A little more than a year ago, the Sacred Heart started pushing its way back into my consciousness. I wasn’t seeking it; I didn’t really understand why it was suddenly front and center. All I knew was that the Sacred Heart would no longer be ignored. I found myself saying novenas, saving images I found online, and repeating the prayer, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.” I even drove up to O’Connor’s Church Goods in Latham to pick up a few of the plastic covered Sacred Heart badges that my mom and grandfather always had in their wallets. I’ve got one tucked in my wallet now.

Soon after, I was digging through some files at home and pulled out a card with my mother’s handwriting on it. Since she’s been gone for more than 38 years, that’s a pretty moving thing for me. It was her Apostleship of Prayer card, with an image of the Sacred Heart on both sides. The card sits on my desk now, next to a small crucifix, a daily reminder of both my mother and the Sacred Heart that binds us to each other across time and space.

To be honest, after last year’s brief-but-intense period of prayer and interest in the Sacred Heart, it faded into the background a bit, only to re-emerge last month with even stronger force. Obviously, this is not something I am supposed to move to the background. Over and over, the Sacred Heart was front and center everywhere I turned — in a book on spiritual poverty I had been asked to “blurb,” at a workshop someone suggested I attend, in the spiritual reading I picked up for retreat planning. Even as my interest and spiritual curiosity increased, however, I felt something holding me back.

The portrait we had at home.

The old-style devotions to the Sacred Heart often felt cloying or quaint to me, something that didn’t seem to have a place in the prayer practices that feel most powerful for me now. But then I happened upon the medieval Nuns of Helfta during a retreat day at Dominican Retreat and Conference Center and came face-to-face and heart-to-heart with the deep mystical tradition that gave rise to this devotion.

Pope Francis, in his last encyclical, referenced the Nuns of Helfta and focused on the heart of Jesus as it pertains to our contemporary world. “Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfillment to which humanity can aspire,” he wrote in ‘Dilexit Nos,’ (He Loved Us). “There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and learn how to love.”

As always, it all comes back to love, whether we are praying to the Sacred Heart of Jesus specifically, reading the words of saint and mystics, reflecting on the Gospels, or receiving the Eucharist — Jesus broken and given for each one of us out of sheer love.

“Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that ability to love has been definitively lost,” Pope Francis wrote in 2024.

In a world seemingly “lost” to hate, division and violence, the Sacred Heart shows us the way forward on the path of love. It’s not an easy path, as evidenced by the crown of thorns that surround the Sacred Heart, but it is a path where love always has the final word.

This column originally appeared in the June 11, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

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With the memory of our beloved Francis still fresh in our minds, Catholics opened their hearts anew to Pope Leo XIV, joyful over his backstory and his roots in Chicago, moved by his work as a missionary and bishop in Peru, impressed by the many languages he speaks. As he offered his blessing to those in person and watching via TV or some other screen, we could all feel a sense of awe that the Holy Spirit continues to work so powerfully in our Church, giving us what we need at just the right moment in time.

Of course, within hours, there were critics trying (fairly desperately, it seemed) to “dig up” some dirt on the new pontiff, attempting to tarnish the shine before we even had a chance to soak up the joy of the moment. I remember when Francis was first named pope and I wrote a blog post about my hope and excitement, another writer immediately came after me claiming I was turning a blind eye to his flaws. Our pope — every pope — is human. Of course there will be flaws, but how about we take a breath and watch and listen before we judge and criticize. It’s the American way to tear down, especially on social media these days, but we Catholics would be wise to pause and pray rather than join the fray.

The day Pope Leo XIV was elected, my husband, Dennis, who is executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, was interviewed on Capital Region television regarding the breaking news. At the end of the conversation, the interviewer asked if he thought Pope Leo was “more of a liberal or a conservative under the umbrella of Catholicism.” He responded with a reminder that Catholics are not so easy to categorize, as we do not fit any label. “The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ don’t really work as much when it comes to the Church … We are very liberal on some issues, like immigration, and very conservative on others, like abortion,” he explained. “I think he’ll be a Catholic, rather than a liberal or conservative.”

