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At no time is that inevitable cycle more obvious than during the autumn season, when we can look out our window and see the unbelievable beauty of trees on fire with reds and yellows and oranges. We stare in awe, knowing that this magnificence is only temporary and will be followed by a dying away, the starkness of barren limbs against a winter sky.

When I finished leading a retreat in the Adirondacks last month, I decided to end the weekend by squeezing in a paddle across the lake with a good friend. We have been spoiled in past years with herons taking off in flight before our eyes, loons floating alongside us, their calls beautiful and haunting, and even once an eagle soaring across the sky so fast we weren’t sure what we’d seen until after it was gone. Not to be outdone by the spectacular sights are the frogs hiding among the lilies, the tree that grows up out of a deep crack in a boulder or the dragonflies that dart by and every now and then pause on the point of a kayak like a prayer with wings.

This last time, however, the one loon we saw was skittish, diving under the water and moving away from us. Eventually we saw splashing and heard a cry unlike any other. We paddled closer and saw the loon was in some sort of distress. We thought maybe he had something caught around his neck and headed back to land to find help.

What we learned was that this loon’s sibling had been found dead that morning. This was distress, indeed, just not the physical kind. My friend asked if I thought it was a bad sign, and I quickly said, No! Maybe too quickly, as though I didn’t want to consider it, because it was in the back of my mind. As I drove home, I found myself thinking about the Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, written by St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast we celebrate this month.

“Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day through whom You give us light,” the prayer begins, working its way through all the glories of our amazing world, from wind and water to fire and flowers. By the end we get to “Sister Death, from whom no-one living can escape.”

Our world makes us think if we try hard enough, worry enough, we can keep the tally of “bad” things in our life on the low side, but we are not in control. There will always be seasons to mourn, just as there will always follow seasons to dance. Our job is not to look for ways to ward it off but to learn to surrender to what is rather than what we think should be.

When I paddled across that lake, I thought I should get something that would make my heart leap, a sight that would somehow seal the weekend as a success in a spectacular way. Instead, I was met by a mournful cry and the primitive ache of loss, reminding me that there is beauty even in the fading. Just look out the window, and watch the leaves let go.

This column originally appeared in the Oct. 5, 2022, issue of Catholic New York.

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Earlier this year, I did a heart-centered program by Danielle LaPorte that required me to dig deep into my core desires, after an arduous process of looking at the stories I’ve been telling myself for far too long, stories that come not only from my history and my experiences but, often, from other people’s histories and experiences and views of who I should be. Little by little I could feel the masks dropping away, and I could feel deep love and compassion for the parts of me I’ve always held at a distance or hid or hated. Fascinating and fulfilling.

In the end, my core desires weren’t about money or success or anything you can achieve or buy in a worldly way. They were contentment, connection, creativity, and love. Tall order, and yet most mornings when I wake up and assess where I am I, I smile to myself as I realize I am there at the moment, and I am grateful. And sometimes, when I’m especially aware, I say a little prayer that when things are not so rosy and a particularly rough challenge surfaces, I can somehow find the courage to stay in the moment and find the lessons and the gifts and the divinity — or Spirit, if you prefer — that is always swirling in and around me, and you and everything and everyone else.

When I peer into the coming decade, there are some fears, to be sure, because it’s undeniable that I’m on the downward slide of life, not in a bad way, just in the circle-of-life way. And that’s okay, even if it’s tinged with a little trepidation. Because if I can learn to be present — really present — and grateful, even when things are not going exactly as I want them to go, I can hold onto contentment and inner joy no matter what. I have no illusions that this will be easy, nothing good in life is, but I do believe that I am finally willing to do the work required. Daily work. Hour-by-hour work.

I grabbed a Mary Oliver book, Devotions, off my bookshelf before I taught yoga class yesterday, and it fell open to her poem “Snow Geese.” I knew as soon as I read it that it was the heart of the dharma talk I would give that day and completely fitting for this time of year and time of life.

“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.” — Mary Oliver

I hope you’ll join me on this journey through the next decade. Who knows where it will take us? Let’s keep each other company because, after all, to quote Ram Dass yet again: “We are all just walking each other home.”

P.S. If you’d like to read my final Life in My 50s post, you can find that HERE.

