Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 43

Only human, just a little human…

This is one of those songs. Every time I get in the car, it seems to come on. Hadn’t ever heard it up until a few days ago but fell in love with it the first time I caught a piece of it. So much so I sat in the library parking lot just listening even though I really needed to get my books and get on with the day.

 

“I’m only human, and I bleed when I fall down…” Give it a listen. I’m gonna let Christina Perri play us out on this Friday afternoon…

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Well played, Facebook, well played

It was hard enough staying off Facebook for two days when I had multiple people emailing, texting and calling to ask why I had disappeared. Apparently when you deactivate, even when you tell Facebook it’s just temporary, your entire page vanishes, like you’ve been sucked into some black hole, like you never existed in the first place, which is a whole other existential blog post I’m not up for writing today. I heard from a few friends and relatives who wondered if I’d unfriended them or if they’d accidentally unfriended or “erased” me after they tried unsuccessfully to send me a message or write on my wall. Oh, the tangled worldwide webs we weave.

Then came the kicker. Dennis was sitting across from me with his iPad and mentioned that the professor from Gilligan’s Island had died. And then a few minutes later than Reuben Kincaid from the Partridge Family had died. Wait. What? See what happens when you leave Facebook? You miss out on critical information like this.  I think the professor and Reuben are reason enough to sign back onto Facebook.

Seriously, there are lots of good reasons to sign back on, all of them having to do with people I love. But I will say this, since I’ve been off — and although it feels longer, it’s only been a little more than two days — I have sent out four handwritten notes, something I almost never do when I can send a FB message instead, and I’ve received phone calls from two people I never talk to because we “chat” via message on FB. So being off Facebook clearly has its benefits. But with Facebook I’d be seeing those same people almost constantly and would be up to date on every last thing going on in their lives. So, again, balance is the bottom line.

I’ll have you know that I received an anonymous email — my least favorite kind of email — from someone telling me I should learn about real friendship (which I kind of already know since I wrote a book about it and all) and that I don’t really have any “authentic” friends on Facebook. After I got over my complete annoyance first with the anonymity of the email and second with blanket statements about my life by someone who doesn’t know me at all, I realized that this person doesn’t understand the first thing about Facebook, which is her loss. I absolutely have some very authentic friends on Facebook, people I’d go the distance for if they called and needed my help, people I pray for regularly, people I can’t see in real life because of distance but get to see every day through the magic of Facebook. (BTW, I think if you’re sending anonymous emails you probably have a thing or two to learn about authenticity.)

My goal going forward is to find a way to take the best of Facebook without getting sucked into the time-wasting void. I know, good luck to me with that. But I can’t give up the virtual relationships I have with so many lovely people, some I didn’t even know before Facebook came along. It’s a beautiful thing. I used to be one of those people who said I was only on Facebook because I HAD to be on Facebook for work purposes, and in the beginning that was absolutely the case. But the truth is that at this point I couldn’t care less about the work stuff. I want to see my friends’ kids and hear about their lives and share vicariously in their vacations and celebrate with them or mourn with them and pray for them.

In the spirit of full disclosure, however, I also plan to go through my friend list and remove those folks with whom I have zero personal connection. I don’t know how many friends I have, but I do know that many of them are not even acquaintances. So my personal page is about to become more personal. If you are my friend there and we don’t know each other in real life, please head over to my author page HERE and click like so we can remain connected. I just need a better separation between personal and professional on Facebook.

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Facebook, we have a problem

I’ve been off Facebook for only 36 hours and already I can see a monumental difference in the way I’m working, thinking, living. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s true. I feel more like my old self, much more efficient, focused, forward-moving.

I realize I can’t lay all of those issues at the feet of Facebook. The problem is not Facebook per se but my reaction to Facebook or my relationship with Facebook or my addiction to Facebook. For the past two mornings of Life Without Facebook (LWF), I have actually completed work and sent it off to clients BEFORE Chiara even got on the bus. That’s how I used to work in the old days. I mean, I used to write entire books in three short months not so long ago. But lately, since I’ve gone from casual Facebook user to obsessed Facebook user, I find half the morning gone before I can see my way clear of must-watch Youtube videos, silly memes I need to share, snarky comments I need to make, and don’t even get me started on Pinterest. I could lose DAYS over on Pinterest.

