Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog

If you spend any serious amount of time with Scripture, you can’t help but take to heart that there are some absolutes when it comes to our call and responsibility as Christians. While there are many things that are not specifically addressed by Scripture, there are others that are undeniable and irrefutable: loving our neighbor, welcoming the “stranger” and caring for the poor. No matter how you slice it, there is no way to avoid these requirements of human decency and Christian mission.

Of course, if you look around the world at the moment, you might think otherwise. “Stranger” has become a dirty word, along with migrant, alien, foreigner. Words used by Jesus when instructing his followers how to live and love. He didn’t say deport the stranger or withhold medical care from the alien. Instead, when asked, “Who is my neighbor?,” he gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan, reminding us that the “other” is often the one acting with more compassion and care than the publicly recognized religious followers and leaders. It’s not an easy teaching, but that doesn’t mean we can set it aside.

Social media is filled with horrifying images of immigrant families — often while at court hearings required to maintain their legal status in this country — being ripped apart, children and wives screaming as fathers and husbands are dragged away, women tackled and clothes ripped off on a street, babies taken from their beds and zip-tied as they are rushed into the night by armed and masked agents. If we can watch those videos or read those stories and still think those actions are in keeping with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our calling as Catholics, we have lost our way.

Pope Leo XIV, speaking about migrants who flee violence, said, “Those boats which hope to catch sight of a safe port, and those eyes filled with anguish and hope seeking to reach the shore, cannot and must not find the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination!”

“No one should be forced to flee, nor exploited or mistreated because of their situation as foreigners or people in need! Human dignity must always come first!” he said at a Jubilee Mass Oct. 5.

Not all of us are called to be missionaries or even to work directly with the migrant community, be we are all called to welcome the stranger and to do whatever we can to ease their way into their new homeland, whether it’s collecting clothing and food, writing to our representatives, or simply offering a smile to those who are forced to move through this world in fear.

My grandfather came to this country from Italy as a child. I have been to his hometown, and I have stood on the deck of a boat in the Bay of Naples, imagining how awful their lives must have been to leave behind such stunning natural beauty for an unknown world where they would be seen as “other” and discriminated against. It’s a point of pride that I am a grandchild of a direct immigrant, and I have always found great joy and hope in the diversity of our country.

Whenever I’m feeling the strain of the current climate, a quick trip to New York City does the trick. There on the subway, riding under busy city streets, we are all one. Our skin color and religion, jobs and homes don’t matter. We stand side by side with one goal, getting to our stop so we can carry on with our day. It’s a reminder that we really are more alike than we are different. Jesus tried to tell us that. It’s time to refocus on his actual words and teachings over a nationalist rallying cry determined to amass power in the name of a distorted Jesus rather than build community according to the literal teachings of the One who came to show us a better, if more challenging, way.

This column originally appeared in the Oct. 15, 2025, issue of The Evangelist. 
Photo copyright Mary DeTurris Poust, 2010

The post Who is my neighbor? appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

As I write this column, the world seems to be spinning out of control. Vitriol, blame and hatred are bouncing around social media and casual conversation so quickly it feels as though we are living inside a pinball machine, hit from every side over and over until we just want to scream TILT and shut down.In the midst of all this, I happened to be praying with particular psalms each morning. I’ve often found the psalms especially challenging but this week it seemed even more so, not because they required heroic feats from me but because they required something much more basic but perhaps more daunting: holding onto hope in an increasingly hopeless world and offering unending praise to God when what I’d really like to do (and sometimes actually do) is rail and cry and ask, “Why?” Of course, the psalmist often does the same, so I guess I’m in good company.Years ago, when I was a chaperone for my son’s trip to the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indiana, the leader would chant, “God is good!” And the teens would respond, “All the time!” Today, with the world on fire, both figuratively and literally, due to human greed for money and power and control, I came back to that chant and asked myself if I could respond as joyfully as those teens once did. And part of me wondered if I even had a right to rejoice in God’s goodness in general and to me in particular in a world where children are starving and being shot at school.How do we maintain hope and even joy in the current climate? It’s a question we pondered on the recent retreat I led at Pyramid Life Center. Oftentimes we feel guilty experiencing joy when so much of the world is suffering, or we simply can’t find our way toward joy because we are so weighed down by the never-ending headlines of hate and hardship. But joy is not happiness according to the world’s standards; it is deep and abiding trust in a God who loves us unconditionally and wants only the best for us, even when we don’t understand how “the best” will come out of what we are seeing or experiencing.As I struggled in prayer this morning, I turned — as I often do — to music to ease my way. I chose “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)” by Matt Redman, which says:

“The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning,It’s time to sing Your song again.Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me,Let me be singing when the evening comes.”

Can we, at the start of our day, promise to sing God’s praise when night descends even if things did not go as planned, even if we experienced physical pain, mental anguish or spiritual heartache? Some days it’s easy; other days it seems to be a monumental task. And yet we are called and challenged to walk this path, through darkness and confusion as well as light and ease, with trust that if we ask God to walk with us, we will never be alone and we will be led to where we are meant to go.I paused in writing this column to attend Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Delmar and felt a peace descend as I settled into my pew surrounded by many others on a beautiful Friday afternoon. My mind returned to my morning psalm, “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved” (Ps 104:5), and all felt right with our troubled world.Our hope is found day by day, hour by hour, in the wisdom of Scripture, the persistence of prayer, the power of the Eucharist, and the belief that no matter what is happening around us, there are always 10,000 reasons to bless the Lord. Because God is good all the time.This column originally appeared in the Sept. 17, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.
Photo by Wes Hicks on UnsplashP.S. Here’s the Matt Redman song if you’d ike to listen:

The post Singing praises when we want to scream appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

My latest (and seventh) book of seasonal Scripture reflections — Waiting in Joyful Hope: Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas 2025-2026 — has recently been released by Liturgical Press. Here are the opening paragraphs of my introduction to this new book. (You can read more over on the LitPress website):

“Standing on tiptoe” is how author Macrina Wiederkehr,
OSB, describes our Advent time of waiting in her beautiful
book Seasons of Your Heart. I’ve always loved that image.
Can’t you just imagine yourself peering over the edge of
time into God’s vastness? “In spite of all the brokenness of
our lives, we are still standing on tiptoe,” Sr. Macrina writes,
“waiting for the glorious freedom promised us as children
of God. This confident waiting is called hope, and our lives
are empty without it.”

Sr. Macrina’s words fit this season like a warm win‑
ter glove. While the rest of the world rushes to-and-fro,
busy with the demands of the secular holiday season, the
Scripture readings we will hear in the coming weeks call us
to be steadfast, to seek out stillness, to wait, to hope. We are
reminded again and again that this world is fleeting and that
time is passing, even as we pretend it is not….”

Click THIS LINK to head over to Liturgical Press to order your copy. Pocket-size is only $3; large-print is $7.95; and ebook is $1.99. There are DEEP discounts for bulk ordering for your parish or organization:

Quantity Discounts1,000 or more copies$1.00 net each500-999 copies$1.25 net each50-499 copies$1.50 net each

Buy early and often. 😉 I’ll be sharing more about this book and my experience writing it as Advent nears. It is always a gift to be given a chance to spend time with Scripture in such an intentional and extended way as I write. Thank you for joining me on the journey!

The post New Advent-Christmas reflection book appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

On a recent vacation to the Jersey Shore, I sat on my prayer cushion with a clear view of the Atlantic Ocean. As I settled into my sacred space, I spied a lone surfer out in the mild waves along the North Wildwood coast. Paddling on his board and looking out into the distance, he’d wait for what appeared to be a bigger wave and then race to meet it and stand atop the rolling water. Although he caught a few, more often than not he ended up under the water, his board rushing to the sand without him. He’d resurface, chase down the board and paddle out again to wait and watch.