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Ah, what I didn’t know at 50. I had no idea at that time that I’d end up leaving my full-time office in the basement of my house to take on a full-time job at the Diocese of Albany as Director of Communications for more than six years. I had no idea I would train to become a yoga teacher at 58, fulfilling a 30-year dream that I’d started and put off multiple times, and that I’d end up teaching at an amazing studio multiple times per week every week. I had no idea I would end up leading large retreats that draw 40+ people in various places and that I would develop a growing community of people who now make up my NSS Tribe. I had no idea I would sign up for Holy Ground, a spiritual director training program, from which I will graduate in the spring. I had no idea I’d walk away from my full-time office job at 59 to pursue my true professional love again: writing spiritual columns and books, leading retreats, teaching yoga. I had no idea how my body would begin to age in obvious ways that would, at many times, hamper my ability to do things I always took for granted, like bending down to unload the dishwasher or carry a laundry basket or do the work in the yard I love so much. I had no idea that the hair I stopped coloring almost ten years ago would not just go gray immediately, and now I wait — no, I anxiously anticipate — finally going fully gray, although my stylist tells me that it’s a long way off since I was a natural-born red head and apparently we gray slower/differently. Check back with me in another ten years.

At the time I wrote: “I don’t want the rest of my life — however long I get — to be only a time of fading, even though part of me welcomes that idea…I think whatever comes next should be a time of growing in the important areas of my life, as a spiritual seeker, as a wife and mother, as a human being, and maybe in some of the less serious and more fun areas as well, things I haven’t yet had a chance to try but have always wanted to tackle.”

I smile as I read that now, because it was all true. Was it true because I just got lucky, or was it true because I worked to make it happen? Both, I would say, without question. Last night, when I couldn’t fall asleep, I lay there with my hands on my heart, my trusty rosary beads there for comfort (as they are every night — my version of a favorite stuffed animal), and I smiled and felt so incredibly grateful and content, peaceful and in harmony with everything around me and with God. And I thanked God for all of it — for the blessings I am so grateful for today and for a full life that has had its share of sorrows and challenges and hardships but that remains a complete gift. Everything has led me to this place, and I have no doubt that whatever is coming next will lead me where I still need to go, to what I still need to learn — however much I might want to avoid some of it.

Life in my 50s has been a ride and a half, and I can tell you that as I stand on the cusp of life in my 60s, I’m excited by and grateful for the freedom, wisdom and growth that is still waiting for me, if I dare (and I do). When I turned 50, I remember thinking that if I lived as long as my grandmother, I would get to do my entire life over again. Now, at almost-60, I am past that possibility, making it very clear that I am on the downward slope of a beautiful life, a slope that I hope will be long and gradual. And I could still get 40 years if I duplicate my E-ma’s arc!

So I’m going to live this last week in my 50s full of gratitude and joy, reflecting on this life of abundance that has been mine for six full decades. That is no small thing, and I am grateful to the point of bursting — either into laughter or tears or both. I’ll be back next week as I herald in my 60s with more thoughts on all of this, and maybe some fun goals and hopes and dreams. Because dreaming is free, and it is definitely not just for the young.

When I wrote a birthday post last year at this time, when I was turning 59, I said: “As I round out this decade and prepare for the next — if I’m given that opportunity — I hope to become even more Mary than I’ve ever been. You’ve been warned. More writing, more meditation, more yoga, more retreats, more spiritual direction, more speaking truth to power, more travel, more learning, more cooking, more dancing, more singing, more creating, more exploring, more dreaming, more, more, more. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I have no intention of “breathing just a little and calling it a life.” Full breaths until my full stop.”

Amen to all of it. I’m going to take that plan and kick it up a notch. I’m hoping life in my 60s will go to 11. (IYKYK, and if you do, you’re probably old like me.) 😉 Peace out, 50s.

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Back when I was in my 40s, I remember waiting for, longing for some magic moment when wisdom would descend upon me as if in a visible way from above. I don’t know if I expected a dove to alight upon my head à la the disciples at Pentecost, but I was definitely expecting something monumental and obvious. Turns out wisdom is a slow burn, and when we’re not looking — if we’re paying attention to our inner life — it is there beneath the surface doing the difficult and critical work of chiseling away at the world’s expectations and demands to reveal the True Self sculpture that may have been locked in marble our entire lives. Like Michelangelo freeing David from the confines of stone, we eventually find ourselves standing there, naked before the world (in a figurative way, of course) and completely at ease with it. No, not just at ease with it. More than that. There is awe and joy, celebration and freedom all wrapped up in the revelation of who we really are once we are ready to be unleashed, untethered.

Although I do feel old thanks to some physical decline that just can’t be helped once you get to a certain age, I fully expect — God willing — that there is an entire new chapter waiting around the bend. I can sense it, taste it, see it just beyond my grasp. It may take me a little bit to get the current me into the the spot I can see up ahead, but it’s there, beckoning me to spread my wings a little wider, take the leap, learn the things, go to the next place I am called to go into to become more fully the person I was meant to be.

