When I first launched Not Strictly Spiritual, I did so with a favorite prayer by St. Francis de Sales, whose writings are remarkably relevant to our world today despite his being a 17th century bishop. I used to have this prayer hanging on my bathroom mirror so it was the first thing I would see when I began my day:

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;
rather, look to them with full hope that as they arise,
God, whose very own you are,
will lead you safely through all things;
and when you cannot stand it,
God will carry you in His arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
the same everlasting Father who cares for you today
will take care of you then and every day.
He will either shield you from suffering,
or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace,
and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.
— St. Francis de Sales

So much has happened over these past 15 years, much of incredibly wonderful, some of it painfully awful. And yet through it all we carry on, trusting the path, trusting our story as it unfolds, trusting that God will carry us, enfold us, shield us, care for us.

As I look out toward the next leg of this journey, I can tell you that I hope to get back to my Life Lines podcast and make that more regular/frequent. I will continue posting my monthly Life Lines column, which runs in The Evangelist, and I will post other spiritual writing as I am able. You’ll also be able to find my upcoming events, which includes four weekend retreats in 2023 (one in the Capital Region, one in Syracuse, one in the Adirondacks, and one in Maryland), plus some single-day events here and there. I’ll be adding more as they are scheduled, so continue to check back on the Events tab at the top of the home page to see what’s coming up. I hope I see you along the way.

Thank you again for joining me in this space and in my Tribe. If you haven’t signed up for the Tribe, which includes receiving an occasional email newsletter from me, you can do so at the Join the Tribe button in the top right corner of this page.

Peace, Love, Blessings, and Every Good Thing,

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Now, all these years later, a lot has changed. While I still maintain a chunk of my freelance writing business, I spend my days working for the Diocese of Albany, and so blogging has dropped off significantly. Not to mention the fact that my kids have reached the age where they now have veto power of my sharing of their stories. Those are no longer my stories to share; they get to write their own stories now. Recipes and travel are on the back burner while I go about the business of my current daily life. And while I’m not here as often as I used to be (or would like to be), this blog will always be one of my favorite places to hang out. I thank those who have continued to visit day after day, year after year, and I welcome those who only recently have joined us. I will do my best to be present here at least somewhat regularly. A special thank you to those who comment or send me emails when a particular post speaks to them. I appreciate the support, encouragement, and sharing.

When I started this blog, I did so with a prayer, and so I will share that prayer again here today on this special anniversary:

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;

rather, look to them with full hope that as they arise,

God, whose very own you are,

will lead you safely through all things;

and when you cannot stand it,

God will carry you in His arms.

Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;

the same everlasting Father who cares for you today

will take care of you then and every day.

He will either shield you from suffering,

or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.

Be at peace,

and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.

                                                                        — St. Francis de Sales

Photo credit:
unsplash-logoNicolas Tissot

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Here’s the description from the back of the book:

Prepare spiritually for the coming of Christ with this popular, easy-to-use annual guide. During the especially busy Advent and Christmas seasons, this book offers brief, down-to-earth reflections that bring prayer and Scripture into everyday life in a thought-provoking and lasting way. Through Mary DeTurris Poust’s insightful reflections on Scripture readings from the daily Mass, readers will grow in their understanding of the word of God. This book will help busy people achieve their goal of enriching their personal prayer life during the seasons of Advent and Christmas.

Thank you to the folks at Liturgical Press for inviting me back for another round after writing the Lent 2016 booklet. For those who like to plan for liturgical seasons years in advance, I’m also on tap to write the Lenten book of reflections for 2019.

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I launched this blog on Jan. 24 because it was the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists and writers. This is a special day for me, not only because of my blog-iversary but because it’s my professional feast day, having worked in the Catholic press in one form or another for just about 33 years. (How did I get this old?!?)

In my very first blog post, I shared one of my favorite prayers, written by St. Francis de Sales. This one used to hang on the mirror in my bathroom as a daily reminder, and it has made it into at least one of my books, maybe more. I’ve lost track. Here it is again:

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;

rather, look to them with full hope that as they arise,

God, whose very own you are,

will lead you safely through all things;

and when you cannot stand it,

God will carry you in His arms.

Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;

the same everlasting Father who cares for you today

will take care of you then and every day.

He will either shield you from suffering,

or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.

Be at peace,

and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.

                                                                        — St. Francis de Sales

 

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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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MARY DeTURRIS POUST

Background: Born and raised in Pearl River in Rockland County. She graduated from Pace University. Her husband, Dennis, and their children, Noah, 19, a freshman at Le Moyne College, and daughters Olivia, 15, and Chiara, 10, who attend Bethlehem public schools, live in Delmar where they are parishioners at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. She’s director of communications for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

Your resume includes reporter, editor, columnist, author and blogger. You’ve switched hats in your new job.

