with the same Arabic “nun” ISIS used as a death mark and show our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

After the initial cleansing — the one in Mosul that the world ignored — some Muslims, in solidarity with persecuted Christians, turned the death marks into a statement of unity:  “We are all ن.” (We are all Christian.) And they are right. Because no matter what our religion, we must be united against unthinkable evil in our midst. Because this will not stop with the cleansing of Christians and Yazidi.  Are we willing to be marked on their behalf?

 

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Prescription for a better marriage: Start dating

My most recent Life Lines column: 

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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Why would you refuse to dance with grace?

Okay, I’ll admit that when I first saw this clip, I was drawn in by the Hafiz poem, one of my favorites. Because when I grow up, I want to be the sage who has to duck her head when the moon is low. But then I kept watching, and I have to tell you that this video is so good from top to bottom it gives me goosebumps.

“I feel so badly for those people who would come to this party that is Christianity and refuse to dance with grace,” says Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Carry On Warrior (a great book, by the way).

Five minutes is all it takes. Watch it, and then decide to dance. (And you can read the full Hafiz poem under the YouTube link below.)

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
~hafiz

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What’s holding you back? #FindIggy

They had me at St. Ignatius bobblehead.

Head over to Find Your Inner Iggy to see how you might win some grand prizes today, the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola. The founder of the Jesuits is the inspiration for this fun-yet-serious campaign to help people find God at work in their lives today. In much the same way that St. Ignatius discovered God in unlikely places in his life almost 500 years ago.

You can even make your own DIY Iggy. That’s mine over there on the left. The future’s so bright for my Inner Iggy, he’s gotta wear shades.

Seriously, today’s reflection about letting go of the armor that might be keeping us from growing closer to God struck a chord with me. Just recently, I was re-reading a spiritual journal, and in it I found a glaring reminder of one of my main bits of armor: the need to be in control.

On this particular date in my journal, I was writing about a spiritual direction session that went something like this:

“I want to be in the spiritual groove. Sometimes I’ve got it going on in my spiritual life, and then I hit dark and dry patches and everything falls apart. I feel like I’ll never get back to where I was.”

And my (former) spiritual director, a lovely Sister of Saint Joseph of Carondolet, suggested that perhaps all that focus on “I” was part of my problem.

She said, “Start telling God, ‘I know I can’t do this without you.’”

In other words, give up the illusion of control and just trust. Ooh, I hate that.

That journal entry was from just about two years ago, and I’m still focused on the “I” in my daily life. So, today, as I search for my Inner Iggy, I’m going to reflect on the advice of my spiritual director and see if maybe I can work on my need to be in control — or to think I’m in control — and accept the fact that I cannot do anything without God, but with God all things are possible.

Don’t forget to Find Your Inner Iggy by clicking HERE. Lots of great stuff there in addition to the chance to win a bobblehead and some other cool swag. Check it out.

 

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Manic Monday: On the road again

As Olivia pointed out on the long drive home from a weekend with cousins at the Jersey Shore, we’ve had three mini-vacations this summer, with the big one yet to come. A weekend trip to the Bronx Zoo two weeks ago, a weekend with Cousins in NYC last weekend, and a weekend at Grandpa and Grandma’s near Long Beach Island, N.J. The minivan is getting a workout. This week we’re hanging out at home for a change, but that doesn’t mean dull and boring. Unfortunately. Between work and Chiara’s Bible camp and her just-over horseback riding birthday party, I’m kind of longing for one day to just sit still and do nothing. Here’s how Manic Monday looks this week: 

Bookshelf: Still reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment, and still trying to discover the magic. I’m not so good at the present moment. I’m incredibly good at the next moment and totally entrenched in the last moment but not so adept at the now moment. I’m working on it.

GPS: Well, as I’ve already mentioned above, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the road, this last time without our trusty GPS known as Katniss. No far-from-home plans on tap until we head back to the Jersey Shore — North Wildwood next time — in August. My happy place. Okay, any time I’m at the ocean (or by a lake) it’s my happy place.

Dennis, on the other hand, plugged in the GPS and had his own adventure this weekend, when he headed to St. Mary’s on the Lake (George) for a retreat. I have to share the awesome shot he took from his kayak, over there on the right. Doesn’t that just make you breathe deep and relax your shoulder muscles, or is that just me?

Menu: Lots of great eating this past week — from the delicious NYC bagel at Zucker’s, to the homemade fettucini at Monte’s in the Village, to the delicious tofu dish and miso soup at Pan Asia in Forked River, NJ, to the homemade (by me) birthday dinner of seafood scampi for Chiara (her pick).  Maybe I should stick with yogurt and salad for a few days…Nah.

Viewfinder: We have had too many great views to share them all here. NYC alone provided so many wonderful shots, and not just of the obvious stuff, although I have to admit that getting close to the Statue of Liberty was a highlight. Haven’t been there since my fifth-grade field trip. This time we just went with a water view — Staten Island Ferry. How is that still free? A couple of shots from our week…

 

Statue of Liberty

 

Chrysler Building – my favorite

 

In Central Park

Soundtrack: Lots of great music was played during those many hours of driving, so it’s hard to choose one song. Here’s an old one that’s back at the top of my playlist thanks to Dennis: Collide by Howie Day.

