Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 47

For people who spend so much time in prison, they sure are fun — and inspiring

I had the honor of addressing 50 Catholic prison chaplains on retreat at Notre Dame Retreat House in Canandaigua, N.Y., this week. And while my presentation was meant to give them a spiritual lift and maybe a little levity — I am totally goofy when I get up there in front of an audience. Go figure. — the truth is that they were the ones who did just that for me. The Spirit works in amazing ways, and there is no doubt in my mind that I was meant to be exactly in that place at that moment this week. And I need to thank them for welcoming me so graciously but also for teaching me and sharing with me and laughing with me and reminding me what is so wonderful and beautiful about the individual Catholics who make up the Body of Christ.

These priests, deacons, sisters, and lay men and women have a hard row to hoe. They are stretched to the limit. They take on darkness and struggle and suffering on behalf of others. And here in New York, Catholic prison chaplains are required to serve two masters, working for both the state government and the Church. If that doesn’t make your head hurt just thinking about it, I don’t know what will.

But hearing them talk about the people they serve and their faith communities that exist behind bars gave me hope, because what they are creating in prison is what I’m talking about creating out here in the great wide open, a place where faith is alive and where it doesn’t necessarily matter if you have a perfect liturgy as long as the Spirit is moving among the people. And I felt the Spirit moving among them right there.

I came home and told Dennis that I wish people who aren’t Catholic or who only know the Church by what they experience in their parish could see the humor and light and love that exists among Catholics who have spent many years toiling in the vineyard and who know that even in the darkest moments there are ways to stir up laughter. Our hospitality hour on Wednesday night is all anyone would have needed to see. I left that gathering lighter. The worries and chaos of the days before — something I shared with the chaplains during my talk about “Creating Calm Amid Life’s Chaos” — were lifted and I felt hope creeping back in.

Between Masses and meals and yoga class and ice cream and the birthday song for me at breakfast the next day, I couldn’t help but feel as though I belonged there, even though I didn’t, really. And I thought, THIS is what I’m talking about. THIS is what our parishes are missing, this sense of welcome even to the stranger, or the seeker, or the jaded veteran Catholic who still needs to feel God alive among the people. I found it there, and I feel renewed.

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Show me how big your brave is

All of my regular readers here at NSS know that honesty is the name of the game. I always try to tell you the truth, even when it’s not easy or pretty. You’ve been to some dark spiritual places with me. And I try to be that way in life — honest. Just ask the prison chaplains who sat through about 90 minutes of honest yesterday. But sometimes, despite all the best attempts at honesty, there’s a sliver of truth that gets left out, something we’re afraid to say because we think hearing the words out loud would shake us to the core. 

What would people think? What might happen? And so we keep our true self, our truth, ever so slightly hidden. It’s just easier. But, guess what? It turns out the only thing scarier than speaking your truth is NOT speaking your truth. Once you let it out, once you stand in your truth and wait for others to take aim, all the fear drops away. Because for once you know there’s no sliver left under cover, and you are finally standing where you were meant to be.

That’s how it felt this week. When I hit “publish” on Sunday and posted my feelings, I knew I was inviting in a world of trouble. But I also knew that to be silent was the most dangerous thing I could do. Because if I’m not being true to myself and true to my relationship with God, none of this works — not the blog, not the books, not the columns, not the conversations, not the prayer life, nothing. It took me 51 years and a lot of prayer and a lot of soul-searching and some serious time in silence to figure that out. I don’t think it’s coincidence that after a weekend silent retreat — time spent crying as I pleaded silently to God: “You need to guide me because I don’t know the way on my own.” — that I finally got up my courage to speak not only my truth, but a truth that seems, based on the many emails I’ve received, to similarly affect many others as well. I didn’t do it just for me; I did it for every person who has ever felt like me.

In the silence I found my voice. Or the rest of my voice.

So today I ask you to think about your truth. What is it that you’re not letting out because you’re afraid? Maybe it’s time to speak it. And show me “how big your brave is,” as singer Sara Bareilles says in the song clip below.Put it on. Dance. Sing. Speak. Your. Truth. Always. Don’t let the shadows win.