It’s the culmination of everything I’ve done professionally over the past 32 years, not only as a writer but as a public speaker, retreat leader and commentator of Catholic issues. Dealing with the media is my favorite part of my job, because I’ll always be a journalist at heart. I love to find an interesting story in the diocese and get it out there in the secular press: Good news with a capital g and a lower case g. I do sometimes miss being a full-time writer.

Continue reading HERE.

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Although I will be full time with the Diocese of Albany, I will continue to do my spiritual writing. I can’t give that up. Writing is a bit like breathing for me. I think I would wither and die without it, so I’ll find a way to do at least a little of that. I will continue my monthly Life Lines column, which appears in Catholic New York and the Catholic Spirit (Metuchen), and I will continue to write for Give Us This Day. In fact, I have a book of Lenten reflections coming out from Liturgical Press in November, and I am beginning work on another book of spiritual reflections for release in 2017.

And I will continue to lead retreats and pilgrimages now and then. I already have a fantastic Holy Year of Mercy Food & Faith pilgrimage to Italy scheduled for May 15-26, 2016. We are going from Rome and Castel Gandolfo to Orvieto, Assisi, Siena, Bologna, the Emilia-Romagna region, Padua and Venice. It promises to be a trip to remember. You can read more about it HERE. I’ll be back with a separate post on that soon. I promise.

So, please, send a prayer my way as I begin this new chapter in my life. I truly believe the Spirit was at work in all of this and that this is exactly where God wants me to be right now. Although I have been doing social and digital media for the diocese part time for the past five months, I am looking forward to kicking it up a notch and using my background and experience to help the diocese spread the Good News in new ways. (P.S. That’s our diocesan crest up there on the left. The beaver is a symbol of Albany, which was once called Beverwyck — “Beaver” — and the crosier is a symbol of the Office of Bishop. The crescent moon and the blue represent the Blessed Mother, patroness of the diocese under the title of the Immaculate Conception. And that’s our cathedral on the right.)

If you’re interested, here’s the press release announcing my appointment and explaining Bishop Scharfenberger’s vision for my office:

Bishop Scharfenberger Announces Changes
To Diocesan Communications Office

Recognizing the power and potential of the changing media landscape, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger today announced a new vision for the Diocese of Albany’s Office of Communications. To lead that effort, he has appointed Mary DeTurris Poust, currently diocesan Consultant for Digital and Social Media, as Director of Communications, effective Sept. 3. She replaces Kenneth J. Goldfarb, who has served in that position since 2002. The appointment also follows the retirement of Father Kenneth J. Doyle from his position as Chancellor for Public Information.

The restructured Office of Communications will not only include public information and media relations but social and digital media and oversight of The Evangelist, the weekly newspaper of the diocese, bringing together under one roof the diocese’s varied communications tools.

“We want to use our communications proactively to announce and spread the Gospel and to equip not only the Catholic population but the general public with accurate, timely and helpful information about the Church and the activities of the diocese and our parishes,” said Bishop Scharfenberger. “We need to use every means available to do that, and while traditional media, such as The Evangelist, remains critical to our communication and evangelization efforts, we must take advantage of the many new media platforms that allow us to broaden our reach and engage more Catholics in the New Evangelization.”

The diocese joined social media in April, when it launched Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for both the diocese and the bishop. Since then, the number of followers has been on the rise as the diocese begins to engage the rapidly increasing local and global Catholic community that exists online.

“As a long-time journalist, I value the power of the printed word, but there is no denying the equal power of new media to reach untapped populations that are hungry for a relationship with God,” said Ms. DeTurris Poust. “With both traditional and new media working together under the newly revamped Communications Office, we will be able to better respond to the needs of our people and the needs of our times. I’m grateful to Bishop Scharfenberger for his vision and for the confidence he’s shown in me to help him implement that plan.”

Ms. DeTurris Poust has been working in Catholic media for more than 30 years and has written seven books on Catholic spirituality and teaching and published hundreds of articles in both Catholic and secular newspapers and magazines on national, regional, and local levels. The former managing editor of Catholic New York newspaper, she is regular contributor to Catholic radio and cable, and a social media expert who has spoken about the importance of using new media as a tool for evangelization to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2012 and World Communications Day in Brooklyn in 2014.

