my guardian dear,

to whom God’s love

commits me here,

ever this night,

be at my side

to light and guard,

to rule and guide.

This was one of the first prayers I learned as a child, and it holds a special place in my heart, probably because I remember my mother sitting at the side of my bed saying it with me each night. But I have to admit that there came a point in my younger adult life when I felt I had outgrown angels. They seemed stuck in my childhood, a remnant of something long gone. And then came the pop culture angel fad. They showed up on everything from keychains to refrigerator magnets and that just made me like the little chubby winged cherubs of coffee mug fame even less.

But then something happened. I don’t know if was age or wisdom or the sudden realization that I could not protect my children on my own, but angels started making their way back into my life. First through my cursory spiritual nod to them every time we got in the car and eventually through my near-incessant pleading with them to watch out for me, my kids and just about anyone special to me, no matter how near or how far. Now it’s not uncommon for me to have a good long heart-to-heart with the guardian angel of a distant friend who just might need a little extra protection here and there. Frankly, I’m sure the angels are longing for the days when I had no use for them. I love knowing my angel is around, and there have been times in my life when I have sensed my angel nearby.

Having a guardian angel doesn’t ensure that nothing bad will happen to us — as know all too well through ongoing personal experience — but it does mean there is a spiritual being of the highest order hovering nearby, sometimes to ease our way, other times to be a comfort, and, eventually, to lead the way for us when we go home to God.

So today, on this Feast of the Guardian Angels, why not take a moment to reintroduce yourself, if you’ve been out of touch, and maybe say that old prayer — or teach it to your children or grandchildren, if you haven’t already.

The icon at the top of the page was written by Minhhang Huynh, a woman I met when I was on retreat at the Abbey of the Genesee in New York two years ago. This post was originally published  on October 2, 2013.

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Thumbing through the cathedral bulletin before Mass, I read an informative public policy piece on growing anti-Catholic sentiments and religious liberty; a short reflection on that day’s Gospel story; and a reflection on the upcoming Feast of Mary Magdalene that made this Magdala fan-girl smile from ear to ear. In terms of a spiritual meal, this spread was a feast of delicious appetizers that left me content and looking forward to the main course, which was everything I’d hoped for and more.

The music was accessible and easy to sing. The homily was on-point and offered food for thought. The Liturgy of the Eucharist was reverent to the point of giving me goosebumps. The pews were filled with people young and old, families and singles, but, best of all, so many young adults. After a liturgy that was beautiful from start to finish, the lector ran through announcements about upcoming events — coffee and pastry in the courtyard after Mass, a summer jazz concert (BYO picnic dinner), a paint-and-sip party. Everything was free and open to anyone and everyone, no exceptions. I turned to my husband, Dennis, and said: “This is how you do Church.”

As we walked out of Mass, we were stopped multiple times by people encouraging us to join them in the courtyard. The young priest who wrote the Mary Magdalene reflection was greeting people in the back. (I knew he was the writer because he was wearing a name tag.) I stopped to thank him for the inspiration. Then I made my way over to the celebrant so I could thank him as well.

Maybe the hopefulness of that morning has something to do with the population of Chicago in general. I had felt a surge of hope as we wandered the halls of the Chicago Art Institute because it was so crowded with young adults and families, but I believe my Mass high was due to more than demographics. It was due to the intentional effort that had been made to welcome newcomers, to find points of connection, to offer something relevant and inviting, to recognize that, while the Eucharist is Source and Summit, we humans often need tangible benefits to go along with the transcendent intangibles.

For years I’ve given a talk called “Lost Generation,” which focuses on reaching out to adult Catholics disconnected from the faith. One of my key points has been that we cannot bridge the divide by starting with theology, or even with Eucharist. For many people who are inactive or uncatechized, the Eucharist is a Mystery that requires time, prayer and revelation that doesn’t always arrive all at once when someone walks through the door. We have to meet people at the door, connect with them where they are, and walk with them down the path until the mundane gives way to Mystery.

That connection begins with sincere welcome, with broad inclusion, with coffee gatherings and painting classes — not just once in a while and not just with minimum effort. Connection begins with a willingness to let go of the old mantra, “We’ve always done it this way,” and open our hearts and minds to new ways of doing things.

