Does that mean we should just give up the whole idea of transformation? No. But it does mean we have to rethink what we’re really looking for when we make a resolution that goes only skin deep and doesn’t get to the stuff underneath that usually creates the need for a resolution in the first place. Enter my annual rallying cry: ReVolution Not Resolution! You do not need to make resolutions. In fact, I challenge you to go against the grain and refuse to make any resolution whatsoever. Instead, promise yourself that you’re going to do something more meaningful and more lasting, something that helps you blossom into the Self you were created to be. The journey of inner transformation is the only real way to make the “progress” we seek in our spiritual lives and in our lives in general.

To that end, I’ll be offering an evening retreat — both in-person and online — for those who would like to take up this exciting and fulfilling challenge. We will talk about all the ways we block our own path when it comes to making our daily lives more peaceful and joyful and learn some practical exercises for clearing away the obstacles and moving forward. You can’t fail at this plan. If you don’t do what you set out to do, you just begin again right where you are. No resolution broken, no plan to abandon until another New Year’s Eve rolls around.

Hosted by Christ the King Retreat House in Syracuse and available to anyone in any region via Zoom, this workshop will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 4, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Two weeks after the event, on Wednesday, Jan. 18, at 6:30 p.m., we will hold an hourlong Zoom follow-up session for all participants so we can check in, share progress or challenges, and just generally support each other in our efforts to keep on keeping on.

If you’d like to read more about this approach to starting the new year off right, you can head over HERE to read a previous post on this favorite topic of mine. If you’d like more info on the retreat or the registration link, click HERE to go to the CTK website.

Click HERE to read a recent story on my upcoming retreat in the latest issue of The Catholic Sun.

Photo by SOULSANA on Unsplash.

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It took an incredible amount of faith — in guidance from the Spirit, in myself, in my experience as a writer and businesswoman, in my intuition. Today, I am here to tell you that following your dreams pays off, as long as you’re willing to risk and work hard. And even as I say that, I know there are no guarantees. Yesterday when I was walking on air due to a couple of nice turns of events, I recognized amid my giddiness that things can change on a dime. So I am basking in gratitude for this moment, even though I know there will inevitably be rough patches of one kind or another. Because, life.

If you are sitting on a dream, putting off your calling, waiting for the kids to move out, or retirement to arrive, or whatever the thing is that provides your ready-made excuse for putting off your truth, your purpose, I urge you to rethink your strategy. That doesn’t mean walking out of a job with no plans or prospects. That would be crazy. It does mean starting to take those incremental steps that will get you where you want to go.

Sign up for a class. Get up early and write, paint, practice, whatever it is you need to do. Make a plan. Do the work of your soul and eventually you will find you are exactly where you are meant to be. But everything leading up to that moment is part of the lesson. Take it all in — the good, the bad, the frustrating, the inexplicable. Sit with each thing, and try to figure out what you are supposed to learn from it. Then take all those lessons and jump into the future that is waiting for you to arrive.

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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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Mary DeTurris Poust will facilitate this retreat.  She is a writer, retreat leader, and spiritual director. She is the author of six books on Catholic spirituality and six books of seasonal reflections. Mary writes about the spiritual journey in her award-winning monthly column, Life Lines, and hosts a podcast by the same name. She and her husband, Dennis, have three children and live in New York’s Capital Region. Visit her website at www.NotStrictlySpiritual.com

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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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For more Life Lines episodes, click HERE.

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This reality became uncomfortably clear to me recently when my eye doctor recommended that I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose for five minutes after using my prescription eye drops each morning. I groaned internally at the prospect of spending five whole minutes on this process. A technician in the same doctor’s office then asked if I was putting hot compresses on my eyes and advised that I spend five minutes doing this while in the shower each day. Cue groan. It’s somewhat comical and more than a little pathetic that I could possibly feel burdened by having to spend 10 minutes a day on practices that will only improve my life and my health. In an age of multi-tasking and mindless media scrolling, we’ve created personal narratives that say we are far busier than we truly are and, in telling ourselves that lie, we rob ourselves of the chance to make the time for practices that can improve our physical health and promise to sooth our souls and calm our minds as well.