As I round out this decade and prepare for the next — if I’m given that opportunity — I hope to become even more Mary than I’ve ever been. You’ve been warned. More writing, more meditation, more yoga, more retreats, more spiritual direction, more speaking truth to power, more travel, more learning, more cooking, more dancing, more singing, more creating, more exploring, more dreaming, more, more, more. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I have no intention of “breathing just a little and calling it a life.” Full breaths until my full stop.

I found this song today, when I was creating the playlist for the Birthday Gentle yoga class I taught this morning. It spoke to me, so I thought I’d share. If you’d like to listen to my full Spotify playlist, you can find it at Another Trip Around the Sun #59. Onward!

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So, I’m patting myself on the back right now for mere fact that I was able to connect all the wires, find the right buttons, and record anything at all. And that dovetails nicely with my topic: age and expectations, but even more than that expanding our boundaries beyond our self- (or society-) imposed limits. You can take a listen at the link below. I’d love to hear your feedback, including topics you might like me to address in the future.

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As my youngest heads to high school this year, I look back and wonder what it is about September that has such a pull on me. I’ll be the first to tell you that if I had to go back in time to any part of my life, it would not be to high school or before. I’d go back to college in a heartbeat. That is where I came into my own, where I felt air under my wings and an opening up of everything that seemed closed before. Memories of books devoured, discussions had, even of the all-nighters required to finish a paper or read one more Shakespeare play bring a rush of happiness. I think it has to do with the accomplishment of taking on a difficult task and seeing it through. I like a challenge, although these days it takes all my effort to try to learn and retain something new. I expect myself—mentally and physically—to be like my 20-something self, but she’s so far in my rearview mirror I can’t even see a faint glimmer. And I think that’s precisely what has freed me to finally let go and let God.

Case in point: I arrived early to a particularly difficult yoga class recently. Over the course of 75 minutes, I fell over in balancing poses, cramped up in leg lifts and generally bobbled around, laughing at myself as I did, and cracking wise with the teacher—a far cry from the way I would have reacted all those years ago, when the drive to do things perfectly often overrode the joy of simply doing. But age flips that outlook on its head.

During the class, as I made a comment about my inability to do something, my teacher said, “Why would you want to do this perfectly? What would you learn from that? I want you to struggle. I want you to fail.” Ah, that’s the part we don’t always remember, no matter what our age. We want to get better at things but we don’t always want to struggle to get there. We want to find a place of ease—where we reach contentment, acceptance—but we fool ourselves into thinking the way to ease is easy. It’s anything but. Ease doesn’t mean no suffering, no mistakes, no bobbling. It means experiencing all those things and still maintaining inner peace, still learning and growing.

While it would seem that reaching that difficult apex would be something that happens on the outside—healthy food, lots of exercise, stimulating books—it really has to happen from the inside out. It’s only when we stop doing that we figure out what we’re really meant to do, who we’re meant to be. And that requires the thing that looks the easiest from outside but is by far the hardest part of this journey: sitting in silence, listening for the still, small voice that urges us forward to uncover our true self and live up to the potential God planted in each one of us.

A blank slate and a rainbow of options will become a muddled mess if we don’t ground ourselves in truth and beauty and love, and all of those things require us to stop moving and spinning and achieving, and to simply be. Be in God’s presence. Be in our own company. Be here (wherever here is) now.

P.S. In that photo above, that’s me all the way on the left standing on the wall and holding myself up with one arm. #warrior

This column originally appeared in the Sept. 11, 2019, issue of Catholic New York.

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That quote struck a chord and affirmed what I’ve been feeling as I head into this new stage of life. I turned 57 yesterday, and I can tell you that I believe, God willing, I will be able to say the same as Patti when I reach 72. I believe my most important work is ahead of me. I am talking about in addition to THE most important work of mother and wife, which would be enough if that was my only work in this life.

Still, 57 feels amazing, feels like a beginning. On the morning of my birthday, Chiara, 14, asked if I felt any different, and I responded, without hesitation, “Yes!” Which would not be my typical response, but I could feel it coming, building as this new age approached. I feel entitled to my life, whatever it may look like going forward, and not just any life but life as I am meant to live it — exactly as I am, with no apologies for who I am. And that, my friends, is the moment I have been waiting for my whole life.

