Pádraig Ó Tuama

Kate Bowler: What does it mean to live alongside people you don’t agree with? This is Everything Happens and I’m Kate Bowler. Living with difference feels harder than ever, doesn’t it? To stay in the room with people we don’t understand or don’t want to. To choose curiosity over certainty. And yet, there are people who have spent their whole lives learning how to do this work. People like poet, theologian and conflict mediator Pádraig Ó Tuama. He’s from Ireland, where his experience of belonging always felt complicated. He was born in County Cork, which is in the Republic of Ireland, but as an adult he moved to Belfast, which is in Northern Ireland. And just to give you a bit of a refresher on the history of this region, there was a very long violent conflict between neighbors and family members, between Protestants and Catholics that still lingers in living memory. At its core was whether or not Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or part of the country of Ireland. And even after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 struck a careful peace, the work of reconciliation is truly never over. Pádraig has spent years helping people talk across divides. He believes that language, when used well, can build a bridge where there was once only a wall. If you’re walking with us through this season of lent, you might find that this is the exact right time to have this conversation about careful peacemaking. And if you aren’t doing lent with us, it’s not too late to join in. Get your free daily reflections at katebowler.com/lent. Okay, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama. When you describe where you’re from, someone who isn’t Irish probably would only see like the neat grid from above and the cleanness of the way I would like to be able to ask you about Ireland, but for someone who doesn’t know any single thing, give me a little sense of like the different, I guess just like how complicated belonging is where you’re from?

Pádraig Ó Tuama: Well, I mean, the complication of belonging shows up in many different ways, in many different places. So I don’t know that we’re unique in having those complications, but maybe the way that it shows up is unique. So Ireland, a small island country in Western Europe with a beautiful old language. It’s one of the three Gaelic languages, which is a further subset of the Celtic languages. Yeah, we are near, near neighbors to Britain. And so for the last 800 years there’s been the presence of British power in Ireland. And so there’s been this tussle back and forth regarding the question of sovereignty. And in the last 100 years, Ireland was partitioned into these two jurisdictions, Republic of Ireland, which is an independent European Union republic now and then Northern Ireland, which is considered to be part of the United Kingdom. I mean, I’m an Irish nationalist in the sense of that I hope for reunification someday, but I hope for that in a way that is safe for all. There was a long standing war and paramilitary violence and terrorism and all kinds of policies and prejudices that occurred regarding in this new jurisdiction that was created in the North about British power and Irish power, and that got reduced to the manifestation of Catholics and Protestants, which has very, very little to do with what people believe about Mary or Purgatory or the Eucharist or any of those things. Really, it was speaking about whether you think that this new jurisdiction of, of Northern Ireland was and should remain British or was and should be reunited with Ireland with, you know, the Republic of Ireland politically. And so that has caused enormous amounts of skirmish and paramilitary violence and the presence of British troops and people saying, well, you’re a terrorist, you know, you’re an occupying force. We’re freedom fighters. All of the things that you find manifested in so many post-colonial places. And within the context of that, there’s an enormous question as to in a small population where there was a lot of murder and then there was an enormous amount of bereavement and injury, how is it that we find a way to share a small space where mostly everybody knows somebody that knows somebody else, you know, and therefore we’re intrinsically linked? There isn’t a lot of space to be able to spread out. Some British families have been there for 300 years and they’ll still say they’re British. They wouldn’t say, oh no, we’re Irish in Ireland, they might say, no, we’re British in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. And so you’ve got multiple forms of belonging happening in the same place. And one of the things about belonging, I think, especially in a place where there’s been so much grief is that you’re trying to look for a way in which you can find belonging in the shared experience of saying, we have multiple belongings here. And, you know, jurisdiction, names and affiliations may or may not change according to Democratic votes, but what we hope is that we don’t have a return to abject violence and murder and the grief that comes from that and bereavement and injury and that I think, that kind of resolution, we’ve had a peace agreement since 1998, I think that it’s fragile and it’s growing, and peace agreements take a long time to work into, you know, but that I think, too, provides a sense of belonging.

Kate: Wow. That’s been your whole lifetime then. I mean, I’m guessing your 40, late 40s.