I loved that statement because it is a reminder that we are not a Church of “sides,” but rather one that is literally “universal” in its reach, its mission, its makeup. We are, in a sense, a Church of both/and, not either/or.

When I think back over the popes of my lifetime, I have loved each one of them for different reasons. Born under John XXIII, I love the fact that I was a child of Vatican II. John Paul II was the rockstar pope of my teens, and when I saw him at Madison Square Garden in 1979, you’d think I was waiting for the Beatles to appear. Pope Benedict XVI was a favorite for entirely different reasons, and if you haven’t read his beautiful and accessible encyclicals, they are worth your time even all these years later. When Francis was named pope, I practically swooned with joy, and I could not imagine another pope would so quickly fill me with hope and excitement for our Church. And then along came Leo XIV, whose first words out on the balcony of St. Peter’s made me declare: It’s a great day to be a Catholic!

We don’t know what’s coming. We never do. But we trust in the work of the Spirit and the wisdom of our new pope to guide us through whatever is ahead. After all, this pope is one of us, and if a kid from the South Side of Chicago can become pope, anything is possible with God.

This column originally appeared in the May 14, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.

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And yet, we are often disappointed, even on Easter, even when we are offered the promise of eternal life and salvation. We look at prayers unanswered (at least according to our standards) and a world breaking under the strain of division and human suffering, and we struggle to find joy, even when our faith tells us not to be afraid, that nothing on this earth, no matter how awful, can keep us away from what God has promised.

Wherever you find yourself today, whatever your problems and struggles, there is reason to rejoice. Jesus is not dead; he is alive. The cross was not a defeat for him, and it will not be a defeat for us. We do not always understand Jesus’ ways, and like those early disciples, we may stare at the empty tomb — or at some challenge in our own life or the larger world — and wonder, “How can this be?” But Jesus doesn’t ask us to understand; he asks us to trust that things are unfolding just as he told us they would.

If you are struggling to find Easter joy this season, imagine you are Mary Magdalene, bereft after finding the tomb empty. Upon encountering a man whom she does not recognize at first, she is called by name and realizes she is speaking to the resurrected Jesus. He tells her not to be afraid and to go and preach the good news of his resurrection to the other disciples. Her fear disappears in that moment, and she boldly proclaims: “I have seen the Lord.” We, too, are called by name.

In his beautiful book, “Life of the Beloved,” theologian Henri J.M. Nouwen writes, “What I most want to say is that when the totality of our daily lives is lived ‘from above,’ that is, as the Beloved sent into the world, then everyone we meet and everything that happens to us becomes a unique opportunity to choose for the life that cannot be conquered by death. Thus, both joy and suffering become part of the way to our spiritual fulfillment.”

Our lives will always be a mixture of both dark and light, happiness and sadness, but always hope, and possibly even joy in the face of struggle, if we follow Mary Magdalene’s example of complete trust.

As you move through this Easter season, pay attention to physical signs and symbols around you at Mass — the Paschal candle flickering, the powerful fragrance of lilies in bloom, the music bursting with Alleluias, the holy water cool against your skin, a shower of blessings in the most literal sense. It’s beautiful how we use physical things to help us bridge the distance to God, as though we are so hungry to get closer, we pull out all the stops. If only we could keep that fire of love going year-round. The Church gives us a running start by offering us the beautiful 50-day season of Easter. Soak it up. Let it feed your soul and animate the inner joy that is your spiritual birthright. After all, he is risen. Run and tell the others!

This column originally appeared in the April 9, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

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“But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ ” — Luke 10:29

One thing that has never been in question when it comes to Gospel teaching is the commandment — part of the “greatest commandment” — to not only love and care for our neighbors, but to love them as we love ourselves. It’s not easy to live out day to day. It requires a sacrifice that sometimes pushes up against our human tendency toward self-preservation and comfort. I speak from the personal and not just the universal here. Caring for and loving strangers, those in the shadows of our society, is part of what makes the Gospel so radical. It was radical when Jesus preached it; it is radical today.

