It’s not always easy to remain curious and joyful when the body is slowing down or maybe even breaking down, when the world around us is full of suffering and uncertainty and downright madness. But if we are willing to approach all that is before us as a lesson to be learned, not in a punitive way but in a heart-opening way, we find a path that is not necessarily easy but calls us forward just the same. It is an approach that reminds me of a T.S. Eliot poem I often use when leading retreats.

In “East Coker,” part of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” the poet writes:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you/Which shall be the darkness of God…I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope/For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love/For love would be love of the wrong thing; this is yet faith/But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

My tattoo.

On the surface, this poem might feel depressing, but on closer inspection these words show us a way to rise up through the mud of this world to the Light that draws us up and out and forward no matter who we are or what we’re facing. To “wait without hope” is not despair, just the opposite. It is to know that when we show up in prayer filled with hope, it is often a hope of our own creation, to suit our own agenda, and achieve a certain outcome. We will be hopeful if all the external criteria are met. When we wait without hope, however, we are fully present before God, allowing God to be God rather than trying to take on that role ourselves, which is what humanity has been trying to do ever since Eve was blamed for the fall.

Our entire spiritual journey is, in a sense, an effort to “get ourselves back to the garden,” as singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote so many years ago. Often, we attempt to do that by trying to force our way through rather than letting the way appear before us according to God’s plans. Especially during difficult times, whether in our personal lives or in the larger world, it can be near-impossible to trust that God has a plan greater than ours and that, in the end, this world is temporary. Our faith gives us the practice of “memento mori,” which means: “Remember you must die.” It’s not meant to be scary or ghoulish, even if it is often accompanied by the image of a skull. It’s meant to ground us in our spiritual reality when this world tries to convince us that what we see in front of us is all that matters.

It seems fitting as we move through the steely gray of late fall, with its chill and encroaching darkness, to wonder how we will ever again find the light to lead us home. As we journey toward Advent, we know from years past that there is a well-worn spiritual path for us to follow, one of expectant waiting, where the light grows day by day, week by week and, with it, our hope.

Mary DeTurris Poust will be leading a free online Advent mini retreat on Friday, Dec. 6, 2-3 p.m. Register here.
This column originally appeared in the Nov. 27, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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I’m not one to find meaning in every little thing that happens, but every once in a while, something stops me. This feather certainly did. It felt like it was meant to make me pause, pay attention. And although I don’t often feel my mother’s presence around me — in the 36 years she’s been gone I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt her nearness — on that day in that gorgeous square, she was there. I tucked the feather in my bag and put it out of my head for the next few hours. But then. Then, then, then! As I walked down the streets of Rome, I spotted another perfect white feather floating right where I put my foot down. And another and another. I’m not talking the run-of-the-mill pigeon feathers that are all over Rome. These were perfectly white, perfectly shaped, perfectly curled, and no one but me seemed to be noticing them. I lost count when it went over 40 in the next few days. Finally, as we stood outside the duomo in Orvieto, a tiny white feather descended, and my husband caught it and handed it to me.

Right about now, you might be thinking I’ve lost my mind but hear me out. Two of my favorite talented spiritual women writers — Emily Dickinson and St. Hildegard of Bingen — had profound things to say about feathers. Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops – at all.” And Hildegard famously said: “I am but a feather on the breath of God.”

Both women remind us that these delicate, fragile, seemingly insignificant natural wonders have something powerful to teach us about trust and surrender, hope and joy. To be a feather on the “breath of God” is to be carried to places we haven’t intended to go but trust in God’s reasons. The tune we sing without words is that deep communication that happens when we let go of the rote prayers that are as familiar to us as our own name and enter into an interior conversation with God in a way that can be all at once beautiful and scary, energizing and paralyzing.

As I tossed all of this around in my heart and soul as we pounded the cobblestone streets of Italy to pray before the remains of saints, we came to St. Mary Major, where our wise Rome guide, Jan, talked to us about the relics housed there: wood believed to be part of the manger in Bethlehem, and relics of St. Matthew and St. Jerome. One of our pilgrims looked at him skeptically and said, “But how do they know that?” Jan went on to say that they do research and can date objects. The he posed a question: “At a certain point, the rest is what? Faith.” He added: “Faith is a decision; you make a decision to believe.”

Like that feather falling from the sky, Jan’s words pulled me up short. I took out my iPhone and jotted them down so I wouldn’t forget. Yes, “hope is the thing with feathers,” but faith is the thing that gives those wings the power to soar.

This column originally appeared in the October 24, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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It’s strange how this time in our liturgical cycle brings us face to face with two sides of emptiness — one born of desperation after the crucifixion when all hope seemed lost and the other an emptiness brimming with possibility, an emptiness so full we can’t help but trust even when logic tells us otherwise. Imagine today you are one of the women visiting the tomb with spices to anoint Jesus’ body, or perhaps you are one of the men locked in hiding out of fear. What are you thinking? Do you dare hope? Do you trust a shimmering mirage, an angel outside the tomb telling you not to be afraid? Do you trust that Jesus was who he says he was and will do what he promised? It requires more than a leap of faith. It requires total and complete surrender to things beyond our comprehension.