There’s a surefire way to know if we’re on target: Imagine you are a non-Catholic — or disconnected Catholic — walking into Sunday Mass at your church for the very first time. Would that experience of Church make you want to come back a second time? If the answer is not a resounding YES, it’s time to rethink the usual routines.

People are hungry for deep connection and loving community. If you build it, they will come. And they will bring their friends.

This column originally appeared in the Aug. 4, 2022, issue of The Evangelist.

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In 1990, when I was deep into my practice and working as the part-time manager of the Austin Yoga Center in Texas, I signed up for teacher training, but circumstances made it impossible for me to get very far. Fast forward to two more near-misses with Yoga Teacher Training in 2011 and 2016, and I began to believe it just wasn’t meant to be. But when you’re meant to do something and you want to do something deep in your soul, the universe keeps chasing you until you put all the fears aside and take the leap. That seed of fearlessness was planted last summer. I wanted to get my yoga mojo back and signed up for a discounted new-student offer at nearby Jai Yoga School. Within weeks I was at Jai constantly, taking every kind of yoga class I could fit into my schedule. I didn’t just love the classes; I loved the community, the chanting, the whole package, and I quickly dusted off my old dream, pushing aside worries that 57 was far too old to take up a physically rigorous and mentally challenging program.

What began in January, with an amazing group of yogis learning alongside me, culminated in our graduation on Oct. 11 in a beautiful, socially-distant ceremony that was buzzing with emotion, energy and joy. We had traversed a pandemic-infused YTT program that lasted twice as long as planned due to COVID changes and required us to wear masks and refrain from hugging, much to our chagrin. Through anatomy and philosophy classes, sequencing and practice teaching, we carried on, pushing beyond our comfort zones and letting our guards down. We became a family, and we will remain a family forever because we have peered into each other’s souls, and you can never go back from that. And isn’t that a beautiful, magical, mystic thing.

Since graduation, I’ve been thinking about the yoga teachers who have walked with me on this journey — teaching me, inspiring me, motivating me, loving me. So let me start at the beginning, even if most of those teachers will never read this. Thank you to Sarah Brumgart, the modern dancer and yogi, who first introduced me to yoga and taught me semi-private lessons for the years I lived in Austin in the late 1980s. She was the first person to inspire dreams of being a teacher, and I will be forever grateful. Thank you to Suzy Yoga, who taught me pre-natal yoga when I was pregnant with Chiara and reminded me how much I loved and needed this practice. Thank you to the many teachers who only briefly touched my life but made an impact, such as Larissa Hall Carlson and Father Tom Ryan, C.S.P., both of whom taught me on my one visit to Kripalu, and Lauren Toolin, who encouraged me when I considered YTT in 2011 and 2016 and tried to get me to look beyond my fears.

Thank you to Deanna Beyer, who is not just a teacher but a dear friend who taught those pre-dawn classes at the Bethlehem YMCA that fed my soul and kept me sane. I loved the drive through darkness to those classes that Deanna managed to infuse with a spiritual light even though we were in a gym room next to treadmills and weight machines. When my dreams of YTT were dashed by what was believed to be a hernia, Deanna gave me personal training, helping me bring my yoga down to the most basic level so that I could maintain a simple practice while nursing my condition. She never gave up on me.

Finally, thank you to Meg Horan, my lead teacher at Jai Yoga School, who is not only an amazing yogi and teacher, but a beautiful human inside and out. I was so blessed to find your school and land in your classes and YTT program. Such a tremendous gift! There is nothing I can say that could adequately convey just how grateful I am for all you have given me. Thank you, too, to Dustin, Sabrina, Kristi, Natalie, Allison, Deb, Blair, Mandy, Mareena, and Laurel — all the teachers at Jai who have helped shape my training and my practice over the past 18 months. You are an amazing community.

A huge shout out and thank you to my family — Dennis and the kids, who put up with my long hours away from home and frantic studying and practicing. I could not have done this without you, and I am so grateful, not only for your support, but for your enthusiastic encouragement of all my crazy dreams and schemes. I love you to the moon and back.