So part of me says, “That’s it. I’m done. No more Facebook.” And yet, and yet, and yet, I just can’t do that. Because so many people I love live just down the street from me on Facebook, and it’s often a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I am oh so happy when I bump into my Facebook friends as I go about my day. I miss seeing all of you over there. Really. I’m not even into two full days of LWF, and I already feel a bit of an ache for some of you and your silly-but-satisfying banter, and the photos of your kids going by in my newsfeed, and the private messages that pop up out of nowhere and brighten my day.

As someone who works alone every day all day in a basement with no natural light and two crazy cats, Facebook is my water cooler and, often, my sanity. If you work from home, you know exactly what I mean. I can often go an entire day without talking to anyone until the kids get home, and so Facebook is my cafeteria table, my cubicle, my table at Murphy’s after a long day on deadline (that’s for all you CNY alums). I don’t want to give it up completely because it would make my very quiet days too quiet, too dull. Some of you can make me laugh out loud without even trying. That’s a good thing. Why would I want to give that up?

So the answer, as is often the case with so much of life, is balance. Can I create a healthy relationship with Facebook, one where I get to see all of you over the course of a day without falling into the mindless scrolling that eats up valuable time from my work day? The answer is yes, of course. Because I am disciplined. You don’t get to work from home for 20 years with no boss standing over you and write six books in the midst of raising three kids without some serious discipline. That I know without question. I just need to figure out what that looks like for me in a landscape that includes Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Bitstrip…

As I said yesterday, I’ll be back sooner rather than later. (My author page continues to run NSS posts, so you may see things generated by that page on Facebook, despite my absence.) Maybe I’ll be back even sooner than I’d originally planned, depending on how much I get done today. And then I’ll watch and see how re-entry affects my productivity. Which is no different than what I would do if I worked in a real office and was spending too much time hanging over the wall of my neighbor’s cubicle or taking one too many trips down to the vending machine for a much-needed break in the guise of a Twix bar.

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Know when to fold ‘em, at least temporarily

As  I mentioned last week, I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I love, love, love that I get to meet up with friends I don’t get to see in real life, and this week in particular some of those friends have provided incredible support via Facebook private message. A few notes arrived exactly when I needed them most. That’s when I look at Facebook with stars in my eyes. But — and it seems there’s always a “but” with Facebook — it is a constant distraction for me, so much so I felt I needed to take a short break to get through a few tight deadlines. 

So, if we are friends on Facebook and you try to message me, it will say you don’t have permission. Which is stupid because you do have permission, I’m just not there to receive the message. I wish it would say that instead, but it doesn’t. I’ve just taken a brief time out. I’ll be back, sooner rather than later. But for the next few days not having the ability to pop onto Facebook every time I have writer’s block or want to avoid a work project will really help me out. I know myself. If it’s there, I’ll be on it. So I have to shut it down. I’m sure you’ll see me around over the weekend, unless I realize my life is so much more efficient without it that I decide to extend my hiatus. We’ll see.

Ciao, for now. If you do need to reach me for any reason, send a message via email to my gmail account or through the email address on this blog. And thank you to all of you who regularly brighten my day via Facebook. I appreciate it, but I just need to take a step back. Blog posts will still appear on my author page thanks to the stealth work of my co-administrator on that page.

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Leap of faith, passport required

My most recent Life Lines column, running in the current issue of Catholic New York, will give you a glimpse into the surprising way my food-faith pilgrimage to Italy came to be and how you can get on board: 

One day a few months back, I opened my email inbox to find a message from a travel agent asking if I’d be “willing” to lead a food and faith pilgrimage through Italy in October 2014. After staring at the email open-mouthed for what must have been a good five minutes, I turned the laptop to Dennis and said, “Do you think this is for real?” I couldn’t imagine that my dream of going back to Italy— not just to Rome this time but for a cross-country trek—might be on the verge of coming true.