It made me think about the fact that in the surfer’s world, the bigger the wave, the better the ride, and how that’s just the opposite of what we hope for in our daily lives. While the ocean with its pounding surf and untamed power tends to inspire and awe us, we prefer still waters and minor ripples, at best, when it comes to the channels we must navigate. Of course, we know from hard-earned experience that the waves will come anyway, sometimes one after another without rest and other times breaking over us in ways that bring us to the shores of life with a force that leaves us gasping for air.

So how do we, like the surfer, learn to ride the waves? Our faith tells us the only way to keep our heads above the swirling water is to ground ourselves in God and let ourselves be carried by the current of God’s love, even when the water rises around us. Psalm 89 says, “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” That’s not the only time we are reminded in Scripture that God is the antidote to the storms that fill us with fear.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we see the disciples in a boat “being swamped by the waves” as Jesus sleeps. In their fear, they wake him, and he says, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” (Mt 8:26) Then he rebukes the wind and calms the sea.

We, too, are often people of “little faith,” when we find ourselves riding a wave or navigating a storm. We cling to our proverbial boat for dear life, filled with fear and anxiety, wondering why God is seemingly asleep and unaware of our struggles. We send up frantic prayers to heaven as we tread spiritual water. When the seas of our life eventually calm, however — usually without the drama witnessed by the disciples in the Gospel — we are often quick to dismiss the calm as life-as-usual, or maybe we don’t even bother to notice the calm at all. We’ve moved on to the next crisis, the next wave on the horizon.

The artist Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, Theo, summed up the ocean-life metaphor beautifully. “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too,” he wrote. We tend to focus all our energy on the storms — past, present and possible at some later date — and we often avoid the depths out of fear of what we might find there. As a result, we can miss the “pearls” hidden in plain sight, those glimpses of the sacred swirling amid the flotsam and jetsam of our lives.

Our challenge then is to paddle through our days knowing that, as Thomas Merton wrote, “God rises up out of the sea like a treasure in the waves.” We are not alone as we attempt to navigate the waters of our life. We are submerged in an ocean of mercy and love, one that carries us ever forward, and rises up to meet us, offering us the promises that shimmer like pearls.

This column first appeared in the August 28, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.

The post Learning to ride the waves appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

My annual tribute to the baby I lost 27 years ago today, the baby I call Grace:

For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 27 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.

With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.

When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was okay after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.

With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I race through my life at breakneck speed, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos, a space reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.

In the past, I have talked about the ways Grace shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence, and that truth remains with me. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.

So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.

The post Miscarriage: love and loss 27 years later appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

I have been blessed to go on numerous visits to the beautiful city of Rome, and each time I visited, I ran the gauntlet of typical tourist and pilgrim attractions in an effort to expand my understanding of the city and the people and to grow in my commitment to the faith. And yet, I never made my way to the Holy Stairs, known as “La Scala Santa,” which are said to be the very stairs Jesus climbed when he went before Pontius Pilate and was sentenced to death. It is believed that St. Helena (Constantine’s mother) brought the stairs from Jerusalem to Rome in 326.

Despite my deep and abiding faith, something in me prickled when I tried to convince myself that this could be the real deal. I couldn’t bring myself to go, that is until my most recent — and fifth — visit to the Eternal City. The Holy Stairs were on the itinerary of the pilgrimage I was leading through Italy. When we arrived at the site, I fully intended to stand by and let the other pilgrims proceed, and then my husband, Dennis, volunteered to go first when no one else stepped forward. I immediately joined him, as did our son, Noah.

It is customary to climb the 28 steps on your knees while praying, which is what we did. As the three of us began, all on the same step as we inched our way up, I prayed for all those intentions I had brought with me from people back home and for my family and friends. As we continued, sometimes waiting for those ahead who were having more difficulty navigating the ascent, I began expanding my prayers to include all those who were before and behind me on the stairs, and finally, as my knees started to ache and I felt a twinge in my back, my prayers seemed to encompass the whole world, and there was a feeling of incredible love for all those on the stairs with me. It was for me a version of what Trappist monk Tho­mas Merton described in his “Fourth and Walnut moment,” when he stood on a street corner in Kentucky and saw those around him shining like the sun.