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My Mighty Girl: Happy birthday, Chiara

When I sat down to write this birthday post for my baby, Chiara Elizabeth, who turned nine today, I found myself unable to get started. Every time I wrote something, I’d shake my head, delete, and stare at the blank space again. Nothing felt quite right, and I wondered, Why?

Well, the answer is simple enough: Chiara really can’t be defined or pigeon-holed. She is such a beautiful and interesting blend of qualities and characteristics. I always say she is somewhere between Noah and Olivia, but that’s not true. She’s her own Mighty Girl through and through. She’s silly one minute, serious the next. She’s sensitive and caring but at the same time so incredibly fearless she makes my heart skip a beat. Like when she nonchalantly does a double back handspring across our backyard (against instructions, by the way).

And so, my dear Chiara, I think what I want to say most on your birthday is “thank you”…

…for bringing your bouncing, giggling, cartwheeling brand of joy into my life

…for making me laugh with your jokes and comments and beautiful smile

…for reminding me that sometimes I need to stop being afraid and just jump, twirl, spin, cartwheel (or at least try)

…for being my last-chance baby, who shows me again and again what it means to go after life — or a big plate of pasta and mussels — with gusto.

Your beautiful Italian name can be translated as clear or bright or light. You are all of those things and more. I love you. xoxo

 

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Learning to be a beginner. Again and again.

Last night a friend invited me to join her at the nearby Dominican Retreat and Conference Center in Niskayuna for vespers sung in the spirit of Taize, a prayer style that uses repetitive, meditative singing. Although I was familiar with Taize, an ecumenical order that came out of France, I don’t think I had ever really experienced true Taize-style prayer. As with anything new, when we arrived at the chapel with its beautiful mural (pictured here) by Tomie de Paola, I wondered what it would be like. Would I know what to do? What if I didn’t know the songs? Would I just have to sit there and listen rather than participate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a different thing.

It turned out to be a calming and beautiful service with easy-to-follow chant-like prayers repeated again and again until they felt familiar. And then silence. And then more chanted prayers and more silence. Until we worked our way through the rest of evening prayer. All of this reminded me of something I wrote about in Everyday Divine: A Catholic Guide to Active Spirituality. A critical part of our spiritual journey — perhaps our life journey in general — is a willingness to be a beginner. Our society tends to make us believe we need to learn something, perfect it, and stick with it, but prayer life and spiritual “progress,” for lack of a better word, really rely on our willingness to learn anew again and again what it means to be a pilgrim on this path toward heaven.

Here’s what I said about my own struggles with this beginner mentality in “Notes from the Journey” in Everyday Divine:

I’m not good at being a beginner. I want to be an expert from Day 1. No matter what I’m doing. Even when I’m doing something I’ve never done before. Not sure where that mentality comes from, but it’s a stumbling block. To expect perfection in everything is a surefire path to “failure,” or to not trying at all.

I need the willingness to be a beginner in prayer, to sit there and be open to whatever might unfold, to come back day after day even when it feels like I’m not progressing and just practice my “craft,” the craft of praying.

This week in the early morning hours before anyone else is awake, I’ve been saying Morning Prayer out on the deck or in my sun porch. And slowly, slowly I have found a rhythm there that feels right, one I hope I can keep up for good. As soon as that thought enters my mind, I realize I’m heading right back to the quest for perfection instead of living in this moment, praying in this moment, one day at a time.  (Everyday Divine, page 12)

Practice being a beginner today. Find a prayer method you’ve never tried before and simply begin, no long-range goals or image of perfection. Just begin. Here’s a clip of a Taize prayer, in case you’d like to experience that, although it’s much more elaborate than the simple chanting we did last night.

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Setting life to a sacred rhythm

Lessons from the  monastics via Everyday Divine:

Start to look at the “life-rhythm” of your day. Is it totally out of balance, with most of your time spent running from one stressful moment to another? Or do you have a peaceful “refrain” that keeps the melody of your life from turning dissonant? Actively work toward bringing balance into your daily life by making prayer the thing you constantly come back to for refreshment, rest, and renewal. 

Take notice of how life varies from day to day, season to season, year to year. Start to adapt your prayer life and your home life to the seasons, marking time with specific practices that keep your life in tempo with the movement of Mother Earth.

…By taking this monastic approach to everyday life, you can create a sacred rhythm, moving in time with the Spirit, coming back to your own prayer refrain or theme as you care for your family, entertain guests, clean your house, and work in your office. If you begin to recognize that God is in everything and everyone around you, all of life becomes a symphony, with every living thing playing its own melody under the guidance of the master conductor.  – Everyday Divine, pages 116-117

 

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Manic Monday: Rocking the Bronx. And Syracuse.