So I called Melani from Travel Overtures, who had read my book “Cravings” and thought it might be a good starting point for a trip combining food and faith. What better place to do that than Italy? She told me to design the trip of my dreams city by city and she would take it from there, and, boy, did she ever. What Melani has come up with truly is the trip of a lifetime, one that will take me— and whoever else decides to join me— from Florence and Siena to Assisi and Rome to Naples, Salerno, Sorrento and the Isle of Capri, with wine tastings, an olive oil tasting, a cooking class, and a boat ride to the famed Blue Grotto woven into the spiritual mix of churches and shrines, museums and Masses. It promises to be a true feast for the senses.

I’ll even get the chance to speak on topics near and dear to my heart in various Italian cities: spiritual friendship while in Assisi, where Francis and Clare—spiritual friends extraordinaire—set out to change the Church and our world; food and its connection to faith while in Rome, where a fabulous meal is always right around the corner; discovering the divine in everyday life while we traverse the Amalfi Coast and soak in the grandeur of God’s glorious creation.

But this trip is also a leap of faith because saying “yes” to the adventure means trusting a plan I didn’t set in motion and relying on lots of other people to make it happen and on God’s grace to see me through. I remain totally open to whatever God has in store because, as I learned when I clicked on that email six months ago, you just never know what God has up his sleeve.

That seems to be the case with so much of life, whether we are flying off to a foreign country or dealing with things around our own kitchen table. It’s all an adventure, and we can either choose to embrace whatever happens next or live in fear of all the what-ifs.

I can look at this trip and wonder how it will all come together, how my husband and kids will fare with me out of the country for 13 days, how my other work will get done while I’m gone. Or I can look at this trip and wonder just how blue the Blue Grotto will be, how it will feel to stand in a hermitage where St. Francis of Assisi once prayed, how I will contain my joy when I finally get to the town where my grandfather was born, Massa Lubrense, just outside of Sorrento. I think the latter approach sounds much more fun.

No matter where you travel this year, or whether you travel at all, remember to embrace the possibilities and trust that God has a plan just waiting in your spiritual inbox somewhere. Don’t be afraid to open it.

“Italy: A Feast for Body and Soul” will be held Oct. 7-19, 2014, departing from JFK-New York. Cost of $4,999 includes round-trip airfare, 4-star+ accommodations, 24 meals, two wine tastings, olive oil tasting, cooking class, entrance fees to museums and other attractions, English-speaking tour guide and more. For more information, click the Italy 2014 tab above, or visit the Italy: A Feast for Body and Soul Facebook page and click “like” to get regular updates. Or email me privately.

Photos by Mary DeTurris Poust. No reprints without permission.

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The lighter side of darkness

So yesterday’s post was pretty heavy, I guess, and I was reflecting on it as I went about my day and thinking about the depths of the darkness. And I realized something, I noticed markers, I guess you could call them, that to me are signals that I have not yet reached a level of depression that is beyond hope. What markers?

1. No matter how down and out I feel, no matter how much self-loathing is going on, I never, ever skip using the squeegee to wipe the down the glass doors when I’m done with my shower. To me, the continued awareness of and aversion to soap scum build-up in my shower is a sign of hope.

2. Despite my pits-of-despair feelings, I continue to talk to the cats in that high-pitched sing-song voice I used to use with my kids when they were infants. And I carry on little conversations with them as if they understand, as if they are not the same animals who have not caught on even over a month’s time that we have moved the location of their foods dishes. If I can rally to be playful with the cats, I can’t be too far gone. Or maybe I’m a total cat lady and I’m past the point of no return.

3. I cannot drive in my car without turning on the radio and singing along, and not to sad, sappy songs but to loud, fast, take-no-prisoners songs. For the past three days I’ve heard the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” in its entirety every time I got in the car. I think that’s a sign. And so I sang it at the top of my lungs every time. If I can still sing and dance while driving, I’ve got a chance.