I’m enrolled in two training programs, one to become a spiritual director and another to become a meditation teacher. Because you cannot do either of those things without keeping up your own spiritual practice, we are required to spend a minimum of 20 minutes in silent meditation every day, preferably twice a day. There are evenings when I’m scrolling through Facebook, slouched in an easy chair, complaining that I don’t know how I’ll fit in my meditation. I manage to miss the irony, on an almost-daily basis. As the old Nike ad said: Just do it! That slogan became a tag line for everything from sneakers to diets to prayer because it spoke to an age-old problem: acedia, as it was known during the Middle Ages, or what we would call listlessness, boredom, distraction to the point of not being able to get yourself to do what you want or need to do.

One of the reasons I sign up for training upon training — aside from my desire to teach — is because I know I need something to hold me accountable, something that will prompt me to set an alarm, wake up an hour earlier, sit in meditation before the sun comes up or close my eyes on a busy train and just be. When we get out of our own way, the 20 minutes that seemed impossible to manage one day becomes impossible to live without just a few weeks later.

We can look to the monastics for guidance when it comes to the threat of acedia. In her book Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris writes: “Monastic wisdom insists that when we are most tempted to feel bored, apathetic, and despondent over the meaningless of life when we are on the verge of discovering our true self in relation to God.” That might seem unlikely when we’re unable to get up the gusto to go for a walk or settle down to prayer, but the monks know of what they speak, with daily lives set to the rhythm of prayer and guided by a rule.

Too often our lives are ruled by bad habits and the path of least resistance. It’s time to stop letting life live us and become active participants. To do that we have to make the time — even if it’s only for five minutes at first — to pause, pray, and be present in our own lives. Just do it.

This column first appeared in the Nov. 4, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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We tend to hear the word “surrender” and imagine failure or weakness, but, in reality, surrender is often the most challenging but ultimately satisfying path. We are taught to strive, to achieve, to keep on keeping on until we just can’t physically do it anymore. But our faith asks us to take a different path, to loosen our grip, to let go of the reins, and let God be God. It’s not easy. Okay, sometimes it feels downright impossible, and yet, if we keep coming back to this idea, this teaching, we find that, over time, it begins to feel more natural, more comfortable, a little bit like home.

A few months ago, when I was giving a retreat in Maryland, I opened the Bible to Psalm 46, since my focus would be on the famous line: “Be still and know that I am God.” But when I placed the book on my table, I noticed that this translation said: “Stop fighting and know that I am God.” I stopped in my tracks and did a little groan out loud. This was not what I wanted. I started searching for the “right” translation, aka, the one I like. Instead, I came upon the translation from the New American Standard Bible and suddenly everything I thought I knew about this Scripture verse fell into place:

“Cease striving and know that I am God…,” it said.

Wait. What? This is very different from just being still. It’s a whole other reality, one that doesn’t fit into our modern mindset. What would it mean to stop striving? Who would I be if I didn’t strive to maintain control, trying to bend God to my will instead of the other way around? As it turns out, I’d be much closer to the person God meant me to be if I just released the need to control. Surrender doesn’t lead to defeat; it leads to freedom.

When I shared this news with the folks on two different retreats in recent months, I could see the light bulbs go off. It was an Aha! moment for them, just as it was for me. “Be still and know…” sounds so calm, so passive, but “Stop striving…” is a whole different ball of wax. We don’t just sit and wait for something to come to us; we actively stop doing the things that are getting between us and God.

“Only when I surrender myself completely to God’s love can I expect to be free from endless distractions, ready to hear the voice of love, and able to recognize my own unique call,” wrote theologian Henri J.M. Nouwen in The Road to Daybreak.

“It’s going to be a very long road. Every time I pray, I feel the struggle. It is the struggle of letting God be the God of my whole being. It is the struggle to trust that true freedom lies hidden in total surrender to God’s love.”

What would happen if you didn’t just choose to be still but chose to stop striving? Would the earth stop spinning? Would your world turn upside down? Or maybe, just maybe, would everything finally be exactly as it was meant to be? Stop striving, and let God do what only God can do.

This column originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2021, issue of Catholic New York.

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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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