I was deeply moved, not because I suddenly believed without a doubt in the veracity of the claim that the stairs are the stairs, but because none of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that we climbed those stairs out of faith, bound together by a common purpose with our interior prayers swirling around the silence.

That night, as our pilgrimage group gathered for dinner, we began talking about our favorite parts of the day, which, as you might expect on a pilgrimage through Italy, was jam-packed with important spiritual sites. I was so happy to hear numerous people say that the Holy Stairs were the highlight. And that is the blessing and beauty of pilgrimage.

We often think we understand the meaning of the word “pilgrimage,” until we find ourselves in the midst of an actual pilgrim journey with things not going exactly as planned, or on a staircase we had no intention of climbing and discover transcendence and transformation where we least expect it. That is often the case when we are willing to embrace the journey before us rather than the image we’ve created in our minds. To be a pilgrim is not to sit in a café and sip espresso, although that’s lovely; it is to walk the path of those who came before us in hopes that as we do so we will be changed.

Author Mark Nepo writes: “To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.”

We do not have to travel far to take up the pilgrim journey. Our very lives can become a pilgrimage, if we can, as St. Catherine of Siena said, recognize that “all the way to heaven is heaven.” God is in our every breath, our every step. All that’s required is our attention and intention.

Mary DeTurris Poust is leading two September retreats in the region: Stillpoint at Pyramid Life Center on Sept. 5-7, and The Journey Is the Goal at Graymoor Retreat Center on Sept. 19-21. For more information, click HERE.

This column originally appeared in the July 24, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.

The post Staircase to heaven appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

This Soul Seeing essay originally ran in the July 5, 2025, issue of the National Catholic Reporter:

As I drove down the New York State Thruway, headed toward what promised to be an inspiring event on the legacy of Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating and the Centering Prayer movement, I was anything but centered or prayerful.

The state of the world and the state of my own interior life felt chaotic, divided, depressing. Despite the welcome sunshine after a stretch of gray upstate weather, I felt smothered in a blanket of melancholy verging on hopelessness. Why am I even going to this event? I wondered as the miles passed by and I listened to Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart audiobook in an attempt to get my head into the “right” place.

When I pulled up to the Garrison Institute, a former Capuchin Seminary on the banks of the Hudson River, I felt my shoulders relax away from my ears and my breath deepen as the reality of spending the next 36 hours steeped in spiritual riches loosened the grip of darkness and anxiety.

As I unpacked my bags, I could feel a sacred energy moving about the place, a sense that spiritual seekers were beginning to amass, bringing not only their travel essentials but a hunger for the holy. When I settled into contemplation in my room, I moved so quickly and deeply into prayer that I knew it wasn’t anything I had done, but rather the collective of this group and its intention.

Over the course of the next day and a half, I met people from around the world who had traveled long distances to be part of the experience. As I talked with a woman from Montreal and a Methodist minister from Memphis, I began to feel the division of our outside world give way to a melting pot of religions and beliefs, practices and personalities. Finally, Cynthia Bourgeault made her way to the stage. Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, author and the definitive living voice on Centering Prayer, called us to begin the symposium in the only way that made sense: in silence.

“Uncross yourselves,” she said, in reference to the practice of sitting with feet uncrossed and planted firmly on the ground and arms uncrossed and resting gently in the lap. “Unless you are Buddhist, then cross yourself any way you’d like,” she added, smiling. “And if you’re Catholic, cross yourself the usual way.” And so began our first session of communal contemplative prayer, with laughter and lightness and a sense of joy.

