To the Heights: The Creative Process Behind Ascension's New Daily Prayer Companion

A. Cahill (00:10.414) Hello and welcome back to the Creative Catholics, a podcast on creativity, faith, and the hidden life. I'm your host, Alex Cahill. Before we begin, I do want to thank, as always, Marie Miller for letting us use her wonderful music for the intro and outro. You can find Marie's songs on any streaming platform, but you can also check out her website at Marie Miller Music.com. So today I am really excited to share with you a new sponsorship that the podcast has gotten, it's all to the goodness of God. So when I started this podcast, to be honest, I wasn't really quite sure where it was going to go. But a few weeks ago, actually Ascension reached out to me and they wanted to offer a sponsorship about their new daily prayer companion, which is called Alto. And I read up on it and I was talking to different people at Ascension about it. And it just really, really felt like the right fit for this podcast. Because as you know, this podcast is all meant to bring us closer to God. That is the whole point of our faith, of our life, but also of this podcast. And we look at it through the lens of creativity. But to have a sponsor that is also promoting us to grow closer to God and to to ascend to our holiness, it just seemed really, really fitting. To partner with Ascension on this and to talk to you guys about their new daily prayer companion. So I had the wonderful privilege of actually interviewing Haydley Thomas from Ascension. And she's one of the key makers in this new daily prayer companion. And I really want to talk to her about the creative process behind Alto. You know, where why do they feel the need to create it? All these sorts of things. Because I think. you and I were really, really interested in the creative processes, in how God really wants to communicate with us and work through us in so many different mediums. And so I sat down with Hadley and we talked about also we talked about its creation, the meaning behind the name. A. Cahill (02:14.316) what you can expect in Alto. And it's really, really just an absolutely wonderful tool. I got mine the other day. So it just first started in October. So this month of twenty twenty six. And it's a brand new daily prayer companion. And what I love, love, love about it is that it is print. So it is a print subscription. You know, you see kind of all these mail clubs and things popping up all over the place. And it inspires your creativity, doesn't it, to get Paper in the mail, right? And not a bill, obviously, but you know, paper that you can flick through and you can be like, wow, I'm gonna read this or I'm gonna look at these pictures. But to get something in the post and to have something tangible in your hands, I think really takes us back to a basic need as humans of just connecting with other people in tangible ways. The size of it is extremely small. You can put it into your backpack, you can put it into your purse. But it has all of the daily prayers that I use and actually some that I don't that I've actually started incorporating in my daily prayer life. And I just really, really love Auto for that reason. So Ascensions also will be sponsoring the rest of these episodes for season one. I'm so excited about it. There is a link if you want to check out Auto for yourself in the bio, in the show notes, in the description for this podcast. You can also use the code CREATIVE10. For 10% off of your subscription as well. And it makes it extremely affordable every month, but just keeps you kind of in check, if you will, with your daily prayer. so let's talk about the creative process behind Alto with Hadley Thomas. Hadley, thank you so much for joining me today on the Creative Catholics. It's great to have you here. Hadleigh Thomas (03:56.408) Thank you so much, Alex. I'm happy to be here. A. Cahill (03:58.828) I'm really, really excited to talk about Alto today and talk about how it came to be and what it offers readers and everything. So, what is Alto? Hadleigh Thomas (04:07.926) Yeah. Alto is a monthly new prayer companion from Ascension. So it's delivered, you you subscribe annually, it's delivered right to your door each month. And our hope is that it has pretty much everything you need for consistent daily prayer. so it has the mass readings, it has liturgy of the hours, morning and night prayer, it has reflections, articles, different things like that, saint features every day. A monthly novena. So there's a lot of things jam packed, but really our hope is just that readers can have everything they need for daily prayer right at their right at their fingertips. Just open it and pray. Can you A. Cahill (04:42.574) Just give us a quick rundown quick about how it came to be. What was the creative kind of innovation around it and creative process around it? Hadleigh Thomas (04:48.994) Yeah. that's such a big question. So it had been floating around in a few people's minds at Ascension for for quite a long time, several years, I think at least. And then it was kind of just presented to me as just something we wanted to get done in the more immediate future. So really it I think it just kind of made sense was really the biggest thing. as kind of the the impetus behind it because as Ascension, one of the really cool things about working for Ascension as a faith formation company is that there's just so much going on in so many different areas of the company. We have units that produce Bible studies. We have units that produce faith formation programs. We have units that are constantly churning out blog articles and saint features and YouTube videos and books, like we kind of we have a lot going on. And it's it's really beautiful to be a part of and just to see how how many talented people work on different things. So I think it kind of just made sense that