Pádraig: I’m 49. Yeah, I was born in 75.

Kate: So, watching this, participating in what it means to experience togetherness probably has been your whole…

Pádraig: Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in Cork in the very south coast. So in some ways that felt very far away from what was happening in the north. There was never any question of bombs happening in our city, you know. So in that way I was very far from that. But being an Irish speaker and in Ireland, where the question of English was there, I never felt far away from the the relationship of Irishness to Britishness. So I moved to Belfast when I was in my late 20s, been doing cross-border experiences from 11 onwards, I’d been fascinated and curious and troubled and all of those things by what was happening at home.

Kate: And cross-border is between Ireland and Northern Ireland?

Pádraig: Between the Republic of Ireland and the North. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I can remember once being asked in an interview for being admitted to a student program as a teenager, what have your cross-cultural experiences been? And I said, I know a lot of people from Belfast and a lot of Protestants from Belfast. And I could see that the people who were interviewing me, who weren’t from Ireland, thought that was funny, to think, oh, how parochial. And on the one hand, I was embarrassed. But on the other hand, I thought actually the ways within which that shows up are significantly different. And it’s not only the difference, it’s that it’s difference about difference in the sense of that, as far as I’m concerned, some of these people who were friends, who I loved, but we don’t live in Ireland, we live in the United Kingdom. And I thought, actually, I think you live in Ireland. And that’s just across the border. And so it wasn’t just different about them, it was also different about where the hell are we and what do we call it? And who are the goodies and who are the baddies? And that that’s a confronting cultural difference. I still stand by what might have seemed like a naive response to a question that it was a huge deal for somebody of my age to have a whole bunch of Protestant friends from Belfast, and that enriched my life and changed my life and deepened my curiosity about what does it mean to have strong political opinions while being in relationship with people who represent a different, strong political opinion?

Kate: Oh my gosh, there’s such a lesson there for us now. I mean, some people don’t feel new to feeling divided from their neighbor and other people, this is probably a terrible introduction to learning for people who are new to practicing crossing divides. Maybe there are divides that were there before and they’re just now aware of them. What are some of the I don’t know, part of me wants to be like, give me a pep talk can we become better? Or can we change for the better in light of the fact that we now feel so fragile and divided?

Pádraig: In the United States? Yeah. I mean, I have some ideas, but I suppose I always think, and it’s important to know that, like, I’m from a different country, and what worked for us is not a template for anywhere else, you know? And so each community has its own deep, powerful wisdoms and survivals and practices. I think there in every American household, people are already practicing the kind of human relationships that will better our human relationships, you know? There’s the convenience of one side against another, but then you’re in your friendship circle, or you’re with your cousins and your uncles and aunties and parents at Thanksgiving, and you’re already even within what might seem to look like a group of similarity, you’re already demonstrating great subtlety for knowing how to listen, knowing how to reframe, knowing how to push back a bit. Knowing how to inquire.

Kate: Knowing when to stand in the bathroom alone.