4. Other people can’t eat when they get depressed. Or they eat too much. I tend toward the latter, but a sure sign that I haven’t slipped over the edge is the fact that even when I can barely stand to drag myself out of bed in the morning, I cannot stand pasta that is cooked one second past al dente. When I stop caring about the firmness of my pasta, I will know I need serious help.

And now the song…

 

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Honesty…is such a lonely word

You will often hear me talk about being in “darkness,” and almost always those posts happily wrap up with a light at the end of the tunnel, a glimmer of hope, a shimmer of the Spirit. Something. Anything. But lately, to be perfectly honest, it’s just been darkness. I know that from the outside — and even from the inside — I clearly have nothing in the world to feel dark about. But there it is. Enveloping. Suffocating. Punishing. Frightening.

Maybe it was a perfect storm, a combination of stress over work, unhappiness over physical stuff, craziness with the kids’ schedules, dryness in the spiritual realm, and then, the icing on the cake, the death of my grandmother in the midst of the holiday season. So perhaps there is a reason for the darkness, but, even so, it shouldn’t be quite so lights-out dark over here. Really. I can recognize that objectively, but, boy, is it hard to shake it off from where I’m standing.

I told someone yesterday that if you were ask people who know me (or think they know me) how I am, they’d probably offer you a fairly upbeat litany: very chatty, mostly smiley, sometimes funny, usually sarcastic, often goofy, but overall happy. That is the armor I put on to go out into the world, whether it’s at a school meeting, in the coffee shop, over the phone, or on Facebook. But what lives under the armor here in the basement office is an entirely different scenario. And I know I’m not alone, so I thought it was time to talk about it, put it all out there, because this place, this blog, is totally worthless if it’s not completely honest. But, as the song says, “Honesty is such a lonely word.” And a hard word, and a hard practice, because being honest means being vulnerable and being vulnerable means allowing your heart to be broken or at least a little scarred and your ego to be buffeted and your sense of self to be hung out to dry, depending on the reaction.

At just about this point in writing my blog post today, I signed onto Facebook and found another friend writing a similar post but with a different twist over at The Glass House Retreat. Some of it sounded so familiar I felt like she must have been taking transcription, right from my brain to her hands. She wrote:

For me, I cope with humor. I cope with eating entirely too much of the “wrong” foods. I cope with hiding in my basement for hours on end. I cope with sleeping. I cope with writing. I cope with meditation. I cope with yoga. I cope with the help of a gifted therapist. I cope with the help of not one, but two psychics. I cope with my dearest of friends who get me and don’t judge me. I cope with listening to same song on repeat for as long as it takes.

We ALL put on award worthy performances for the public. We smile, though our heart is breaking. We get dressed and put one foot in front of the other even when the very last thing we want to do is leave the cocoon of our blankets. We put on mascara, even though we will cry. We go out for meals with friends. We toast each other because we have gotten through another day.

Yes, much of life is a performance. Dare I say almost ALL of Facebook is a performance, not just for me but for everyone out there. Best foot — photo, video, life news, vacation — forward almost all the time, with only rare glimpses into our pain and struggle. Sometimes I verge on leaving Facebook for that very reason, too much surface and not enough depth, too much pizazz and not enough honesty. I like deep. I like honest. I like real. But I stay because of the virtual connections that have given me real friends — like Maggie, the blogger I mentioned above, whom I’ve never met but feel like I know — or have renewed old friendships with people who are so dear to me that I can’t imagine not seeing their smiling faces scrolling across my computer screen each day.

On dark days, sometimes those little blips of light flashing from my laptop are enough to chase away the shadows. Of course, on other days, some comments on my thread — even if they are painfully honest, or maybe because they are painfully honest — are enough to kick me right back down into the pit. So I think there has to be balance and awareness. Know when to hold ‘em; know when to fold ‘em, I guess. I’m holding ‘em for now, although I always keep the possibility of folding and disappearing for a while as a back-up plan. And that’s okay. Sometimes we all need to disappear for a while. Well, at least those of us cut from this particular cloth.