Father Doyle, former editor of The Evangelist, spokesman for the USCCB, and Rome Bureau Chief for Catholic News Service, has served as Chancellor for Public Information since 2000. He will continue as pastor of Mater Christi Parish in Albany and will continue to write his nationally syndicated “Question Corner” column, which runs in The Evangelist, for Catholic News Service. Mr. Goldfarb, who came to the diocese after a long career as a journalist covering state government and later as spokesman for the State University of New York, has served as diocesan Director of Communications for the past 13 years.

“We are so grateful to Father Doyle and Ken Goldfarb for their many years of dedicated service to the diocese and the people of God,” said Bishop Scharfenberger. “They leave us with a strong foundation on which to build this next generation of Catholic communications.”

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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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For me, this was one of those moments:

“After all these years, I’ve come to realize that I really don’t enjoy reading the “Divine Comedy”; I just like the thought of being someone who enjoys reading the “Divine Comedy.” I like to pretend I’m special, but I’m really just like everyone else.”

Yup, except, unlike Bob, I’ve never even attempted The Divine Comedy, despite having a bachelor’s degree in English, despite owning that lovely set of books you see in the photo here, complete with side-by-side Italian and English translations. Those books have been on my bookshelf in various apartments and houses in various cities for more than 30 years. I guess I, too, like the idea of Dante more than I like the actual reading of this classic. (For the record, I also have not read the The Iliad or The Odyssey shelved right next to it. Same idea, different classics.)

Then again, there’s a lot I’ve got sitting on the shelf of my life, unopened, untouched, undiscovered for a host of reasons that run the gamut from laziness to fear to exhaustion by a life that at times overwhelms and confounds.

“Life is messy,” Bob writes. “It’s forever unfinished, often complicated and sometimes extraordinary, and it renews itself with or without you. Everything matters, because every moment is unique.” (Read the full post HERE.)

Amen. Why do I always seem to forget that?

So what would you tell your 22-year-old self as you look at your life with 20/20 hindsight thanks to your progressive lenses? I’m going to ponder that thought as I go about my day and come back with my own version of this post.

Right after I put my Dante books out on the curb.

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The Advent and Christmas seasons tend to make us more grateful and more giving. At this time of year, when we’re abundantly aware of children who want nothing more than a pair of mittens or a warm winter coat, we seem to recognize how lucky we are. We collect boxes of stuffing and bottles of gravy for our parish food pantry and take tags off the Giving Tree so that others will have for one day what we have every day. And in those moments we are humbled by our blessings and all too aware of the fact that we often remain blissfully unaware of those same blessings the other 11 months of the year.

Gratitude isn’t meant only for a season but for a lifetime, and using gratitude practices to transform our lives is promoted in both spiritual and secular books and blogs by people of all faiths or no faith at all. The advice seems so obvious, the practices so easy, and yet it is often difficult to remember to be grateful, not just for the grand and sublime things—an illness healed, a job secured, a child safe—but for the minute and perhaps ridiculous things—a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, a dog waiting at home with a wagging tail, a night with no meetings or obligations.

I have kept various gratitude journals with fits and starts over the past 10 years. My first, started in 2003, lasted only a few months. I’m assuming the book got buried under some magazines or scooped up in a cleaning frenzy and dumped out of sight, and with that I quickly fell off the gratitude wagon. I tried it again with more success in 2011, after reading the beautiful and moving “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are” by Ann Voskamp. The author takes on the challenge in her own life to list 1,000 things for which she is grateful, and in the process she is transformed inside and out. So I started a journal modeled after hers, noting not only the spectacular things that made me gasp with gratitude but the small, silent things that usually went unnoticed

Here’s a random sampling of what a couple of days in my journal looked like. Today I am grateful for…

The sound of thunder

Noah home safely

Warm chocolate chip cookies

Memories of Rome

Early morning soccer games canceled the night before

All my babies sleeping snug and safe in their beds

Clean bathrooms

I kept that up through #310 before I started taking things big and small for granted all over again. In 2012, I started up again and made it as far as #426, and then the journal goes blank. Did I have nothing to be grateful for all those days and months between then and now, or did I just lose sight of the blessings? It’s the latter, of course, and when I lose sight of the blessings, I also tend to lose sight of the joy and hope and light that is always lurking around, even when we see only darkness.

It’s easy, when we’re not intentionally trying to be grateful, to focus on the problems, the obstacles, the annoyances of daily life. Instead of giving thanks for a full moon glistening on a blanket of snow, we curse the weather that scuttles our party plans. Where once we took the time to note something as simple as a cat curled up and purring on the arm of the couch, we instead whine about the litter box that needs to be cleaned. Again.

It’s a matter of perspective, and I’m not talking about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. No matter which part of the glass we see, gratitude is our calling. The German mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you said your whole life was ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

So today I’m dusting off my journal and starting all over again at #427.

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