Pádraig: Knowing how to avoid to you know and sometimes avoid because you think, oh, it’s just a bad time or this is going to be fruitless or this is going to upset them, and actually they’ve just been through a bereavement or something, you know, that so many of us already have these very, very useful tools for trying to figure out how to hold something together. And sometimes it’s a way of thinking, well, what would that look like in a public field? And, and it’s a matter of going what you already do, and how can you think about expanding the field of generosity within which you do that and not just believing the spin? I like to think that, like, peace isn’t a way of kind of going we all agree the same, we all think the same. Peace is the capacity to have serious, serious disagreement and even argument without recourse to threat and violence. And that’s what I work for in many years as a conflict mediator. And I begin also to address some of the dynamics of power. There’s a rare conflict, if ever, where 50% of power is with one group and 50% of power is with the other. Typically you’ll have 90% of the power with one group who will deny that they have 90% of the power, and you’ve got 10% of the power with another group who are aware that fundamentally they have to deal with the other groups certain experiences of fear that may not be justified by actual threat. And so you’re dealing therefore with how is it that you deal here? Often much more is asked from the group with much less power, in order for them to allay the fears of the group who already have much more power, and how to pay attention to the shifting dynamics of that. But sometimes I’m in the 10% group, you know, and plenty of times I’m in the 90% group. And trying to find the ways within which how do I feel like when I’m on the other side of that, how do I feel like when I’m the side of that and recognizing that there’s multiple shifting senses of belonging that I have and thinking, well, sometimes I’m the one who needs to dismantle my power. And other times, I’m the one who hopes that other people can dismantle theirs. And what do I expect of myself and how do I navigate it and not take it personally when somebody says to me, you’ve got a lot of power here? Rather than going, no, I don’t, I’m the victim, you go, oh yeah, I do. And that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to say or that I should be ashamed of myself. It just means I’ll pay attention to my power. I think these kinds of belongings and capacities for curiosity and care that we have, it’s possible, and the question is, is what’s it like to practice those in larger circles? And what’s it like to have structures of leadership where leaders are saying, let’s expand the circle? Well, we practice those kinds of radical forms of community engagement, challenge, disagreement, arguments without recourse to threat and violence. I think America is perfectly capable of that because people are already doing it. I think already in any group of people, you could say, what arguments are you working with in your community? And you could come up with, you’d see the harvest of such practiced wisdom in every community already.

Kate: Kind of reminds me of, I grew up among the Mennonites, and there’s just, there’s like kind of a, and I feel it sometimes when I say like, well, I’m a pacifist. We’re people who want to practice peace. But really, there’s such a hilarious, deep coercion of just deciding that the fight is going to be verbal, and sometimes it just means that nobody gets to take a bathroom break. We’re staying here until we’re having this horrible discussion. But it’s kind of, it’s not very glamorous like in practice.

Pádraig: No it’s not. Peace is tiring, exhausting. Yeah, and it takes a lot of time to work through the things to get to the final piece where you’re like look at that. Yeah. But it’s an interesting employment of time. Elizabeth Alexander had that great inaugural poem at one of Obama’s inaugurations, I always forget which one. Richard Blanco was one of the inaugural poets. Elizabeth Alexander was another. And she said, are we not of interest to one another?

Kate: Oh, that’s lovely.

Pádraig: And it’s a reminder and a call and it’s a declaration. And it’s also something of an imperative. Are we not, like she’s putting it there as well as, I think hoping for it to be true. It’s a very, very powerful phrase.

Kate: How interesting can we find each other? I really like that. Because it is such a great interpersonal, I don’t know, it’s one of the sort of like back pocket tricks that I have when I’m really mad at somebody is I try to find one thing that I remember being very hyper specifically into.

Pádraig: Yeah.

Kate: With like–

Pádraig: Anyone.

Kate: How can I drill down to the thing?

Pádraig: Yeah. I mean, like, I have these fantasy games whenever I’m on a bus, which is regularly like if this bus broke down and we’d all have to be stuck here for an hour, what question could we ask each other that would just make the hour pass quickly? You know, obviously people would get on their phones and write complaint letters and all of that and fine. Do what you need to do. But wouldn’t it be interesting to say, let’s have a group question?

Kate: You’re very good at group questions.

Pádraig: I love them.

Kate: What kind of questions would you ask people?

Pádraig: What’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to you? When do you feel most alive? If right now you were to tell the story of your life, what would the first sentence be?