The event brought together people of all faiths and no particular faith. We heard from a Buddhist monk who was close friends with Keating and from a Catholic monk who led us in song and reminded us that the deep work of contemplative prayer can lead to new solutions to old problems. We heard from physicists who talked about quantum entanglement and from family members who shared personal stories of Keating’s journey. It was a beautiful display of our common bonds rather than our theological differences. No one talked about dogma; no one was there to convert. Rather, everyone was there to celebrate our shared spiritual journey, one that leads us ever closer to the Creator who loves each one of us without limit or condition.

As the group closed out the day chanting kyrie elesion a capella and with harmonies, there was a powerful feeling of the Spirit moving among us, binding us to God, to each other and to the larger world. I left there feeling hopeful about the world for the first time in months, not because anything major had changed — in fact it had only declined further — but because I had seen in this group of seekers the unitive spirit of faith, hope and love.

Driving back north, I felt carried by the chants and prayers, the mealtime conversations and powerful presentations. I was stunned by how my inner view of the outer world could be transformed so quickly and completely (at least for a time) by the shared practice of contemplation and community.

When I returned home, I told my husband, Dennis, that I wanted to start a Centering Prayer group at our parish. He was surprised at first. After all, contemplation is a solitary, silent practice, so why drive across town and plan a gathering when I could just pad upstairs to my personal prayer space? But bringing together contemplatives to pray in silent community offers not only encouragement to individuals but fosters the beautiful spiritual energy that arises when two or three are gathered in God’s name. In much the same way that those who pray the rosary privately benefit from joining others in the communal praying of that beloved devotion.

Months later, I still come back to the lessons I took home from that day on the Hudson River: a hunger for a community, a place where silence moves like a spiritual stream flowing between us and out into the world, a place where division gives way to harmony, and practice leads us ever closer to presence.

Link to NCR Soul Seeing essay

The post The gift of centering prayer: finding unity through silence appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, our home was adorned with a large portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The same one hung in my grandmother’s home. Back in the day it was ubiquitous in Catholic homes, and as a kid it seemed as though Jesus’ eyes followed you wherever you went. Once I moved away, however, the Sacred Heart image and devotion was left in my rearview mirror, along with most of my childhood belongings. That is, until recently.

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.

The post Sacred Heart and the path of love appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Happy Feast of St. Joan of Arc!

When I was in a difficult stretch a few years back, Joan of Arc became my guide and inspiration. I had the image you see here hanging on the door of my former office (now in my home office). I had a statue of her leading the battle charge on my office table (now in my living room). I have socks with her image on them. I have a t-shirt with her image and her famous statement: “I am not afraid; I was born for this.” And I have begun making my own mixed-media interpretations of her in a series I call Joan of Art. (See two images below)

Let us not forget how Joan was treated during her lifetime — accused of witchcraft, heresy, cross-dressing, and more, and eventually burned at the stake. Now the Church celebrates her as a hero and a saint. No matter how she was treated, no matter how many threats, she never wavered in what she believed was her calling. May Joan of Arc inspire us to live out our purpose on this earth, even when others doubt or challenge us. Even when our own Church doubts or challenges us. Who is God calling you to be? Do that, and do not be afraid.

Joan of Art 1 

Joan of Art 2

Mixed media images by Mary DeTurris Poust (do not reproduce)

The post Remembering Joan of Arc appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Every woman should watch this. And maybe every man as well. I’ve been a fan of Andie MacDowell since the 1980s, when I carried a magazine picture of her in my wallet to show hair stylists how I wanted my hair to look. (True story.) Now I pull out my phone and do the same. My goal is for my hair to look like hers. Alas, my gray is slow to come in. My stylist tells me it’s because I’m a natural-born red head and we gray at a slower pace. It’s been 10+ years without putting a drop of color in my hair and I’m finally getting a significant amount of gray, but I want more. Soon, soon. Embrace the beauty of older age. Don’t listen to the anti-aging BS. Be you and be beautiful!

The post Life in My 60s: Be you and be beautiful! appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.