Jesus answers the above question in the Gospel of Luke with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, an impossible-to-ignore story about the righteous who choose to do the wrong thing and the one who is despised by society but does the right thing. We like to imagine ourselves in the role of the Good Samaritan, remembering times we may have donated to a food drive or helped out at a soup kitchen or maybe even literally helped someone up off the ground. But we don’t have to dig too far to uncover the fears and built-in biases that often prevent us from committing ourselves fully and without condition to what Jesus demands.

In our society today, we can look around our own towns, cities and larger country and see the many men, women and children who are figuratively — and in many cases quite literally — on the side of the road in need of mercy. We take cover in the broad brushstrokes that attempt to cast all of the marginalized as criminals and cheats. We convince ourselves that our willingness to look away is grounded in preservation of orderliness. Like the priest and the Levite in the parable, we rush by, clutching our convictions and hoping someone else will fulfill the Gospel mandate for us. But what if we are the people we are waiting for?

Pope Francis, in a recent letter to the U.S. bishops, said: “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. …The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ‘ordo amoris’ (order of love) that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

The pope’s powerful message calls us back to who we are not just as individual Catholics but as a universal Church, as the Body of Christ at work in our broken world today.

We take comfort in Jesus’ shared humanity with us, in his understanding of our suffering. For many of us who live with the privilege of security and relative safety, it’s often easy to overlook Jesus’ experience, along with Mary and Joseph, as a refugee fleeing violence, as displaced people dependent on the kindness of strangers in a foreign land. If we see that as just a story and not a fundamental truth in our history, it allows us to look away from those who are similarly persecuted.

What would Jesus do? Well, we don’t have to imagine; we know. And not only do we know what Jesus would do, we know what Jesus expects us to do:

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:36-37)

This column first appeared in the Feb. 20, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.
Photo copyright Mary DeTurris Poust, Rome 2010

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One of my favorite Scripture quotes comes from Jeremiah: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future of hope…if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jer 29:11-14)

While I love this quote precisely because it reminds me that God is there, always, waiting for me to come around, sometimes it offers more questions than answers. If we are in the throes of suffering or we are watching others suffer, it can make us wonder what exactly God wants us to do to earn release from our “exile”? When we don’t get a response or a clue, it can leave us feeling ignored and abandoned.

As we look around our world, our country, our communities, and our families, we witness suffering that can seem cruel, perhaps even beyond what humans can be expected to bear. It is in moments like these that God may feel distant, unreachable, maybe even absent. It can cause not only spiritual despair but a doubt so deep that we may begin to question the very foundation of faith that has always shored us up.

“Even a believer can sometimes falter when faced with the experience of pain,” Pope Francis has said. “It is a frightening reality that, when it barges in and attacks, can leave a person distraught, even to the point of shattering his or her faith. The person then is faced with a crossroads: he or she can allow suffering to lead to withdrawal into self-doubt to the point of despair and rebellion; or he or she can accept it as an opportunity for growth and discernment about what really matters in life until the time one encounters God.”

As is often the case, the pope’s wise words are difficult to live. Finding an “opportunity for growth” in the hardest moments of our lives or in the pain of those around us can feel like a pious platitude. So, what can we do if we feel ourselves faltering and cannot see our way clear to approach our suffering in such an enlightened way just yet? We can continue to show up in prayer. Daily. Even when it feels as though our spiritual life is a black hole devoid of God’s presence and our prayers words shouted into the wind.

Paulist Father Tom Ryan, leading a retreat I attended years ago at St. Mary’s on the Lake in Lake George, offered one “non-negotiable” when it comes to prayer. “Be faithful to the rendezvous,” he said, following up with a challenging question: “Can you love the God of consolations when the consolations aren’t there?”

Perhaps that is a question each one of us can ponder not just today but any time a prayer isn’t answered in the way we had hoped or isn’t answered at all (at least as far as we can tell). Can we continue to show up and sit in God’s presence anyway, knowing that if we do — through dark and light, joy and sorrow, abundance and scarcity — God will respond to our hungry hearts in God’s own time and release us from our exile?