Probably one of the common questions I get when I tell people about this journey is whether — or how — it complements my Catholic faith, or even if it’s possible for the two to co-exist in the same spiritual universe without harming one or the other. I am here to tell you that they can more than co-exist; the practice of yoga has made me a better Catholic, a more prayerful and compassionate person, and a more engaged and energized spiritual pilgrim. Years ago, I wrote about this in an essay called Where the Amen Meets the Om. You can read that HERE,

For those who don’t venture over to that essay, here’s the bottom line: My Catholic faith is my bedrock. The message of the Gospel, the teachings of Jesus, are essential to my life, to my very being. But I also know how easy it is for me to get distracted, to skip prayer or find it impossible to settle into prayer. Enter yoga, a practice that slows down my fast-moving body and mind and settles my soul just as it settles my limbs on the mat. When I step onto my mat and stretch and balance or sit cross-legged and breathe deeply, I open up a space where God can enter. And that is why yoga is so vital to my own Catholic spiritual life. And it is why I am so excited about teaching others how to use their practice to deepen their own prayer lives and to move them forward on their spiritual journeys in the most beautiful way.

If you’d like to know how to book a yoga class or retreat, or just want to know more about my yoga journey, visit my page dedicated to this topic HERE.

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Here are some highlights:

• Silence in the early morning through breakfast.
• Mindfulness practice with your morning meals
• Several spiritual talks…on the cravings that get in the way of our relationship with God, on weaving prayer into everyday life, on spiritual friendship, on embracing our own brokenness and learning to love ourselves as God loves us.
• Collage as prayer
• Opportunities to pray together and apart in different formats
• Poetry, music, journaling, nature, creativity
• Disconnecting from email, texting, social media
• Opportunities to hike, kayak, nap, or do whatever it is you need most

The cost is $150 for the entire weekend, including the program, accommodations, meals and activities. Pyramid is a rustic retreat center, with a lovely lodge with two big screened porches, a big dining hall, a log cabin chapel, a small meditation house on the lake, a “tree house” looking out over the lake and lots of nooks and crannies for stealing some quiet time.

The weekend begins at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 8, with dinner at 6 p.m. and our first introductory session at 7:30 p.m. The retreat concludes with lunch on Sunday, Sept. 10, although you are welcome to stay on the premises until 2 p.m. As of this writing, it looks like we’ll have our own priest on hand to celebrate Mass for us on Saturday evening or Sunday morning, which is a wonderful bonus.

To register, click HERE and sign up through Pyramid’s online form. Once we have our final group, I’ll send out an email with some additional info, but just to give you some ideas… Plan to bring a journal, scissors, a glue stick, some old magazines (3 should be plenty). If you’re a photographer, bring your camera (or your phone in airplane mode) and use it as a way to pray visually. If you draw, bring a sketch pad. Whatever gives you peace and helps you connect with God. We’ll talk more about it in the days ahead. I can’t wait to see you there.

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Being on the open road for four hours is the perfect time for thinking about waiting and the way we view time, or at least time spent on things that don’t seem important or productive or special. After all, the goal of my drive was the destination I had programmed into my GPS; the drive was just the means to an end. At least that’s how my mind usually works.

“Be here now.” I often write those words on a small dry erase board on my desk. It’s as much a reminder for myself as it is for those who come by to visit. Can I be present where I am at this moment, even if that happens to be behind a steering wheel, or on line at the grocery story, or in the waiting room at the dentist? It’s human nature to see those times as a sort of limbo where we’re biding our time until real life gets back under way.

And sometimes the waiting is much more difficult than a long Friday afternoon drive. How often do I look at the events of my life as things I need to wait out until I reach a better or different destination? When I get through the big work project, a child’s illness, the busy holiday season, the inevitable annual financial crunch…life will be better, easier, happier. We tend to live in a state of “I wish (fill in the blank).” But “active waiting,” as Nouwen calls it, challenges us to settle into where we are right now and sit with our pain or frustration or boredom in hopeful expectation.

“I feel that for many people waiting is sort of an awful desert between where you are and where you want to go, and you don’t like that place,” said Nouwen, pointing out that the difference between seeing waiting as a time of growth rather than as a time of frustration is choosing hope over fear. “A waiting person is someone who is very present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.”

We are all waiting in one way or another. Many of the women I met in Rochester shared difficult stories, and I marveled at how faith-filled they were in spite of their sorrows and stresses. I never would have guessed from looking at them that they were facing such obstacles and burdened with such heartaches. They are women waiting in hope, and they showed me in very practical terms what I’d heard in theory on the Nouwen recording the night before: “Waiting is never moving from nothing to something. It’s always from something to something.”

