Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 49

Ready to paddle my way to an unknown adventure

Ever since moving to upstate New York almost 13 years ago, I’ve wanted to try kayaking. Finally, earlier this year, I got my chance when we took Chiara’s Brownie Troop camping up near Lake George. Little Girl Scouts aside, it was so peaceful and lovely as I quietly paddled around in the sunshine, and I knew I wanted to do it again. And I secretly thought, Wouldn’t it be fun to have my own kayak? But how was that ever going to happen when I don’t know the first thing about kayaks?

Once you put a thought out into the universe, however, you never know what might happen. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky and paying close attention, the thing you put out there as a wish comes back to you as a reality. Happened when I said I wanted to go to Italy a few years ago, and now it happened in the form of a kayak. So be careful what you put out into the universe people. Make it something good or fun.

Just a few days ago, out of the clear blue sky, I received a Facebook message from my neighbor: ”Do you guys want a free kayak? It’s an 8-footer and broadbased so it’s good for kids. One person – very light. If you want it, come get it. Red!”

It took me about five seconds to respond, “Yes!” Even though I don’t have a roof rack or a life vest or even the slightest idea how to get into the thing without tipping myself over and going head first into the lake, thereby losing my new blue glasses. But minor details have never stopped me from plowing ahead willy nilly with a crazy scheme.

I thought kayak thoughts and a kayak showed up. You don’t say “no” to that. And now, when I look out my kitchen window as I cook dinner, the sight of the bright red kayak and lemon yellow paddle makes me smile because it means I’m bound to find an adventure somewhere around the bend, and life is so much more fun when there’s an adventure in the offing and when we push out of our comfort zone, even if, in this case, that means no more than pushing off the sandy shore of an upstate lake.

So local friends, if you’ve got a kayak or want to kayak or have ever even considered for half a second that you might some day want to try to kayak, send me a message. We will paddle our way toward something spectacular. And I’ll be sure to wear my back-up glasses just in case.

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Broken and beautiful

If you look around my office prayer space or on my bedroom dresser, you’ll notice one constant: broken conch and whelk shells everywhere. Small and blue-grey, large and sun-bleached white, twisting, turning, spiraling in that gorgeous and mysterious way that sea shells do. Although I do have one perfect channeled whelk shell, which I purchased in Cape May years ago, my prized possessions are the broken shells because, as far as I’m concerned, they are far more beautiful than the ones that are perfectly intact and so lovely on the outside.

I love the way the brokenness lets you see inside, where the true beauty lies, the magnificent soft turns and intricate work of the Creator typically hidden by the outer shell. I think I love them so much because they remind me of people, broken but beautiful. Even the people who look physically perfect on the outside harbor an intricate beauty and brokenness somewhere on the inside. It’s just a factor of our humanity. We don’t get through this life whole and intact; we are meant to be broken open so eventually we can expose and embrace our inner beauty. Like my collection of scarred and shattered shells.

We are all shattered in one way or another. We are all incomplete, missing a piece here and there. But we are all beautiful. In fact, we are more beautiful because of it. Who wants polished perfection that belies the truth of what’s inside when you can have the raw power of beauty that’s broken because it has lived and loved and lost and carried on in spite of it all. Be broken and be beautiful.

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Foodie Friday: Let the vacation eating begin

Vacation is under way here at the Poust House. Last night we fired up some S’mores. Today we are packing our annual single-serve sugar-loaded we-never-eat-this-any-other-time breakfast cereals. Every year the kids look forward to eating this stuff with abandon. (Shhh, don’t tell them most of these marshmallow-packed and chocolate-flavored cereals were considered healthy eating when I was little.)

“Pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers…” They’re magically delicious!

We will spend the next seven days eating some of the best worst food ever. Fried Oreos, waffles and ice cream, pizza and more pizza, and sugary cereals of every kind. Maybe I’ll post some shore food photos along the way. Stay tuned…

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Life in My 50s: Learning to risk a little, love a lot

My August Life Lines column, from the most recent issue of Catholic New York:

When I turned 50 last year, I had some vague notions of how I wanted to mark my half-century on earth. A lot of it had to do with visiting friends I haven’t seen in a while, reflecting on where I’ve been and where I’d like to go next, and getting right with God.

But now that I’m closing in on the end of my year, I find that the past few months have ushered in a time of my life that can best be described as “expansion.”

In years past, a friend might have had something important or difficult going on in his or her life, and I’d think to myself, “I should try to get there.” But for one reason or another, I didn’t make it happen. Too busy, too far, too something. And usually I would regret it later. This year, whenever I thought, “I should (fill in the blank),” I did it. I followed my heart instead of my head, and not just where physical journeys were concerned.