When I commented over on Maggie’s post today, I said this:

I have not been able to write because I have been frozen by a grief that really has no direct or obvious source. That’s why my blog has been dry for a while. I usually cope through writing, so to find myself without words is a grief all of its own.

Honestly. I have been aching to write here, to share with you, but if I can’t be totally honest, I’d rather not be here at all. So there you have it. I can’t write, can’t pray, can’t do yoga, can’t eat right, can’t sleep, can’t laugh, can’t anything, and yet life requires me to find a way to do all those things in spite of myself. Maybe showing up here again is a first step in doing just that, a leap toward the light even when I can’t see the other side.

And now, here is the song, which I especially love because it is a raspier, rougher, realer version than the original:

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Are you making the same resolution over and over? Try a new approach. Getting fit is an inside job.

As we head into another new year and people everywhere jump on the diet and fitness resolution bandwagon, I thought I’d rewind to last year at this time when everyone was probably making the exact same resolutions and I was talking about our real cravings and how to conquer eating issues without counting calories. So often our hunger has nothing to do with cookies or potato chips or eggnog. It has to do with our understanding of ourself and our place in the world and a hunger for inner peace and joy. We just use food to fill the void.

Here’s what we were talking about one year ago when my book Cravings: A Catholic Wrestles with Food, Self-Image, and God was released by Ave Maria Press. I think I just might reread it this coming month because, as I write in the book, it’s oh so easy to slip back into old habits and patterns of thinking.

Here’s a snippet from an interview I did with Alex Blackwell over at The Bridgemaker:

1. How are our eating habits driven by emotions?

I think it’s a matter of wanting control.

So much of life, especially in our fast-paced society, feels beyond our control, so food becomes one way we can feel like we’re in charge, but often it’s just the opposite.

We stuff ourselves or starve ourselves in attempt to become something we’re not, something we imagine will be so much better than who we are right now.

Most of us recognize that we use food as a reward or a comfort, but I think it goes much deeper than that. We use food to fill a void or a hunger for something more – love, acceptance, a relationship with God or others – but food can’t satisfy that deeper hunger and so we end up with problems.

Of course, as I say in my book, sometimes a cookie is just a cookie. Not every snack or indulgence is a statement on our self-worth, but a lot of it is.

So this work of developing a good relationship with food doesn’t start with calorie counting but with self-acceptance and a willingness to do some soul searching.  Read the rest of that interview by clicking HERE.

And if you’d like to really dive into this and get some specific pointers on how to curb your cravings, here’s a 45-minute webinar I did on the topic:

And, of course, you can buy the book, which has questions and meditations at the end of every chapter and a series of exercises to put what you learn into practice.  You can get the book by heading to Amazon at this link or Barnes and Noble at this link.

 

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It’s always darkest before the dawn

I love Advent and Christmas. Really I do. I wear a Santa hat, light the Advent wreath, deck the halls, and drink eggnog like it’s going out of style, but usually by this point I am in closer to a pit-of-despair feeling than I am to holly jolly.

And every year I forget that I felt the exact same way the year before. I can go back to posts from Advents gone by and see the same sorry attitude.

Don’t believe me? This is what I said about it last year:

I have to be honest with you. I have been basking in the darkness this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Okay, in a bad way. God and I really haven’t been on speaking terms lately, which wasn’t God’s idea but I’m still annoyed with Him over it. Yes, sometimes I treat God like a spouse, sibling, parent, child, depending on my mood. I get mad, I lash out, I talk too much, I don’t talk at all, I yell. I figure God can take it. Then I wait and wait and wait for God to come around and make me see the light. But this week that hasn’t been happening so much, and as we inch closer to Christmas I worry that everyone else will be singing Joy to the World while I’m still singing the spiritual blues. I keep waiting for a sign.

Yeah, fast forward to now and hit replay. That’s exactly where I’ve been lately. So this year I got to wondering about that, about my love-hate relationship with this season of joy.