God calls us to see the “something” in the fallow moments as well as the full moments, in our struggles as well as our successes. That’s certainly not easy, especially if we’re suffering through it. It takes practice. We can start small—like on a drive across the state on a clear autumn day—and embrace what is rather than what we wish could be. The next moment isn’t the one that counts. This is the moment. Be here now. Wait in hope and see what God has in store.

This Life Lines column originally appeared in the Oct. 13, 2016, issue of Catholic New York.

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“Read why @MaryDTP is one of our top 25 blogs on #spiritual wellness.”

And I was like, wait, what? So I clicked on the link that took me to a list of the “top 25 spiritual wellness bloggers,” and there I was, slipped in among some of the most wonderful and inspiring contemporary spiritual wellness/wholeness writers and thinkers: Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Danielle LaPorte, Krista Tippett. And me?!? How did that happen? I’m still not sure. I just know I am beyond overwhelmed and grateful that anyone, anywhere would include me and my blog — this blog! — on that list. I’m not worthy. And I’m especially honored to be the Catholic writer representing on that list. Preach.

Thank you again to the folks at The Clearing. I am so grateful. And, now, here’s the full list. You’ll find me in the #6 slot:

Spiritual Wellness Bloggers We Love and Respect

Here’s our list of the top 25 spiritual wellness bloggers, in no particular order, to inspire and encourage you in your spiritual path.

1. Louise Hay

Louise Hay is an internationally-lauded author and speaker who focuses on how positive philosophies and affirmations can help people to heal their lives. She began her healing work by speaking in church, and later chronicled how she healed her physical body from cancer through emotional work, nutritional support, and therapy.

2. Lori Deschene

Lori Deschene is the founder of Tiny Buddha, a popular online community devoted to “reflecting on simple wisdom and learning new ways to apply it to our complex lives”. The site features guest posts from individuals all across the world to help readers cultivate happiness in their own lives.

3. Leo Babauta

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits was among the first personal development bloggers on the web. He writes about minimalism and the concrete, real-world habits that promote happiness; recent posts include essays on mindful walking and eating. He emphasizes clearing the clutter to allow for a greater focus on what matters most.

4. Ilchi Lee

Ilchi Lee of Change Your Energy writes about unleashing positive transformations for the mind, body, and soul. He offers various courses, videos, and products designed to increase your energy and thus improve your quality of life.

5. Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson is an acclaimed, bestselling author and speaker who penned the much-beloved, oft-quoted paragraph that begins: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…” She writes about the spiritual journey from suffering to enlightenment.

6. Mary DeTurris Poust

Mary DeTurris Poust of Not Strictly Spiritual is a Catholic writer, speaker, blogger, and communications consultant who writes about finding the Divine in the everyday, healing from grief, developing spiritual friendships, and more.

See the rest HERE.

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What are your favorite retreat spots? How do you feel about sitting in silence for a few hours, or a few days? Some day I’ll do a weeklong silent retreat. For now, it’s bit by bit. Peace.

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I come from a big Irish-Italian family, one where the food was always delicious and plentiful. On any given night, an entire extra family could show up for dinner at our house unannounced, and no one would go hungry. There would be chicken cutlets or pasta in abundance, and probably a batch of freshly made chocolate chip cookies. My mother wanted everyone to feel welcomed and loved. It didn’t matter whether you had an invitation, whether you were a close relative or the high school boyfriend of the resident teenager, whether you wanted a cup of tea or a three-course meal, she would smile and put out another place setting. Or five.

When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.

Jesus manages to give the crowd a feast from almost nothing and still have leftovers. My mother would have been impressed. Another place setting. Or five. Or five thousand. No one goes hungry; no one is turned away.

In this precursor to the Eucharist, Jesus reminds us in the most practical way that he will always make room for us at his table, even when we show up unannounced, even if we arrive empty-handed. He gives us food for the journey, food that never runs out, food that fills us to overflowing.

If you don’t already have a subscription to Give Us This Day, click HERE for more information on this wonderful collection of daily Scripture readings, Morning and Evening prayer, spiritual reflections, and more.

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