we were like, there's so many different things going on at this company. And if we combined a lot of them, it's similar to when we started the Ascension app a few years ago, it just kind of made sense. We have this really cool Bible offering that so many people say changes the way that they view scripture using the Great Adventure program and all of that and the Bible timeline. So we like we have these offerings kind of as like individual piecemeal things. And if someone could just sit down and kind of Combine all of it. We have the mass readings in our app and we're so blessed to be producing the new liturgy, the hours translation. And you know, we have all these different authors that we work with and book excerpts and Bible studies. Why don't we combine all of this into something that is really user-friendly? I think especially the experience of producing Bible in a year. I wasn't on that team, but as a whole company, we kind of rallied around this offering that people love the idea of kind of overcoming. Hadleigh Thomas (06:36.402) a a hurdle in their faith, like I don't understand the Bible the way that I know that I want to, the way that I know that I should. And having a really easy offering and an easy way to do that where you just press play every day. And that's all you have to do. So we kind of, yeah, we we ended up with Alto. And it's kind of a similar thing where hopefully most of what you want for your daily prayer routine is just at your fingertips. And again, A. Cahill (06:58.926) Absolutely love Cause like when I was looking through it, it just seems like there's everything you could need kind of in a daily prayer, in the sense of like readings and things like that. Because obviously everyone has different prayer lives, prayer routines, but kind of starting your day. For me, anyways, it was very much kind of like a starting your day. Here's the readings of the day. What does Altok include? Hadleigh Thomas (07:17.398) Yeah. So in the day-to-day, we call it like our daily devotions section. It's typically five different sections. So every day includes morning prayer or lauds from Liturgy of the Hours, and that's full, unabridged, official liturgy of the hours. Every day also includes the mass readings as well as the extra prayers and antiphons, the collect, prayer over the offerings, things like that. So lauds, mass readings. Every day has a like a brief one page reflection that kind of dives deeper into the liturgical season or maybe the feast day of the day or the mass readings. In most cases, it'll kind of elaborate on the mass readings. Then we have a saint feature. So a cool saint to be inspired by and to learn more about their life. And then we round out the day with compliant or night prayer. again, full unabridged liturgy of the hours at the end. So those are the five sections that appear every day. And then beyond that, we have tons of supplemental stuff that kind of appears maybe once a month or sometimes throughout the month, every month includes a novena right in those daily devotions. So you it's very easy not to miss your novena days because it's literally like right there. Day one, let's go. Here we are. So easy to fall off the novena bandwagon like you do what day one, day two, and then day three, and it's over. Yeah. I feel like that's like one of the most universal Catholic experiences. Yeah. But hope our hope is to like try to make that again just kind of plug and play. Like you open it, you're doing the Christ the King Novena, and it's there for you. So those are the five things that we have every day. And then there's tons of different articles, studies, book excerpts, and things baked throughout. A. Cahill (08:56.078) I loved that you were saying that too about the novenas because I am always that person that like we get to the feast day and I'm like, I should have started the novena nine days ago. And I'm so I definitely am the person that starts the novena on the feast day, not ending on the Okay. And how would you consider that it's different from other prayer periodicals that are that are offered or out there? Hadleigh Thomas (09:03.574) exactly. Hadleigh Thomas (09:08.945) I say you know that's a Hadleigh Thomas (09:16.556) Yeah, I think there's beautiful other offerings out there. It boils down to like a list of differences and I'll get into some of them. But really at the end of the day, I think some of these speak more to some people and some of them speak more to other people. So one huge difference that we are really, really blessed and try to highlight a lot is Alto is the only periodical to combine the daily mass readings and official liturgy of the hours. So that is one really big difference that I think a lot of people From, you know, from what we've been hearing from our customers, a lot of people really are enjoying is this idea of having Liturgy of the Hours completely laid out, no flipping, no phones, none of that, no confusion. It's just laid out for you there day by day. It's it's baked in with daily mass readings and reflections and things. So that's one of the biggest differences, I would say. And then A lot of it is just maybe littler spins. So we love kind of having the ascension spin on different things. So almost every Sunday the reflection is from Father Mike Schmidt's. We we take his homilies and we we adapt them into like a short one page reflection. so we take a 20 minute homily and we kind of make it a bite-sized reflection for Alto. We are the only periodical that features Father Mike's homilies, so that's almost every single Sunday. We also have Liturgical Living. So if anyone knows Kendra Tierney Norton, she is fantastic. And she writes liturgical living for us for Alto. So every single month there's like an opening letter from her and she just dives into kind of themes that arise that month in the liturgy and what liturgical