I think maybe I need to pace myself. I jump into this season full force spiritually, thinking THIS is going to be the year I get it right. I’m going to be peaceful and prayerful and our home is going to be like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And then I wake up to my own spiritual desert and the kids fighting and the work deadlines looming and, well, the slow decline begins. By the time the fourth Sunday of Advent rolls around and I’m looking back and realizing that none of the things I had hoped for became reality, I start to get a little down on the whole thing. In fact, just this weekend I declared to Dennis that next year we are just not doing Christmas. If the celebration of Jesus’ birth isn’t enough to snap us out of our complacency or our frustration or our anger or our disappointment, well, then I don’t know what will, and maybe we should just stop pretending it means something when clearly it doesn’t because if it did we would change.

That’s a pretty big demand to place on a holiday season — finally allowing Jesus to change us completely in just four weeks. No wonder I get depressed. But today, with Christmas just around the corner, I feel my spirits starting to lift. At Mass yesterday, a glimmer of light was trying to push its way into the dark corners of my soul and I felt a little bit of that Christmas joy stirring around somewhere in my heart. And so I’ll hold on and hope and wait these last two days for the Light that shines in the darkness, knowing that I can never find my way out of this pit on my own and maybe that’s the first step toward true joy.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

And all things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;

the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:1-5

 

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What is the end you’re living for?

I was searching for something in my digital files and came across this column from January 2012. It seemed to ring true all over again, although, to be honest, I had totally forgotten about it — both the words and the lessons. So here it is again, if only for myself.

It amazes me sometimes how a casual comment, a familiar smell or the sound of a name we haven’t heard in a while can send us spiraling back in time to a place or event we’d long ago forgotten. Memories linger on our hearts. Some we’d like to preserve forever; some we wish would stay hidden. Good or bad, they are too often the things that shape us.

I was at lunch with some friends not long ago, laughing and sharing stories, when one line, uttered in passing, hit me like a brick. I was suddenly on the playground in elementary school, feeling unwanted for reasons I never quite understood. As I had during those sometimes painful times of my past, I kept a dim smile on my face, hoping to hide the fact that I was aching inside, not because what was said was intentionally hurtful but because it spoke a truth I’d rather not admit.

We all want to be loved, even if we don’t show it or say it. We want to feel accepted, appreciated, and while that sometimes seems important on the surface—as evidenced by the popularity of accumulating Facebook friends by the hundreds—that kind of goal only serves to take us farther and farther from our truth.

Life is not a popularity contest, and the road to sainthood is not paved with compliments and friend requests. Trying to fashion ourselves in someone else’s image is just about the worst thing we can do. It’s really no different from what I tell my kids as they face their own struggles on the playground or in the classroom, and yet I think we adults sometimes forget that it still applies to us. Too often we think becoming successful or loved or holy means becoming someone different than the person we are at our core, the person we were created to be.

Jesuit Father James Martin, in his book Becoming Who You Are, talks about our penchant for wanting to become better by becoming different:

“Early in the novitiate, I thought that being holy meant changing an essential part of who I was, suppressing my personality, not building on it. I was eradicating my natural desires and inclinations, rather than asking God to sanctify and even perfect them…As strange as it sounds, I thought that being myself meant being someone else.”

I think that same line of reasoning is true for most of us. We look around and make comparisons and see ourselves as “less than.” Comparisons lead nowhere, at least nowhere good, but that no-win proposition of keeping up with the Joneses—materially, professionally, socially, spiritually—is about as American as apple pie, or Facebook.

“Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire,” famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote, reminding us that the only way to conquer the world is to renounce it.

We can’t all “renounce” the world in monastic fashion, but we can renounce all those things that pull us off our true path, that convince us we need to be somebody else in order to be good enough, to be loved. As St. Francis de Sales once said, “Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.”

Truth is, we are loved exactly as we are by a God who holds us in the palm of his hand no matter how many Facebook friends we have or how much “stuff” we have or have not accumulated.

“No one can serve two masters,” Jesus said. So often today our “masters” are not just money and possessions but the comparisons we make and strive to live up to, the desires we have to be someone we’re not, the longing to be loved not by God but by the world.

God alone. When that’s enough, no memory can knock us off our path or send us reeling because we possess the only thing that truly matters. What is the end you’re living for?

 

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