(H/T to my FB friend Maggie over at The Glass House Retreat, who first brought this song to my attention. It came on twice during the eight hours I spent driving during the last 24, so it seemed like the right theme song for today.)

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Creating Calm Amid Life’s Chaos

Well, I didn’t plan for this confluence of events, but, as is often the case, the Spirit took care of that for me. Today I’ll be out in Canandaigua, New York, talking to 70 Catholic prison chaplains about “Creating Calm Amid Life’s Chaos.” Couldn’t have come at a better time, what with this week getting off to a somewhat chaotic start here at Not Strictly Spiritual.

I am looking forward to this time at the retreat house in the quiet beauty of Western New York, hopefully out of wifi range so I won’t be tempted to read any more comments. But I’ll be back late Thursday to pick up where we left off, if necessary. If you leave a comment and it doesn’t pop up right away, it just means I’m out of reach. Every comment — unless it’s spam — makes it through, regardless of how it makes me look. Free speech is kind of important to me, even when it’s tough to take.

I’ll be speaking in a bunch of places in the coming months. (This talk happens to be based on my book Everyday Divine.) If you want to know where I’ll be or would like to talk to me about speaking to your group, you can click THIS LINK and go to my events page.

Peace out.

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Now that I have your attention…

Although I can’t respond to every blog response to my “Losing My Religion”  and subsequent posts, I do want to include the comment I left over on OSV Daily Take this morning because this is my former blog home and because OSV is still family to me. I feel I owe it to them to be sure people see that post and my response to it. 

Here’s a brief snippet of the post, but please go read the whole thing when you’re done here:

“If a parish is struggling, talk to one that is thriving. Open conversations to collaboration across the universal Church. If we work together out of love, I believe we can bring about far more change than by walking away.”

Here is my response:

I am not telling people to walk away from the Church. I’m telling them to walk away from a particular parish when that parish continually fails to feed them. I’m talking about trying to bring about change so that people are finally getting something meaningful from their parishes, which is what they deserve.

And, although my writing about it doesn’t sound like I’m doing much, I am. People are talking about it. Mission accomplished.

This was never about one homily, or one priest, or even one parish. This was about a larger, more pervasive problem. People are choosing to focus on the homily aspect because it’s easier than dealing with the hard truth of people leaving our Church in droves. Why are they leaving? I want to keep them from leaving. I want to get back the ones who have already left, and I was willing to put my neck on the line to bring attention to it.

I love my faith. If I didn’t love my faith and my Church, I would have quietly walked away. What I said, I said out of love because we have the Truth, but if we aren’t feeding people and giving them what they need, they’ll never hear it.

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“Reckless and harmful.” Who me?

“I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses! I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!” — Pope Francis said at World Youth Day, ending his talk with an off-the-cuff-remark reported by AP, “Don’t forget: make trouble.”

And so I am. Consider it tough love. Really, that above quote, and perhaps the reminder that Jesus himself turned over tables in the temple, are all I need to continue saying what I’m saying without fear and without doubt.

I won’t give the blog post below the dignity of a response other to say that this isn’t me “blowing a fuse.” Trust me, you’ll know when I blow a spiritual fuse, and this isn’t me calling my Church to do better out of “boredom.” This is a faithful daughter of the Church fighting for the institution I love because people are leaving, and I know why they’re leaving and it’s about time I said so.

But, really, you need to read this post because if this is why people give to the Church and why people stay in the Church, then we’ve got bigger problems than I thought. It’s titled, “Avoid Mary DeTurris Poust’s Bad Advice.” Enjoy:

Time constraints prevent my giving Mary DeTurris Poust’s column “Losing my religion” (22 Sep 2013) the attention it deserves, likewise her reiteration of her position in “Words matter” ( 23 Sep 2013), so let me get right to it: Canon 1247 and the First Precept of the Church (CCC 2042) bind Catholics to participate in Mass on Sundays and holy days (irrespective of how crummy the homilies might be) and Canon 222 § 1 and the Fifth Precept of the Church (CCC 2043) bind Catholics to contribute to the materials needs of the Church (irrespective of how ‘welcome’ one feels at the parish).