Kate: Before we head into our first break, I want to take time to thank one of the sponsors of our show, the Cologuard test. As many of you know, colon cancer screening is a cause near and dear to my heart. Why, you may ask? Because as a colon cancer survivor myself, it has become my personal mission to get people screened. You might hear this and think, that’s awesome, but I’m 46, so I’ve got a few years. Well, please listen closer. The American Cancer Society recommends that everyone at average risk should begin screening at age 45. I myself was diagnosed at 35. So I’m now that girl shouting from the metaphorical podcast rooftops, have you gotten your colon cancer screening yet?! Look, I get it. I know a lot of people know colon cancer screening is important, but are filled with an immediate dread because they hear about it and think colon cancer screening equals colonoscopy, equals a full day of drinking prep liquid and fasting, which equals time off work, and then an invasive procedure and then a whole bunch of other unpleasant stuff. Okay, that is fair. But what if I told you there was another screening option, the Cologuard test? The Cologuard test provides a one of a kind approach to managing your colon cancer screening comfortably at home, on your own schedule, without the preparation required for a standard colonoscopy. Let me say that again. This test is delivered right to your door. Then you simply collect a sample and ship back to the lab for testing. It’s the only FDA approved noninvasive option that looks for both altered DNA and blood in your stool. And in addition to its convenience, Cologuard is also affordable. Most insured patients find they pay nothing out of pocket. I know the instinct is always, always to think I’m fine, I have more time, I feel great. But many individuals with early stage colon cancer don’t show any symptoms at all, and are only diagnosed through routine screening. Early detection is key. So I’m asking you, in this year of 2025, to refuse to let your health take a backseat. It’s time to put your health first. It’s time to make a plan. So if you’re 45 or older and at average risk, you can also request a Cologuard prescription today at cologuard.com/podcast. The Cologuard test is intended to screen adults 45 and older at average risk for colorectal cancer. Do not use a cologuard test if you have had adenomas, have inflammatory bowel disease and certain hereditary syndromes, or a personal or family history of colorectal cancer. The Cologuard test is not a replacement for colonoscopy in high risk patients. Cologuard test performance in adults ages 45 to 49 is estimated based on a large clinical study of patients 50 and older. False positives and false negatives can occur. Cologuard is available by prescription only.

Kate: You’ve really known insider and outsiderness in all kinds of ways. Catholic and charismatic, being gay in a overwhelmingly straight very often wounding church culture.

Pádraig: Yeah.

Kate: Understanding the colonial dynamics of the world that you grew up in. Do you think sometimes for people who feel they’re, I don’t know if loneliness is the right word, but like, belonging is such a through line in your work and your desire for people to find those points of connection. I kind of wondered, actually, can I make you read something that I really love? I wonder if you could read your…

Pádraig: Oh. This one. It’s been quite a while since I read this one.

Kate: Really? Tell me about it.

Pádraig: Well, I mean, I’m very interested in form. I’m always interested in form. Formalism in poetry and formalism in language. I was interested in, in these questions of like, in the name of the father, son and the Holy Spirit. And then I was also interested when people would say something like, say something terrible had happened in Ireland, so some horrific act of, of hatred or something, and people would say, not in our name. And I liked the sentiment of that. But I also think sometimes when you say that, you go, what? No, it has happened. I hear you want to distance yourself from it. But sometimes saying that something isn’t in your name is actually a denial of the fact that it has happened in your name, whether you like it or not. I’m fascinated by belonging. I’m drawn to it, but also repelled by it, because we can do terrible things in the name of belonging. Almost every person I’ve met who’s been recruited into a paramilitary group has been recruited in because of a sense of a promise of belonging, and some of the practices of belonging in groups of violence are very, very powerful. And you can feel like I’m with my brothers. And they go, yeah. And what’s the cost? Maybe not to you, but certainly to other people. But the cost can be high in many of these ways. And that doesn’t mean we should abandon belonging. So that was all part of trying to think in this poem about belonging.

Kate: Tell me the name of it again.

Pádraig: It’s called in the name. In the name of goodness, of love and a broken community. In the name of meaning, of feeling and I hope you don’t screw me. In the name of darkness and light and ungraspable Twilight. In the name of mealtimes and sharing and caring by fire lighf. In the name of action, of peace and human redemption. In the name of eating, of drinking and table confession. In the name of sadness, regret and holy obsession, the holy name of anger, the spirit of aggression. In the name of forgive and forget and I hope I get over this. In the name of father and son and unholy spirits. In the name of beauty, in broken and beaten up daily. In the name of seeing our creeds and believing in maybe. We gather here a room full of strangers, and speak of our hope land and talk of our danger. To make sense of our thinking, to authenticate lives, to humanize feeling and stop telling lies. In the name of philosophy, of theology, and who gives a damn. In the name of employment and study and finding new families. In the name of our passions, our lovings and indecent obsessions. In the name of prayer, of worship and demon possession. In the name of solitude, quiet and holy reflection, the lost, the lonely, the without direction, the early, the late, and the holy ineffectual, the straight, the queer, transgender and Bisexual. In the name of boot clogs and boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, schizophrenia, hysteria and obsessive compulsion. In the name of Jesus and Mary and the mostly silent Joseph. In the name of speaking to ourselves, saying, this is more than I can cope with. In the name of touch up and break up and break down and weeping. In the name of therapy and Prozac and full hearted breathing. In the name of sadness and madness and years since I’ve smiled. In the name of the unknown, the alien and the holy and exile. In the name of the named and the unnamed and the names of the names. In the names of the prayers that repeat I wish that I could change this. In the name of goodness and kindness and intentionality. In the name of harbor and shelter and family.