This column originally appeared in the Jan. 23, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

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The poet and artist Jan Richardson, writing in her “Blessing for Epiphany” — which we will celebrate in just a few days — says: “If you could see / the journey whole / you might never / undertake it; / might never dare / the first step / that propels you / from the place / you have known / toward the place / you know not.”

Such true words. Looking back over our lives, many of us recognize that had we seen the entire path in advance — including the eventual losses, illnesses and other difficulties we all inevitably face — we might have hunkered down and refused to budge. But in hindsight, we can reflect on the difficult moments and marvel at the strength and faith that got us through things we would otherwise consider unimaginable. Often, we also marvel at how those moments shaped us, and our lives, in ways we would not want to erase, even if we wish we could erase the painful parts.

As we prepare for the arrival of the Magi at the crèche in Bethlehem, we often forget what was required of them. They did not have a GPS or comfy hotels or any guarantees they’d find what they were after. But they had a star and a belief in something so powerful that it literally moved them into the unknown. If they had been able to foresee the dangers they would face along the way, they might have come up with any number of reasons to stay put, but they trusted the movement of the Spirit and approached the threshold with curiosity and wonder. Epiphany moments don’t happen in the regrets over the past or worries over the future; they happen in the now.

In her book, “Open the Door,” writer Joyce Rupp says: “Threshold experiences contain tremendous energy. They hold the power to unglue and shake us deeply, to enfold us with a seemingly empty darkness that makes us yearn for relief. They can set an imprisoned spirit free, nurse a wounded heart back to health, and bring peace to a desolate mind.”

As we cross the threshold into a new year filled with things we can’t possibly see from our current vantage point, we have a choice about how we approach what’s ahead. Most of us — because we are human, after all — can’t help but go forward with some trepidation. We may not know the specifics, but we know life is usually not easy. In some ways, that in itself can be freeing. It’s a given that some days will be challenging, so how do we navigate this grand adventure? Step by step.

“There is nothing / for it / but to go / and by our going / take the vows / the pilgrim takes: / to be faithful to / the next step; / to rely on more / than the map; / to heed the signposts / of intuition and dream; / to follow the star / that only you / will recognize,” writes Richardson.

We can only recognize our star if we ground ourselves in God and prayer. There, in the landscape of our souls, the signposts will come into focus, showing us the thresholds we are meant to cross, not with fear and hesitance but with faith and hope, even if they unglue us along the way.

This column originally appeared in the Dec. 26, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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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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Each year, as I plan the talks I will give on retreat and create practices for our group, I go where the Spirit leads, which is always exactly where we are meant to be and not always where I set out to go. That is part of the beauty of any retreat and of the spiritual life in general. If we are so set on where we think we need to be going and what we think we need to be doing, to the point that nothing else is considered, we are following our own spiritual plan, not necessarily God’s plan for us. We often have to get out of our own way and open ourselves up to possibility in order to see the next step on the path.

In this year’s retreat, the ­presentations and practices spanned the Catholic treasury of prayer. We practiced lectio divina (sacred reading) but also visio divina (sacred seeing), using icons, images and even nature. We dug down deep into silent contemplative prayer, something that harkens back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and used methods based on Centering Prayer, which comes out of “The Cloud of Unknowing,” a 14th century anonymous book and, in more recent years, the work of Trappist Father Thomas Keating. We shared how adoration is its own form of contemplation, one that puts us directly before Jesus in the Eucharist, adding a singular beauty and power to this style of prayer. We wrote poetry and created spiritual collages; we did yoga and went for meditative walks or paddles; we ate silent breakfast and sat in silent prayer as community.