Neither canon law nor catechetical precept admits of dispensation-by-blog, especially not blogs by folks who should know better than to sit down at a key board while blowing a fuse. Catholics who walk out on Mass because the homilies bore them or who withhold support for the Church because they don’t feel welcome in the parish fail in their duty to render due worship to God and in their duty to share their time and treasure with others. In short, Catholics (including those feeling every bit as frustrated as Poust feels) who follow Poust’s bad advice do so at spiritual peril to themselves.

If Poust would like to add her voice to the chorus of Catholics who have asked for better preaching, and join the throngs of faithful who would like to see the Church more vigorously engaged in the world, fine, but for her to suggest, in the meantime, that quitting Mass and/or cutting off support to the Church is the way to pursue those goals—not to mention her invoking Pope Francis as the inspiration for such a tactic!—is reckless and harmful to others.

With respect, what is “reckless and harmful to others” is watching my Church whither on the vine because I don’t have the courage to speak the truth. While I know the letter of the law, I live by the heart of the law, as Jesus taught.

 

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Words matter. The Word matters. Especially at Mass.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. 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

Over and over yesterday, in response to my “Losing My Religion” post, many people tried to convince me that a bad liturgy shouldn’t matter all that much in my faith life. Some who don’t know me very well — or at all — assumed (wrongly) that one or two bad homilies had sent me running. All that matters is the Eucharist, they said. And, I’ll give you this, the only reason I stayed seated in that church this weekend is because of the Eucharist. I would have been out the door before the homily was even close to over if not for that, but are we really going to pretend that the Word doesn’t matter? Because it does.

We come out of the Word. We are bound to the Word. We live by the Word. And if the Word isn’t being preached in a way that relates to people’s lives, well, there’s not much chance they’re going to find meaning in the Eucharist. And I’m not talking about myself here. I’m talking about the countless other Catholics who sit in pews week after week, hungry, waiting, praying that someone will feed them, and although they receive Communion they often leave feeling that same hungry ache in their soul. Yes, Eucharist is source and summit, but mere mortals can’t always get to that place without a little support and help and nourishment along the way. Enter the Word.

Let me ask you this: If Jesus just went out there and took some old message preached centuries earlier and read it to the crowds without relating anything to their day-to-day lives, do you think anyone would have stuck around? Do you think people would have given up everything to follow him if the Word didn’t matter? Do you think there would have been anyone sitting around the table for the Last Supper if Jesus didn’t first draw them in with parables and stories that connected their faith to their everyday lives? No.

As I tried to get across in yesterday’s post, my discontent with my current church experience is not based on a single homily or even a series of homilies or homilies in general; it’s based on the whole package. As a lifelong Catholic who’s been a Catholic journalist for almost 30 years, I don’t take the whole “losing my religion” thing lightly. In fact, just last week I went on a silent retreat specifically because I felt I needed to pray on this and spend time in solitude with God. So, if you don’t know me, try to understand that none of this comes from a place of boredom or single-homily frustration or from an unwillingness on my part to bring something to the table, as was suggested a bunch of times yesterday. This has been years in the making, thanks to one bad experience after another, and it is a cross for me. And what I said yesterday, I said out of love for my faith and my Church and my brothers and sisters sitting in the pews beside me and feeling just as alone and deprived.

When I go to church and nothing – from the six-verse processional dirge to the poor sound system to the inane homilies to the complete lack of community – seems to feed me, well, I tend to ask myself one question, “If I were coming to this church for the very first time, if I were a non-Catholic thinking about becoming a Catholic, would I ever come back?” And nine times out of ten, the answer is a resounding NO!

We need to do better as a Church, and if the only way to get the attention of those in charge is to pull our donations and take back our time and maybe just stand up and take that long walk of shame down the center aisle in the middle of Mass, then so be it. It’s worth it if it prompts even the slightest movement in the right direction.

As I told someone in a comment yesterday, I know my faith. I know my God. I’m not worried about that. It’s my Church I’m worried about, and that’s the truth. God and I are just fine, no thanks to what I’m getting in Sunday liturgies. But what about those folks who don’t have that foundation? What about the people who wander in hoping for someone to pick them up out of their darkness and lead them forward? For their sake and my own, I’m going to fight the good fight, even if it means ruffling some feathers along the way. People suggested I DO something about it. This is me doing something about it in the only way I know, using words, because words can be a lifeline to people, maybe the thing they grab onto until Eucharist takes hold and transforms.