About six years ago, a Trappist monk at the Abbey of the Genesee in western New York asked me, during a spiritual direction session, to consider the meaning of the infinite — a God beyond all time and space. “When you deal with God, you enter another world,” said Father John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, who was a novice under Thomas Merton, perhaps the most famous Trappist monk, and a spiritual director to theologian and writer Henri Nouwen. Throughout our hour-long session, Father John Eudes kept coming back to death and the fact that it could show up unbidden at any moment. Our challenge, he said, is to live for the next world not for this passing version.

I remember as I made the four-hour drive home later that weekend, I was cut off by a truck pulling a boat, and in a split second I had to maneuver my car to save my life. It was that close. It was as though the Spirit wanted to hammer home Father John Eudes’ lesson: We really do not know the day or the hour, so why do we live as though our lives on earth are guaranteed?

That lesson came flooding back as I thought about the women at the tomb, confused by the absence of a body. The disciples in hiding, confused by the story the women tell. There is so much confusion today. None of it makes sense. How can this be? Because we are dealing with God, and when we deal with God, we have to check our human sensibilities at the door.

On this day of waiting, we ponder the infinite, which just yesterday seemed impossible. God makes a way where there was none before. “We live every day by acts of faith,” the old monk told me as I sat before him full of confusion and doubt about my own life, a modern version of the disbelieving disciples. “We have to trust,” he said, seeming to see right through me to the questions in my soul.

We have to trust that God can do what we cannot. Trust that no matter how we fared during our Lenten journey, we are beloved just the same. Trust that what we see in this life is its own shimmering mirage; we live for what comes next.

God is here. Now. We don’t have to look for God because God is our everywhere and our everything. The tomb is empty, and our hearts are full.

This column originally appeared in the April 6, 2023, issue of The Evangelist.

Photo by Mary DeTurris Poust at the Abbey of the Genesee, Piffard, NY.

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Jonah’s anger and attitude sound all too familiar. He is beside himself with frustration over what God has not done for him, his rage so intense he says he’d be better off dead. Even if we’ve never said it out loud, there’s a good chance we’ve felt that kind of desperation at some point in our lives.

Maybe our rage was warranted to a degree—a loved one claimed by cancer, a job claimed by downsizing, a home claimed by flood. For far too many people, anger and rage, even against God, seem reasonable in light of the hand they’ve been dealt. And yet the people who’ve been put to the greatest test are often the ones least likely to make a fuss. Faced with monumental loss or suffering, they cling to God, knowing the only way out is through.

For many of us, however, desperation grows out of far less dramatic life events, maybe even minor daily annoyances. We shake our fist at God’s unfairness, like Jonah railing over the withered gourd plant. But do we have reason to be angry?

We cannot reap what we do not sow. Until we recognize God as “gracious and merciful” during both the joys and sorrows of our lives, we are likely to be beaten down by the burning winds of our daily struggles. The choice is ours: arid desert or life-giving waters, seething anger or boundless love, living death or life without end.

Give Us This Day is a wonderful monthly Scripture subscription filled with daily readings, reflections, saints of the day, and more. If you don’t yet receive it, click HERE to check it out or place an order.

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When I was on silent retreat last month, I sat in the dining room on our final morning, staring out the window at the peaceful, frozen landscape. In the front yard of the Dominican Retreat and Conference Center in Niskayuna (yes, this place is becoming a perennial favorite in my posts) amid the many barren trees and evergreens was one lone tree still covered entirely in leaves — dead, brown leaves hanging ever-so-delicately yet ever-so-resiliently from its sprawling limbs. 

As I sat there, mesmerized by this tree and its odd determination to fight nature, a breeze kicked up outside. The leaves started to flutter, at first just the tiniest bit and then more and more intensely, as if the tree was breathing.  I guess because the leaves were so dry and light they fluttered in a way that was unlike hardy, green leaves. Their twisting and turning made the entire tree appear to be covered in small brown butterflies, flapping their wings quickly and in unison.

I couldn’t help but smile, especially considering the fact that the previous night’s talk had been about reconciliation and butterflies and new life. In fact, each of us was given a small foam butterfly to take home for our sacred space as a reminder of the freedom that is ours when we forgive others, forgive ourselves, and let go of our burdens in confession.

Suddenly that tree and its dead branches became a symbol hope and a sign that even when our soul is entrenched in the deepest winter, the Spirit is fluttering through our darkness offering light and new life. The Spirit beckons us to see the possibility for renewal and transformation even when everything around us convinces us we are stranded in a barren wasteland.

Butterflies in winter. Nothing is impossible with God.

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

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

http://youtu.be/dbIVi_hFJsg

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

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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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