seasons, you know, if Advent's coming up or some feast days that are coming up. And then for three different days throughout the month, every month she picks three feast days to encourage readers in like specific ways to celebrate. So like our October issue is the one I'm holding right now. And we have the three feast days are Friday the second, the Holy Guardian Angels, Our Lady of the Rosary, and then Saint John Paul II towards the end of the month. And for each of those days, she really elaborates, it's like a one or two pages in alto that she says, like, here are some prayers that you can pray. Here's an activity that you can do. Hadleigh Thomas (11:24.066) A lot of times these are really family-friendly activities, but they're also things that you could do with with different ages and like everyone can do that. They're beautiful activities. So prayers and meal ideas if you want to incorporate liturgical living into your meal planning. So yeah, liturgical living is another cool thing. We're also the only periodical course to feature. We're doing like miniaturized versions of Ascension Bible studies every month. So every issue has like a little mini study. So it's four little sessions. It's not a ton of homework or anything. It's just enough to like dip your toes in throughout the month. You could meet with a small group and do it together, or you could just kind of pray through it four different days of the month on your own and dive into a book of the Bible or, you know, a theme that's arising with the daily readings or something like that. So there's probably more that I'm forgetting, but those are the ones that are top of mind. A. Cahill (12:11.938) That's amazing. And I love too, you mentioned as well that obviously people getting off their phones and doing it because obviously it's a print it's a print version as well, which I think so many people are trying to kind of get back to. It feels like there's kind of been this turn to kind of analog and print and things like that. Can people, you know, bundle the auto subscription with the Ascension app for a discount or something? Hadleigh Thomas (12:32.268) Yes. yeah. So we have we have a discount right now. So anyone who is a premium annual app subscriber gets I think it's a thirty-two percent discount on Alto. It's a pretty good deal. My mom signed up for it actually. my mom was like, I want to sign up for Alto. And I was like, This is actually a pretty good deal. You should sign up this way. So so yeah, if you're if you're a premium annual app subscriber, then you can get alto for a very big A. Cahill (12:56.846) discount. So when can people kind of expect the next month's one kind of arriving in their in their mailbox? Hadleigh Thomas (13:01.806) Yeah, I feel like people are pretty used to this with maybe magazines or other periodicals that they subscribe to. the lead time is pretty, pretty intense with the printer. So we have to send over our lists and get everything in the mail, and we don't want things to be late. So typically it's about like six to eight weeks after you subscribe. It kind of depends when, when in the month. you end up subscribing. But so right now, if people signed up, you would be getting the December issue, which will be a great one. There's a lot of like advent content in there and lots of good stuff from Father Mike on advent. So yeah, there's a lot of a it's a longer lead time, but that just means go check it out right now. Tell A. Cahill (13:40.366) Just a little bit about the naming of it quick before we go into our last question. Hadleigh Thomas (13:43.022) Yes, yeah. We threw around tons of different names. It's it's hard to name things like this. It's it's so hard to name Catholic things. But ultimately we were really inspired by St. Pierre Giorgio Fersati and his motto, Versalil Alto, or to the Heights. And we just really loved this idea of going to the heights of holiness together as a church and really trying to do it like one day at a time and making it as user-friendly and simple and beautiful that as you can. So Our tagline on the back of a lot of the books is to the heights of holiness one day at a time. and that's really the motto that we kind of approach Alto with. And, you know, as we produce every single piece of content, as we write and commission and edit all of these reflections, that's kind of what we have in mind is pursuing the heights of holiness, you know, how we can help our readers pursue the heights of holiness. But do it in a bite-sized, easy to implement in your crazy day, one day at a time. A. Cahill (14:36.406) So I it's so complimentary as well to to Ascension as well as a name, isn't it? Because obviously ascension, ascending to the heights, like all these sorts of things. So yeah, it's so lovely. Exactly. Yeah. And they're I mean, even like the logo and everything, very like, let's ascend. Yeah. So what do you hope people get out of Alto by sending it out and you know reading it every month? What what is what are you personally, but also Ascension as a whole? What are we hoping to get out? Hadleigh Thomas (14:44.494) Lots of mountain imagery. Hadleigh Thomas (15:00.342) of it. I feel like I'm piggybacking off of the answer to the like what's behind the name question. But I mean, really with everything we do, like the hope is that we can help help our readers and you know, our listeners and all of that with everything Ascension does, help everyone become saints and really just inspire them to grow closer to the Lord in, you know, whatever medium that is, whether it's a YouTube video, whether it's a homily from Father Mike, whether it's a Bible study, whether it's reading Alto. so that's kind of always just always top of mind. For us and we try to really incorporate that and pray for our customers as much as we can remember to and really make sure that that's the goal. That's always the goal. We