And I’m going to hold onto the Word for dear life and refuse to accept that it shouldn’t matter so much if it’s mangled and mistreated at Mass. So often, when I have wanted to walk away, not just one Saturday night or Sunday morning but for good, I have come back to the words of Peter: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

“You have the words….”  Words matter. The Word matters, even at Mass when we have the benefit of the Eucharist. Especially at Mass.

 

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Losing my religion…

Oh, no I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough…

I almost walked out of Mass in the middle last night. Seriously. And I was not in my own parish so don’t try to figure out where I was. But it doesn’t really matter where I was because, from what I can tell, what I experienced yesterday is a universal problem, as in Universal Church.

It wasn’t that the priest was preaching heresy, which also isn’t unheard of in my church-going experience, unfortunately, or that any one thing outraged me to the point where I felt I just couldn’t remain. It was the overwhelming, long-building, near-constant feeling that my Church really doesn’t care enough to try to feed me spiritually, that the Church is daring Catholics to leave. As in, let’s see if they’ll sit through THIS. Quite frankly, these parishes don’t deserve any of us.

One of the reasons I cried while reading Pope Francis’ stunning and inspiring interview with America magazine last week was because I have been starving for what he’s calling the Church to be. I have been desperate for a shepherd, for someone who wants to meet me in my darkness and walk with me spiritually, for someone who gets up there and tries to meet people where they are – in the real world, struggling with real problems, in a way that actually has some meaning in their lives. That maybe the music lifts us up instead of leaving us shaking our heads. That something, anything, give off even the faintest whiff of meaningful spirituality.

You get a Gospel like we had this Sunday – “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and money.” – and you choose to drone on for 20 minutes about temperance and prudence and fortitude and justice in a disjointed, monotone, utterly incomprehensible way? I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do better than that. I look around and see the blank stares, the fidgeting, the eye-rolling (at least in my pew), and it depresses me. It’s not that people are unwilling to listen or that they don’t want to be there. They’re in the church on a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon or early on a Sunday morning. Obviously they want SOMETHING, but it’s not this. I can assure you.

I walked out of Mass last night and looked at Dennis and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” Meaning, I cannot put up with parishes that do not even attempt to lead spiritually, that do not care what their people need, only, it seems, what might take the least amount of effort, like using an old canned homily (and, yes, we can tell). The path of least resistance. Well, I say it’s about time we start putting up some resistance.

I think every Catholic who is sitting in church week after week wondering, Why? Why? WHY? should not put another thin dime in the collection basket, should not volunteer one more minute of their precious time, should walk out every single time they are insulted by or condescended to or lied to by someone on the altar until something starts to change, until Pope Francis’ challenge begins to take shape before our eyes, not just in beautiful words spoken by a courageous man.

I’m talking about a revolution. But it’s not going to happen unless we care enough to take the dare and get up and walk out until they can do better. It took a while, but I’m ready.

 

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Celebrate freedom. Read a banned book.

Banned Book  Week starts tomorrow, September 22, and I would like to personally encourage you to find your most favorite banned book and read it again. What? You don’t think any books you like would be on the banned book list? Think again. I can’t count up all the books I love that have been on this list at one time or another, from the obvious (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) to the ridiculous (the entire Harry Potter series) and all sorts of great books in between.

Book banners and their ilk would like us to think they’re protecting us and our children from dangerous or indecent ideas by censoring out what they don’t like or don’t agree with, but curtailing our ability to read curtails our ability to know, which, in turn, curtails our ability to form our own opinions based on that knowledge. Once you chip away at this most basic freedom, everything else is on the table as far as I’m concerned. We can never become complacent or complicit.

And if you don’t think it’s still happening, think again. You can click HERE to see a list of the most frequently challenged books of 2012. Captain Underpants tops that list. Sadly, I’m not kidding.