Kate: Alright. Oh, it’s so beautiful. Like, what a mess we make of all of this, like misfired love, you know? Or hope. And it’s so beautiful. How are we supposed to pray given, I mean, I love this prayer because it’s got such a deep. I’m trying not to reach for profanity. It’s like my first instinct. It’s got such a deep fuck you in this.

Pádraig: Yeah. It does.

Kate: Which I love because it’s, we want so much to, like, satisfy our deepest hopes for each other. And yet it’s just such a mess all the time.

Pádraig: I mean, I think so many of us know the situation where you’re in some kind of group and something happens where you can just begin to relax and go, oh, I don’t have to be perfect. And there’s a strange relief and joy and release and connection with that, where you just begin to say that or you begin to say, something difficult has happened in my life, and then suddenly your friends and strangers might go, oh, I’ve been through something similar. And that is the hope, really, in this poem is to begin to go like, look at the legion of wildness that we all are in ourselves, and what would it be like to have civic liturgies that tell that not as confession of wrongdoing or sin, but confession of truth, a confession of look what I’ve been coping with, what I’ve been surviving and what a relief that could be. And I think so many of us are hoping for that. You know, I have friends who go to 12 step groups speak, without giving any details, they speak about what it’s like to be in a place where there is a radical commitment to authenticity and telling the truth. You know, Nadia Bolz Weber says that, you know, sometimes what’s happening in the basement of church buildings all across the world is often what it is that’s happening that the sanctuary says is happening, but may not be. I think that’s so powerful.

Kate: I love blessings because I love the allness of it. My best prayer is usually like, God, let me see the world as it really is, because then I’m not inventing anything. And then I have to hope for courage, and I have to hope for faith, and I have to hope for other people, because I’m definitely not going to be able to largely paper over what’s happening. How do you encourage people to pray?

Pádraig: Well, I think a lot about this. I mean, I grew up so religious and was involved in Catholic Charismatic Renewal and then the ecumenical, charismatic experience in Ireland, which was very brave and very powerful. And it’s true to say that by and large, most of those are places of terrible homophobia. So, you know, so I learned a huge amount about mediation and courage and bravery from people from whom I then later on was put through exorcisms and forced into reparative therapy for being gay.

Kate: How old were you in this.

Pádraig: Eighteen, the first exorcism. So I don’t want to define people by only that because they weren’t only that. there were also people who were doing extraordinary things. And those things co-existed, inasmuch as all kinds of complicated things coexist in me as well. And so one of the things that’s been important for me when it comes to the question of God has been to recognize that for me, the word belief is the least interesting question. I’m not that interested if I believe in God. Question is, is do I experience yearning? Do I experience a need for some way to put my desire into language? And that, I think, is called prayer. That prayer is something that comes from, arises from the core of me, sometimes against my other instincts and links me with something that is guiding and true. And that, I think, is what so many of us are doing in and outside of formal affiliations to religion or not. Like the word in English pray comes from French prier, to ask, and ask is linked to desire. What do you want? What are you asking for? Is it true enough? Is it good enough? Does it lead us? Does it lead us into creativity? Or does lead us into active destruction? That’s what I think is at the heart of prayer. What do you want? I think we also have a stubborn anthropology that is that somehow, when we correspond to some creative impulse in us, that that tends to be a good thing for ourselves and those around us, and that the artist in all of us, and I don’t say this is a fool, I say this as somebody who’s worked in conflict for a long time, that what we’re looking for is ways that we can be working collaboratively in our societies toward the art of health care, toward the art of looking after each other, toward the art of structures that allow and facilitate education and learning and encounter and dignity. And I see those things as act of prayer.