want to create quality products that lead people to Christ and help them make it to heaven and be saints and really change the world for Christ. So so that's the goal is just helping people to pursue the heights of holiness. And and then I would say kind of additionally for Alto specifically, it's meant to be a day-by-day companion. It's meant to accompany us. throughout the craziness of day-to-day life, whether that's, you know, little kids or a student who has like tons of classes and tons of obligations, or you know, people with a lot of family obligations. Everyone's lives are really busy and and that's a good, beautiful thing. It's it's great that our lives are full. But sometimes it really is just hard to fit prayer in. Sometimes it's really hard to, you know, maybe you want to get into liturgy of the hours. That's something you like feel called or inspired to begin praying more. But it's really hard to just get over that learning curve of the ribbons and the page flipping. Maybe you want to pray the daily mass readings and you do it on your phone, but you always end up getting distracted by a text and the meditation part of it is is not really there or something like that. Or even just, you know, the daily reflections. So many like how many times? I'm sure you and I have this experience too, Alex. Like how many times you show up to Mass and you're like, that was a really good parable in the gospel, but what on earth? Yeah. like what am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to apply this to my life? So that's really where we really thought through so many potential components that we could put in alto, and that's kind of where we landed on the five that I mentioned earlier of morning prayer and night prayer from Liturgy the Hours, the mass readings and prayers, and then a daily saint and a daily reflection is really each of those features is kind of just meant to really make it easy to just open the book and pray. Hadleigh Thomas (17:22.561) really removing any unnecessary friction so that hopefully readers can just boom pray. That's the goal. So you don't feel like you have to like set up a bunch of books or you don't feel like you have to have like a fully stocked library of biblical commentary to be able to understand the daily master readings, which is beautiful. And I love I love how, you know, so many people can do that and that's great. But it's right there for you. And in the midst of the busy day today, it's easy to just open and pray. It's A. Cahill (17:51.182) Also, I was just thinking about this 'cause we're we're traveling very soon and I was just thinking actually it's gonna be so easy for travel. I don't have to take six, seven books. I can just take the one, you know. And I think that's I mean that's a beautiful thing as well because I think travel At least for me, I don't know if you have the same experience, but when I travel, my prayer life gets kind of thrown all over the place. Like especially if I'm traveling internationally. You kind of what what you do in the morning, you forget to do it in the morning 'cause it's not morning time in your body and all these sorts of things. Whereas now that you have just a book that you take with you, you're you know, a a magaz would you call it a magazine periodical, I guess. Hadleigh Thomas (18:21.612) Yeah, periodical book. It's not a booklet. It's like five hundred pages. I feel like it's most tempting I'm always most tempted to call it a booklet and then I'm like, It's like a hundred pages. This is this is not a booklet. But yes, book book period. A. Cahill (18:35.79) Exactly. But it's nice that it's just that one that you have to take, which is so nice for travel and things like that as well, which I think is amazing. Hadleigh Thomas (18:43.63) But yeah. Yeah, we worked really hard to to make it to make the content good for travel, first of all, but then also to make kind of the the specs and the materials and such good for travel. So many sampled so many different papers to try to get a paper that that was thin enough. to, you know, not result in like a huge, heavy book that you could barely open. So like I said, it's 500 pages, but it is it's not very thick at all. It's like under three quarters of an inch in the spine. So it's nice. It'll fit right in your if you have really large pockets on like a big winter coat, maybe it'll fit in your pocket, but it'll definitely fit in, you know, your purse or your backpack or something. It's really helpful for travel too. A. Cahill (19:23.338) Yes, super, super helpful. And also, I mean, helpful for like just if you want to take it to church for adoration or something. And it's all there and you don't have to bring all these books again. So I I'm w definitely one of those people that has like twelve books with me all the time. So this is actually very it's very appealing to me that it has Hadleigh Thomas (19:37.548) Maybe maybe you'll go down to like nine books. A. Cahill (19:40.438) Yeah, I might. I might. We'll see. Like I might just take some extras just because like I feel very like my my arms are like not full enough. But no, awesome. Awesome. Happy. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really, really appreciate it. Hadleigh Thomas (19:52.64) Yeah, thank you, Alex. It was great to chat. A. Cahill (19:54.732) And thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you are as enthusiastic about this as I am. Just anything that can kind of strengthen and flourish our daily prayer, I just think is such are such wonderful tools for us to have, both as Catholics and as creatives to feed our creative soul and our connection with our creative God. so again if you are interested, the link is in the bio, it's in the show notes, it's in description. But you can also then use CREATIVE10 to get 10% off. Until next time, stay creative and keep making what matters most.