For friends on Facebook and friends via email and friends around the corner or hours away, I have felt this kind of expansive love, a desire to strengthen old bonds, build new bonds, and just generally revel in the wonder that is relationship. And at the ripe old age of almost-51, I have come to realize that relationship is what it’s all about, whether we’re talking about God or family or friends or strangers. This life isn’t worth much if we don’t put relationship at the heart of it.

So often I think we imagine that serious relationships are reserved for our spouse, our parents, our children, and maybe one or two close friends. But imagine how much richer our lives can become if we open ourselves up to the possibility that love relationships can exist outside those boundaries.

When I wrote Walking Together, my book on spiritual friendship, I explored this idea of non-romantic soul mates, those friends – from all walks of life, of either gender, of any age, any faith or none – who connect with us on a deeper level. I’m finally starting to more fully live what I wrote about, not because I have “better” friends or different friends but because I have removed any self-imposed limitations or expectations on “friendship” and what the world says that’s supposed to mean. The result has been this expansion, this feeling of wanting to wrap my arms around the world, this realization that I have been blessed by the presence of so many good people who walk into my life on a regular basis. Some are passing through, others stay for a while and then move on, and a smaller group plant themselves in the soil of my soul.

Those friends, the ones with whom I make that extra effort, will be with me forever, connected even when we are not together, connected for all time simply by virtue of our love for each other, a love grounded in our willingness to accept each other exactly as we are, to love without any conditions, to simply take pleasure in the sheer joy of making each other smile, of sharing each other’s sorrows, of being present – physically when we can, virtually when we can’t – day after day, year after year.

In my book I wrote, “We have to learn to recognize the diamonds in the rough – those people who may not initially seem to have much in common with us but end up in our lives for reasons we can’t explain. When we accept these blessings and begin to seek out ways to nurture the early bonds of spiritual friendship, we will find ourselves with a growing community of people who can see beyond the ‘mask’ we sometimes wear in public, people who know our hearts.”

Life is full of good surprises, if we are willing to risk a little and love a lot, and that realization has been the greatest blessing of my half-century year.

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Foodie Friday: Tuna with avocado-tomatillo sauce

This is one of Dennis’ specialities. I’ve never made it. But it is so good, I have to share it here. If you don’t like tuna steaks, the sauce is so amazing you need to make that and put it on something else — grilled veggies, a baked potato, tortilla chips, the back of your hand. Yeah, it’s that good. Make extra.

This recipe is from Bobby Flay’s Boy Gets Grill cookbook. Serve it with fresh corn-on-the-cob for a perfect summer dinner.

Sauce ingredients:

8 tomatillos, husked and rinsed

2 jalapeño chiles

1/2 cup mild vegetable oil, such as canola, plus extra for brushing

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

2 Tablespoons honey

4 ripe Hass avocados, halved, pitted, peeled, and cut into 1/2-inch dice

1 small red onion, finely diced

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Preparation: 

Heat your grill to high.
Brush tomatillos and chiles with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill the tomatillos and chiles, turning, until blackened on all sides. Remove from grill (leave the grill on if you’ll be cooking the fish right away) and coarsely chop the tomatillos. Stem, seed, and chop the chiles.
Combine the tomatillos, chiles, lime juice, and honey in a blender and blend until smooth. With the motor running, gradually pour in the 1/2 cup oil and blend until emulsified. Transfer to a bowl and fold in the avocados, onion, and cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (The sauce can be made two hours in advance, covered and kept refrigerated. Bring to room temperature before serving.)

For the tuna: 

4 (8-ounce) tuna fillets or steaks, 1 to 1 1/2-inches thick

Mild vegetable oil, such as canola

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preparation:

Heat your grill to high.
Brust the fish on both sides with oil and season with salt and pepper. Put the fish on the grill with the top side down (in other words, the side that will face up when you serve, so it should be the best-looking side). Grill the fish until crusty and browned on the bottom, about three minutes. Turn the fish over and grill until medium-rare, about two to three minutes longer.
Remove fish from grill and spoon sauce over each piece. Serve immediately.

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Miscarriage: loss and love 15 years later

My annual post in remembrance of the baby I never got to meet:

For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 15 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I drive my other three children to and fro, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

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Male-female friendship: Intimacy of a different kind

Who are your best friends? Is it strictly a boys’ club or girls’ club, or is there a mixture of both? Does it raise eyebrows if and when you mention a friend of the opposite sex? Unfortunately, in a society where sex saturates just about everything, it’s often hard for people to accept, admit, embrace opposite-sex friendships that are not headed toward the altar or the bedroom, and that’s too bad because when we cut ourselves off from deep friendships with people of the opposite sex, we cut ourselves off from a different perspective, a different kind of connection, a different kind of intimacy that has nothing to do with the pop culture definition of the word.