Kate: I like that you started the answer with, like, sort of violent forms of prayer. And I’ve been exorcised a few times.

Pádraig: Successfully or unsuccessfully?

Kate: I don’t know. I think I am a little too spiritually agreeable these situations. But I, I like that you started by saying like not all prayer is, we shouldn’t think of that word as either neutral or necessarily kind.

Pádraig: No, no. It’s violent. Oh my God. I had a Californian exorcist when I was 18, the week after I was 18, with 20 people in the room with her hand on my head screaming at the devil of homosexuality in me. Suddenly I was outed to everybody. And then people were gathered around going, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Like, that’s assault, you know? And so therefore the question of prayer is not neutral at all.

Kate: I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone answer me like that, and I really that’s that, I mean, given what I normally like, study and participate in, I find that so helpful to think about it as like the force of it and the asking of it. And then people can ask and impose themselves on you in so many kinds of ways. And some of them are so painful. I mean, I’m just thinking of kinds of prayers for me that are around my cancer, that just assumed my unfaithfulness or assumed my like complicity in things that hurt me.

Pádraig: And causation and blame are these addictive imaginations that can sometimes happen in the context of a religious affiliation. And so therefore, there can be this absolute ravenous desire to somehow locate causation and blame. And you, if you can manage that, will save the other person from their limited imagination. And that is a terrible imposition. And that’s a violent prayer when that’s put on you.

Kate: And it’s really helpful. I love you just said addictive imagination. I’m going to remember that. That’s so beautiful. I always think of it like hyper causal. That’s always the language I use where it just can’t help moving to the next domino in their minds to make to make a synthetic world.

Pádraig: And it isn’t only I mean, I think it’s really important to say this, it isn’t only people who have a very particular religious affiliation who have that hyper causality.

Kate: Welcome to the wellness industry.

Pádraig: Exactly. I am trained in group work, and so much about what’s happening in group work is to help the group to not try to fixate on why did this happen and why was I like that in the group? Say no, well, you were an asshole in the group. Talk about what’s just happened. Talk about what’s right here. And you talked about prayer as this capacity for presence and to notice. That is so difficult to do that. And sometimes we can use psychological excuses to go way out of the room instead of going, let me talk about what I just experienced right here, right now. Whereas if you go, well, here’s what happened to me, and terrible things have happened to us, and they are present and they are true. And at the same time, there’s an invitation to say, how can I be right here now and say something courageous and true and challenging or vulnerable or whatever is appropriate in the present moment? That’s so interesting.

Kate: That’s a very unpopular view of being present, because mostly when people see be present, I think they often think of it as a solution to the problem of pain, like, just be here now. Relax into the meditative present. And I think, man, being here now is kind of the hardest and sometimes the worst thing. When I’m miserable or scared or unable to manage my reality, The last thing I want to do is be fully present in my reality.

Pádraig: Yeah, and some of those self-soothing techniques are ways of of self censoring and ways of not feeling. And ways of not feeling the feeling to go, okay, I’m just feeling this. I’m feeling this, I’m feeling this. It’ll pass, it’ll pass. And those are very, very helpful, of course.

Kate: I really like that.

Pádraig: But yeah, they’re very helpful. And it can be helpful to go, well let me just feel it just for a minute. Let me, let me take off the pressure to consolidate or to explain or to blame or to try to contain this just for a minute, and then to go, okay, I’ve been here before and it will pass. And so like I need the reminder that this will pass. So that’s, that’s necessary. But I also know that there can be other pieces of information that occur if I’m able to sit in the moment.

Kate: There can be other pieces of information, you’re totally right. Because then you can, like, Be interrupted by reality.