How is it possible we have already hit mid-July? I would find that totally unbelievable except for the fact that I’m looking out at my yard as I write this, and it is clearly mid-July out there. It’s like a jungle, with plants run amok and weeds the size of small trees. This is what happens when summer starts to get away from me, and it almost always does. (It just so happens that as I was looking out at my jungle yard, Cari Donaldson posted this wonderful essay  about this very thing. Please go read it when you’re done here.) With everything on our calendar for the coming week (including another trip to NYC with my sister and brother and our families), I suspect things aren’t going to get any tidier any time soon.

Before we get on with the rest of Manic Monday, just take a look at that beautiful July sunset over the Stewart’s Shop near our house. Don’t forget to look for God’s beauty in unexpected places — like when you’re at a gas pump a mile from home.  Anyway, away we go with the rest of Manic Monday…

Bookshelf: When I was at the library last week, working at one of the desks hidden behind the fiction section, I had the sudden urge for some easy-to-digest spiritual food for thought. One of my favorites in this category is Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, whose writing always inspires and whose Buddhist philosophy actually complements my Catholic faith life quite nicely. So I picked up You Are Here: Discovering the Magic in the Present Moment.

GPS: I had a chance to put my driving-as-prayer suggestion into practice when I hit the road on Friday and headed west to see my childhood friend, Kari, who was staying with her sister just outside of Syracuse. We have been friends for more than 40 years, although we rarely get to see each other anymore. Doesn’t matter though. We pick up right where we left off in high school. It was a wonderful almost-24 hours of friendship and laughter and sunshine, of good food on the deck and beautiful children splashing in the pool, of quiet conversations late into the night and early morning coffee shared before the kids woke up. Such a gift. I am blessed.

Viewfinder:  Syracuse one day, the Bronx the next. Dennis and I took the kids to the Bronx Zoo, an almost-annual tradition that we all love. It was a beautiful day for it, although by mid-afternoon we had surpassed steamy, as evidenced by my willingness to knot a broken hair tie and pull my hair into a ponytail because I couldn’t take it anymore. The animals were in fine form despite the heat. The grizzlies were frolicking in the pool; the gorillas were resting but full of quizzical and serious and playful looks; the tigers were on the move; the monkeys were putting on a show as they swung from vine to vine. We always become members of the zoo when we make these trips because it not only saves us money but allows us to become part of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which does amazing work to make sure animals that are endangered or close to extinction manage to survive. And in case you have issues with zoos, know this: The grizzly bear you see here, as well as the others that live with him are considered “nuisance bears” because they continually worked their way into human territory. If not for WCS and the Bronx Zoo, those bears would have been put down. Instead, they’re climbing rocks and playing together in a pond.

And here’s a lovely peacock who was walking around in the food court. You know me and peacocks. Couldn’t resist a photo when he was walking right in front of me.  Unfortunately, he was almost off screen by the time I snapped this. Still, look at those feathers! (You can click on it for a closer view.)

 

Menu: After our day at the Bronx Zoo, we headed to our favorite restaurant on Arthur Avenue: Dominick’s. No menu, no prices, no credit cards. They pretty much tell you what you want to eat, and we are never disappointed. We were stuffed to overflowing and took home enough for at least three more dinners. Here’s my stellar cavatelli with rapini in garlic and oil. Delish. Next time, however, we will go on a Saturday so we can go to all the other shops.

Soundtrack: This one makes me happy. And I do believe we’ll be okay.

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In the footsteps of St. Benedict…

In honor of the Feast of St. Benedict, I thought I would re-post my Time Union reflection on my trip to the Monastery of St. Benedict in Subiaco, Italy, four years ago. 

With a breathtaking valley stretching out below and an ancient monastery clinging to the cliffs above, Subiaco, Italy, feels as though it is a world away from the chaotic streets of Rome, only 40 miles to its west. And, in a sense, it is.

Steeped in history that stretches back to the Roman Empire and the earliest centuries of the Roman Catholic Church, Subiaco is a place out of time, giving visitors a chance to step into the very same cloisters, caves and gardens that were once home to ancient saints and medieval monks.

During the hour ride by tour bus, past fields lined with cypress trees and tiny villages dotted with red-tiled roofs, the hustle and bustle of Roman life seemed to fade with each passing mile. Finally, in what can best be described as the white-knuckle portion of the trip, the bus wound its way up a narrow mountain road to what has become a spiritual pilgrimage spot for Christians and a treasure trove of artifacts for history buffs and art lovers.

Although today Subiaco is known as the birthplace of Western monasticism, thanks to St. Benedict of Nursia — who spent three years living in a cave there before starting 13 monasteries — it was first home to the Aequi people, who were defeated by the Romans in 304 B.C. The Roman Empire took advantage of the nearby Anio River and built aqueducts to bring water to Rome, but it was the Emperor Nero

who left his mark on the place. He built a villa there and created three artificial lakes, giving the area its name Subiacus, “below the lakes,” which became Subiaco.

Tour guides like to point out the ruins of Nero’s villa and the irony that the one-time home of this brutal persecutor of Christians would become the fertile ground in which the seeds of the great monastic orders of the Christian faith would be planted. Regardless of why you visit — for the history or the spirituality — Subiaco is a place of mystery and silence, natural beauty and artistic significance.

Continue reading HERE.

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