So, yes, I feel fierce and fearless at 57. But what does that mean? It’s more than the words suggest. Fierce implies potential anger, but this kind of fierce is not about anger. Passion yes, anger no. This new feeling of fierceness is about knowing who I am, what I stand for, and where I will or will not go spiritually, emotionally, physically simply because someone or something else demands it of me. I will protect the True Self God gave me and follow that course and no one else’s. Fierce.

Now what about “fearless”? Can anyone really be fearless? This isn’t about never being afraid or never worrying. There’s a great quote from Nelson Mandela that sums it up: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

That’s what I’m talking about. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Try that job that scares you, find a way to adapt or leave a job that crushes your soul, take that class you’ve been wanting to take for years, reconnect on a deeper level with your spouse or a child, book that flight to the place you dream of visiting, go on a retreat and spend time in complete silence and discover who you are.

Really, I think silence is key to reaching this place on the path. We have to sit in silence, sometimes uncomfortable silence, to hear the Still, Small Voice that will tell us where we need to go, who we are meant to be. I know your life is busy and a retreat seems impossible. Not so. Find a way. Even if it’s only for one day. Go somewhere, maybe even a tent pitched at a quiet campsite, and unplug your phone and just be. And when you just be, and you don’t feel the need to say what you think you need to say or do what you think the world expects you to do; you will find bliss, you fill find Spirit, you will find your True Self.

And when you find your True Self, the person God created you to be, you will feel fierce and fearless because you will know you have a power within you that is unstoppable. That’s not to say life won’t throw you a curve and try to crush you again; it will. But with this new knowledge, this new confidence, this new interior silence, you will face whatever comes and know you will survive, maybe even thrive.

I have another quote hanging in my office, a favorite from St. Joan of Arc — talk about fierce and fearless — and it says: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” Find what you were born to do, and do not be afraid. Fierce and fearless feels fabulous. Don’t tell the younger folks, but old age is where it’s at. It’s where all the wisdom is hiding. We just need to dig around and grab it.

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Driving east on the New York State Thruway, the darkness soon gave way to a slice of bright yellow light on the horizon. I sped toward my destination while the sun crept up bit by bit, treating me to a spectacular light show over the already scenic Mohawk Valley. As I sipped my coffee and sang along with “Blessings” by Darden Smith, a favorite artist from my life in Austin, Texas, in the late 1980s, I was struck by the perfection of that single moment, a glimmer of grace sparked by a sunrise and then cascading downward, catching me and my minivan in its grip.

Lately grace has been elusive or absent, or, more accurately, I’ve been negligent and distracted, which is usually the case when we think grace has up and left us. Amid the busyness of life and the heartbreak surrounding the current scandal in the Church, I’ve forgotten to notice the everyday moments that call us back to God, the miraculous in the mundane, the divine in the daily drudgery. I wrote an entire book about it, but the reality is that being mindful with an eye toward grace has to be intentional; we won’t find it if our literal and figurative arms are folded against it, against God, if we’re moving about our days mindlessly, or, even worse, with our eyes closed to potential beauty.

So, how do we make room for the divine in day-to-day life, especially if we’re struggling, whether that struggle is physical, spiritual, mental, professional, or just plain annoying? Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a deep breath and paying attention to what’s going on around you at that moment—birds chirping at your window, a lawn mower humming next door, the smell of cut grass tickling your nose, your cat purring on the couch next you, the last of the summer flowers nodding their heads. Such ordinary things and yet so full of life and blessing when we break them down, when we stop and pay attention to our own lives.

The morning after the drive to Auriesville, my husband and I were having breakfast in a café near our home. On the table near the door was a vase of rusty brown sunflowers. Although they were slightly past their prime, they looked like a Van Gogh painting come to life—a reminder that even in aging and fading there is beauty, sometimes a particularly profound kind of beauty. On the drive home a little while later, we stopped to take a short hike and spotted a heron standing statue-still on a small island of earth in the middle of a pond—a reminder that there is grace and power in simply being willing to stop and stay in one place for a while.

Of course, life can’t be all hikes and cafés and sunrises. Work and school, chores and challenges get in the way and make it hard to spot the grace hidden in plain sight, something that is magnified, I think, by the fact that the one thing that has always given us comfort—our faith and our Church life—is now mired in pain and confusion, snuffing out the sparks of grace that once came to us unbidden. Don’t let go so easily. Don’t let what’s happening out there rob you of what’s in here, in your heart and soul: an invitation, or, more than that, a right to a relationship with God.

This column originally appeared in the Oct. 10, 2018, issue of Catholic New York.

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