I wrote about this kind of friendship in my book Walking Together: Discovering the Catholic Tradition of Spiritual Friendship — in the chapter called “Celibate Love: A Different Kind of Passion.” And it was because of this book that I had the good fortune of meeting (virtually, for now) Dan Brennan, author of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women. Dan, who is doing amazing things to raise awareness of male-female friendship, recently spoke with me via email for another project I was doing, but his interview was too good to leave large portions of it unread in my computer file. So I thought I’d share it with you here:

NSS: Our society in general approaches male-female relationships as having certain eventual goals: marriage and/or sexual intimacy. The idea that it’s possible for men and women to share a deeply spiritual friendship without bringing physical relationship into the mix is doubted by most people. How do we get past that notion and embrace this reality – male-female FRIENDships? Can you talk about your personal experience a little?

DB: I’m a Protestant but ironically it was the Catholic tradition of spiritual friendship that helped me move past the fears and challenges of nurturing friendship as a form of love with the opposite sex.

In Catholic spirituality, you can’t talk about deep friendship without talking about chastity. Chastity is oriented to the spiritual and sacred dimension of love (i.e. divine love) intersecting with friendship and sexuality. In cultivating the virtue of chastity we’re not stuck in some rigid stereotype of fearing the other because they are the opposite sex. I like what Jesuit author James Martin says: “one of the main goals in chastity is to love as many people as possible.”

So in my experience, learning to develop a deeper attraction of the good and spiritual beauty in my friends has been the pathway for deep, chaste friendships. As a happily married man of 31 years, I’ve been able to enjoy several close friendships with women. I have a close friendship with a single woman going on 11 years. My wife knows her, loves her, and deeply trusts her with me. We have nurtured a transparency and a cherished trust within our micro-community. My friend and I pray together daily (over the phone). We meet once a week for hanging out and enjoying one another.

NSS: What are the challenges with male-female friendships? Any suggestions on how to navigate the tough spots?

DB: There are four central challenges. The first, the most obvious, is sexual attraction. The next one is emotional intimacy or passionate expression of unashamed dependence and healthy affection. The third challenge is the equality and mutuality in the relationship. The last main challenge is the audience challenge. This last one involves not any internal issues between friends but addressing external perceptions of onlookers.

It’s deeply important to navigate some of any of these issues with a growing, honest self-awareness. Initial attraction or moderate attraction accompanied with chastity and empathy learns to love the whole person. We will not objectify our friend or our spouse if we learn to see Jesus in them and revere them as whole persons.

Emotional intimacy is certainly a treasured bond in friendship. Learning the risk of appropriate vulnerability and tenderness will mean the difference between appropriate emotional depth and connection versus emotional fusion. The stereotype for men is that emotional intimacy translates into sex. The Catholic tradition boasts many men who have expressed deep tenderness without falling into sin. One cannot have too much genuine tenderness in friendship. Tenderness always respects the other.

NSS: Can you talk about differences between a male-female friendship that may exist between single people and one that may exist between married friends (who are not married to each other)? Is one more difficult than the other? How does the marriage partner fit into the picture of a friendship his/her spouse may share with someone else?

DB: Each has its own set of challenges. For singles, the door for romantic trajectory for one friend or both is an ongoing challenge to navigate. It then becomes difficult if one of the friends does not reciprocate romantic feelings. That’s one of the biggest challenges to navigate.

For married friends, the challenge is not merely adultery but of emotional fusion emerging in between friends which threatens the communion between spouses. Chaste love does not fear emotional depth or passion between friends. It becomes unchaste when we begin to use either our spouse or our friend for our own pleasure and selfish ambitions.

NSS: Why is this kind of friendship so important? I mean, it only makes sense that we should/would have friends of the opposite sex. There are so many benefits to this sort of friendship. I say this as someone who has a good friend who is a guy (and a priest). And yet we so willingly cut ourselves off from this potential joy/fulfillment because we’re told it can’t happen. How can male-female friendships enrich our lives and move us farther along our spiritual path?

DB: One of the surprising things for me when I poured myself into researching friendship in the Catholic tradition was discovering this simple but profound reason: chaste, authentic friendship is a foretaste of joy and the feast of heaven in this life. There is a special drawing power in sexuality that draws us into the fullness of love which is not genital-driven.

To understand that communion happens not just in marital sex but in friendship is to experience God as a community of love. This is not just a special relationship. Yes, friendship as a form of love overcomes the superficiality we experience in relationships. But it also opens the door for human flourishing, social justice, and experiencing eternal Beauty in the here and now. It embodies the social desire of the communion of the saints in the here and now. Taste and see that the Lord is good is a powerful motivator.