But sometimes fear wins out. One person, ahead of the retreat, questioned how this could be a Catholic retreat if it included optional yoga (stretching). And then one person, new to Pyramid, questioned why this retreat was “so Catholic” and said that she didn’t know any Catholics who were talking about adoration, Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, or Thomas Merton — a mainstay of the Stillpoint community since my Pyramid experience was forged on the spiritual ground of Merton in the Mountains under the guidance of the wonderful and brilliant Walt Chura.

If one out of 30 people thinks the Stillpoint Retreat is not Catholic enough and one thinks it’s too Catholic, it’s probably exactly where it’s supposed to be. But what struck me even more in both of those instances was the opportunity that’s lost when we make assumptions and close ourselves off to possibility rather than see where the Spirit wants to take us.

When I went on my first silent Merton in the Mountains Retreat at Pyramid 12 years ago, I almost backed out when Walt told me we not only needed to remain silent but were not supposed to read, write or make casual eye contact. I decided to forge ahead, and I am so grateful I did. It opened my eyes to how many obstacles I put between myself and God, and it led me to a part of my spiritual journey I otherwise would have missed.

Don’t shut down wonder. God has so much in store just on the other side of fear. The Spirit is always teaching us, if we are willing to find our still point and just listen.

The next Stillpoint Retreat at Pyramid Life Center will be Sept. 5-7, 2025. What the Events page here for details.
This column originally appeared in the Sept. 12, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

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By Mary DeTurris Poust

Noah plopped down on the floor next to me the other day and asked me to read one of his favorite books, “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed,” by Mercer Mayer. As we turned the pages and followed the little boy on his quest to capture the elusive alligator that kept him up at night, I had an eerie feeling that the story was an allegory for what I’d been feeling since that terrible morning a few days before.

The night after the World Trade Center attack, I lay awake in my bed staring at the ceiling, filled with a sense of dread that I could not quite put my finger on. I was scared, but not by the images of horror that had flashed before my eyes for hours that day. Instead my fears seemed frivolous, not at all unlike the little boy’s alligator: Had I left the dryer on in the basement? Was the window over the kitchen sink still open? Were the kids’ pajamas warm enough? I felt a childlike fear of the dark, of things no one else can see, things we parents usually try to hush with a goodnight kiss and a night-light.

When morning finally arrived, I realized that my sleeplessness wasn’t really about what might go wrong within my four walls. It was about what had gone wrong in our world. Long after I had wiped away the tears of sadness that fell as I watched the World Trade Center collapse over and over again on television’s seemingly endless loop of horror, I fought back tears of a different kind — as I rocked Olivia to sleep for her nap, as I kissed Noah good-bye at preschool, as I hugged my husband, Dennis, at the end of a long day. Those were tears borne of fear, tears for tomorrow, tears for a world we don’t yet know. And I didn’t like how they felt.

Despite the fact that I have spent almost two years writing a book on how to help children deal with grief, the events of the past weeks left me in the unusual position of struggling for words. On the day of the attack, when Noah, asked if “bad people” might knock down our house, I reassured him that they would not. When he made a logical leap – at least for a 4-year-old – and worried that they might knock down his grandmother’s apartment building in New York City, I told him he was safe, that no one was going to hurt him or the people he loved. All the while I found myself wondering if I was telling him a lie.

But that kind of thinking leads to hopelessness, and when we lose hope, we leave a void just waiting to be filled by fear and despair and alligators of every kind. Through stories on television and in newspapers, I had seen unbelievable hopefulness in the face of utter destruction. How could I not believe in the power of the human spirit and the ultimate goodness of humanity and a better world for our children?

That night, as a soft rain fell, our house seemed wrapped in a comforting quiet that was interrupted only by the reassuring hum of the dishwasher. With Noah and Olivia asleep in their rooms, I lay down and looked up. For the first time in days I didn’t notice the enveloping darkness but saw instead the tiny glowing stars that dot our bedroom ceiling, a “gift” left behind by the previous owners. As I finally closed my eyes to sleep, I whispered a prayer of hope, a prayer for a world where the only thing our children have to fear are the imaginary monsters hiding under their beds.

Copyright 2001, Mary DeTurris Poust
This column originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Catholic New York

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