My 13-year-old is reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as her individual selection in her school’s larger celebration of Banned Books Week, and I’m so happy and proud to know that the local middle school is working hard to make sure our kids understand and cherish their right to read.

For homework, Olivia had to write a short answer about this quote: “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” Amen to that. When I asked what she thought that meant, she said that she thought trying to silence someone would just make them more determined to stick up for what they believe in. Gotta love that kid.

If you want to learn more about Banned Books Week, click HERE for the website in support of this annual celebration. And even if you don’t have time to re-read a favorite banned book, take the time to see just how many of your favorites are on there. It will make you realize — or remember — why it’s important to refocus our attention on this subject once a year.

My top hits on the banned list are Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Lady Chatterley (and the many other D.H. Lawrence books I own and love), Harry Potter, pretty much anything by Ernest Hemingway (I’ve also got a whole shelf of him), The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita, Where the Wild Things Are, and Charlotte’s Web. Let me repeat those last two: Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte’s Web. Sigh. I think that’s all I need to say, isn’t it?

Go. Read. Be free.

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Let Pope Francis tell you what Pope Francis thinks

When I sat down to blog about Pope Francis’ interview with America magazine, I started and deleted the post three times. Finally I decided that I have very little I want to say to you about this inspiring, groundbreaking, monumental interview with a man who continues to fill me with hope for the future of our faith and reminds me that, yes, the Holy Spirit is very much alive and active in the life of our Church.

So here’s the only message I have about this interview, which left me in tears at various points. Read it. Slowly. Then read it again. Then take parts of it and use it as spiritual reading, fodder for meditation. Really let it sink in away from the headlines and sound bites and spin — secular or Catholic — because, to be sure, there’s spin from every corner. In fact, I have not read one news story or watched one news show or listened to anyone’s analysis of this piece, even among the bloggers and Catholic writers I most trust. I don’t want to hear what they think about it. I want to hear what Pope Francis thinks, and the only way to do that is to read it for yourself — in context, in its entirety, in solitude, in faith.

Click HERE to go to full text. Print it out. Reflect. Use it as a kind of lectio divina. That’s what I plan to start to do today, and at 12,000 words, it’s going to take a while to get through it a second time.

 

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‘We are travelers on a cosmic journey…’ What a long, strange trip it’s been.

So a few months ago I came across this quote and fell in love with it:

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”

Beautiful, right? Everywhere I looked online this quote was credited to Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. So on the power of that one quote, I ordered the book immediately and took it on vacation with me. And I read. And read. And read, waiting for the moment when that beautiful quote would be put into context. Every time our intrepid protagonist met someone new, I thought: This is it.

When I finished the last line of the epilogue without ever finding this most wonderful quote, I figured I’d finally lost every last brain cell in my head. I mean, how could I buy a book for a singular quote, read the whole thing and not even notice it passing by? Wow, good thing I don’t have to go through college at this age. So I skimmed through the entire book a second time. I was obsessed. Nothing.

Upon returning from vacation, I started doing more Google searches. Over and over, Paulo Coehlo’s name came up. The Alchemist was credited everywhere for this line of poetry meets philosophy meets prose. But the journalist in me would not rest. I needed to know the real deal. This quote was not in that book, so where did it come from?

Finally, deep in the bowels of my Google search, I found a thread where someone equally obsessed put the question out there: “Where is this quote in this book? I can’t find it.” Aha! So I’m not crazy after all. And little by little, after wasting too much work time on something totally unnecessary, I found one little reference to Deepak Chopra. Bingo. Switching gears, I began my search anew and found something that said this quote was really from Chopra’s book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. So I requested the book from my library and waited.

I’m holding it in my hands now. Turned to the very last page and there it was, not  the exact quote in the exact form I found online and first fell in love with, but there nonetheless. It belongs to Deepak Chopra, inspired by Buddha. Amazing how the internet can lead us so far astray and transfer “ownership” of those words from one famous author to another.

Here’s the full quote from Chopra’s book:

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. But the expressions of life are ephemeral, momentary, transient. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism once said,

‘This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.’

We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.” — Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

There. Now I can finally rest. But in the end it all comes back to this one beautiful thought: We are travelers on a cosmic journey and this moment is just a little parenthesis in eternity.

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