Pádraig: I remember, I’ve had a difficult few years, and at one point I was crying and I was crying by myself. And I noticed I kept on covering my face and like, nobody was around for miles. I was completely alone in the countryside. And I found myself thinking, why? Why am I covering my face? Like from whom? What is this? What’s occurring? What is it about me that needs that claustro experience? I don’t know if other people need it, and I also don’t know the answer to that, but it was just the noticing of it.

Kate: I think, that’s partly, I’m sure other people do this too, but I find when I’m not able to notice myself, noticing my son is so helpful. Like he has made, I came home yesterday and he had made a snuggle box. It’s the desire to be small and held every time a package comes and the thing comes out of it, and then blankets and pillows are in there all of a sudden and I look at him and I think, oh, man, of course I would love to be held. What a great thought. You’re just doing this in front of me?

Pádraig: Yeah. What intelligence/

Kate: Yeah. That’s right. We’re going to take a quick break to tell you about the sponsors of this show. We’ll be right back. There’s just so many ways to use spirituality to skip what’s really happening or to foreclose new possibilities.

Pádraig: Yeah.

Kate: It’s really funny. We do this Lenten practice together with Everything Happens and we have this, you know, lent is the practice of death, right? As we all get together and face down our mortality and Jesus’s but then he rises again, and it’s very annoying at the end, because you have to go from being in a one way, almost totally certain of what’s going to happen, which is that we all die and you want to confront your limitations. But then he rises from the dead, and I find there’s such a lurch trying to let yourself actually be surprised by the fact that life continues to unfold in front of you and that God continues to be actually discoverable, sort of a bit of a mind bender every time.

Pádraig: Yeah. Two things come to mind, one of which is that a number of years ago, a good few years ago, there was a BBC adaptation of the story of the Gospels after the torture and execution of Jesus by the Romans. And he’s buried, you know, the disciples are there, and you know, you’re watching it thinking, I know what’s happening is going to pop up somewhere and he doesn’t turn up. And then this other character, totally different actor, you go, you’re the resurrection. And it was so clever because everybody watching it was like, where’s Jesus? And suddenly he had to go, I don’t recognize resurrection. Who’s this guy? It was so clever. I think of Michael Kleber-Diggs, a brilliant poet in Minneapolis who’s got this great poem called called Gloria mundi. And it’s about the body turning to life and new forms of life through mushrooms and decomposition. And it is speaking in a very physical, earthly, meaty mineral and vitamin way about turning to hummus and being part of what might grow somewhere where a tree might grow for you. And that that’s resurrection. And I mean that is much more where I go to when I think of questions, too, with resurrection, I think it’s a lifelong global theme about what happens with life. And what I love about Michael Kleber-Diggs’ intuition is to say, well, it’ll probably be unrecognizable to what I think life is now, and I love the physicality of where his imagination goes. We made a Poetry Unbound episode about it.

Kate: That’s beautiful. You used to work with kids, their kind of spiritual experiences of this, I think it was retreat center?

Pádraig: Yeah, it was Catholic, it was a school chaplaincy center where schools would send their kids for a day of retreat, 30 of them at a time.

Kate: Speaking of the like, texture and how much more sometimes we get out of our faith or out of our understanding of things that seem so wildly abstract, like God, is the more specific you get sometimes, even if it’s just like a wonderful turn of your imagination, the more you can be really surprised by how both fun and funny and like, moving it is to listen to kids imagine Jesus.