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Pope Francis and seeing the forest for the trees

As I watched the events in Rio unfold throughout the World Youth Day celebration, I found myself tearing up over photos of three million people crammed on a beach just to be near and hear Pope Francis, over the shot of a little boy breaking through security to whisper into the pope’s ear that he wants to be a priest, over the many beautiful things Pope Francis said that give me renewed hope. And every once in a while I’d think, I should blog on that, but I wouldn’t because a new thing would come along so quickly. But then yesterday I read the one line that made me stop and say, YES! And I knew I had to blog about it, but I needed to let it sink in more fully.

“As always, the ones who aren’t saints make the most noise … a single tree falling makes a sound, but a whole forest growing doesn’t,”  Pope Francis said in response to a question about the Curia. (Via John Allen’s story in NCR.)

To me that one line sums up so much of what I often try to tell people who aren’t Catholic or who can’t see beyond the headlines that constantly remind us of all those single trees falling, all the human errors, weaknesses, and, sometimes outright crimes that steal the spotlight and keep us from seeing all the beautiful trees silently but powerfully growing in a forest of compassion, generosity, and pure love.

That’s the reality of the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. There is so much goodness, so much truly Gospel-centered work going on without headlines or stories or recognition of any kind in bustling cities and remote villages on every continent. Religious sisters, brothers, lay people, and priests who live in poverty alongside the people they serve. People who bring life-saving programs to places where there is no clean water or no health care or no schools or no food. And not as an NGO but as a mission of compassion and love, grounded in the teachings of Jesus and built on the tradition of the faith.

In other parts of my professional life, I get to write about many of the “trees” that make up our Catholic forest, and I am in awe of and humbled by what other people are willing to do to make the world better for their brothers and sisters. Although I have always known it, now every time I see a headline that gets me disheartened I will have that image of a falling tree in my head, and I will turn my gaze to focus on the whole forest growing instead.

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Manic Monday: Jumping one hurdle, ready for more

This has been a crazy busy week, but a good week. After months of preparation, weeks of handwringing and many sleepless nights of worry, Noah’s Eagle Scout project is complete. I have to send out a special thank you to all those people who gave their time, their talent, their treasure, and their used books — 1,006 of them, to be exact. We took a dreary room in a residence for children slipping through the foster care system and turned it into a beautiful refuge filled with books and comfort and calm and a quote to inspire. I hope they see it not only as a place to relax but as a reminder of their worthiness in this world. They should have a beautiful place to sit and read. Every child should have that. 

Now we head into the last week of summer camps: Vacation Bible School at the local Methodist Church, Chiara’s one “must” every summer, and horseback riding camp for Olivia. That means it’s a serious work week for me since I won’t have any uninterrupted time again until school is in session. I’ll be working, but you know how it goes when you’ve got three kids looking for summer fun and you’ve got a deadline to meet. Yeah, no one is happy. So I’m hoping to keep things fairly balanced in August so no one feels neglected and everyone feels like they had a great summer. We’ll see how that goes.

Here’s what we’ve got on Manic Monday…

Viewfinder: The Eagle Scout project

Original ugly green room. Desperately needing a makeover. And bookshelves.

Lots of spackling required. Dennis hard at work.

Finished room. Beautiful transformation.

The girls and I take a last look. We added those cool decals to the a/c unit.

Noah surveys the results of the hard work — his and that of our great team of family, friends and Scouts.

Wall decal that became focal point of the renovated room.

Bookshelf: Not much reading going on these days. The Happiness Project sits unfinished. Maybe now that the Eagle Scout project is done, I can get back to that project.

On the Menu: It’s prime pesto season, at least in these parts. Our containers are overflowing, and that’s always a happy site. Click HERE if you want my pesto recipe.

Soundtrack: Although I’ve been feeling sort of melancholy lately, this song was playing when I got in the car, and it sort of lightened my mood. After all, what’s there to complain about? Maybe it will do the same for you.

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Beautiful and tragic, a too-frequent combination

The determination of the human spirit is amazing, and watching this video clip is inspiring. But the entire time I watched and listened, all I kept thinking was,”Why is it that anyone anywhere should have to live like this?” A slum built on a landfill? Let’s start there.

The haunting music and the complete injustice of it all made me want to cry. These children deserve better. How is it that the rest of us can just go on with our lives while this kind of thing exists on this planet? And yet we do because we all just have to keep moving forward and how do we begin to make a difference when there is so much heartache out there?

I know people who take their children to places like this so that they can understand in a real and powerful way what it means to serve and what real need and hunger look like. I have not been brave enough to try that. And so I’d like to thank all those people who are brave enough or who care enough to go to places like this and make a difference. And to the people who figure out how to make music out of garbage, well, there are no words. I am humbled by their strength, their determination, and their belief in something beautiful even when everything around them screams with ugliness and despair and death. That is faith.

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