Pádraig: I’d done the Spiritual exercises and Daily life of Saint Ignatius when I was in my 20s, early 20s. And Ignatius always encourages people to read a text, to read it twice and then close it, and then to put yourself into the text as you’re retaining parts of it, and to employ the imagination. So when I got a job as a school chaplain a number of years later, I was interested to think, what would that would be like with kids? These were kind of these were not kind of angels. These were kind of fun, enjoyable, energetic, kind of bonkers West Belfast kids, I loved them, they were great fun. And sometimes it would be a group of eight 11 year olds, sometimes a group of eight 18 year olds. They were all Catholic, but I don’t know what that meant to them, but they were all Catholic by affiliation. We’re going to take this imagination walk and go along with it. Not going to be long. And if you’re bored, that’s absolutely fine. You don’t have to answer any of my questions afterwards. Just be bored quietly because somebody in the room might be having an experience and be respectful of their imagination. And then they take a walk and Jesus would come and he’d know their name. I’d know the name of everyone in the room, and I’d say their name. And then often it followed loosely along some kind of gospel text, maybe like the woman at the well or something like that, and he’d ask them a question and they could ask him any question back. And I’d say that Jesus is asking, is there any change that you’re looking forward to and any change you’re worried about? It was just a way of creating an an imaginary container for having some kind of conversation that could be something that if they were ever distressed to say, you can return to this anytime you want. You know, tonight, in ten years, it doesn’t matter. You can always come back to this kind of experience. And then I’d ask, did anything happen? And say, you can say, I’ll keep it to myself if you want me to shut up. But one time Jesus had said to this kid, you looking forward to anything about secondary school? And I said, what did you say? And he went, armpit hair. He was just looking forward to developing some armpit hair, which I just thought, what a fantastic thing. One time I said, what was it like when Jesus said hello to you? And one girl said, do you know when you get home from school and it’s been wet and you go inside and the heating is on and you can just sit in an armchair and the fire’s lit? Like that. I thought are there more beautiful words of praise being uttered in the world right now than that. Utterly unpretentious, this beautiful simile being spoken from somebody who was speaking about bodily experiences, you know. Another time, one of the kids said when Jesus came up and said hello to me and said my name, the kid said, I said to him, how do I know you are who you say you are? I said, what did he say? And she said, he looked at me and he told me the story of my life. I was like, right, it’s kind of special. And she went, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you’ve had a mystical experience that other people have kind of trained their whole life for, and I said, I knew that this kid would be coming back to the chaplaincy a bit later. And I said, you might find that a nice thing to just remember every now and then. So six weeks later, when I saw the kid again, I was like, remember the thing that happened? She went, yeah, yeah, yeah, story of my life. So I mean, the whole point of this retreat center was never to try to deepen a child’s experience or a young person’s experience of faith, it was to say, let’s have a positive experience of talking about whatever they want in the place of religion, a positive experience of knowing each other, and that I remembered their name when they were there. That was the whole thing.

Kate: Those are very basic things.

Pádraig: But you can provide that.

Kate: I always liked it, and we always had to take these systematic theology classes or else you couldn’t pass your own divinity degree. But they always talked about the grammar, like what are all the basics that you have to learn this language so that you can speak faith. But when you talk about belonging, it just really felt like there’s such a, there’s like a grammar to it. There’s this really basic way that we can put together knowing each other. We learn each other’s names. We create the possibility of discovery with each other. We get very curious. We assume that these things actually can make more. And what it looks like they can make by itself.

Pádraig: Totally. I think in psychology and conflict studies and in many places, you know, there’s this thing, the Jala Hari window, you know, that it’s it’s kind of it’s like four boxes, like in a rectangle split into four boxes. And one of them is like things that I know about myself and other people know about me, or, you know, things that I see. Another one is things that others see about me that I don’t. Another one of those things that I see about me that others don’t. And then there’s that final one, things that not none of us know. And whenever I work with a group, it has been fruitful to deliberately say, I don’t know why people are here, and I don’t know if there’s anything that holds us together apart from the physical reality that we’re here. And I have found that to nurture that unknown space in group work has been fruitful because it stops me from saying, well, we’re all here because and I, I’m not a member of Faith spaces, but I would imagine that it can be useful to say the same thing in faith spaces. I think there’s a way, if in group experiences, where you have to consolidate your group’s identity in order to know who to hate, that that is going to feel very, very welcoming because, hey, I’m in. But it is also threatening because it also says, don’t leave, and here’s how we’ll talk about you if you do. And I, I’m interested in thinking, what if we just said, well, we’re here and it’s okay if you’re not. It’s okay if you don’t come back. You know, we’re not going to talk about you as they used to come to us. Whatever the ways of being with each other, if we can find a way to allow the anarchy of human motivation to be present in a way that might allow the imagination to flourish and for curiosity to occur and for very, very little projection onto the other to say, oh, we’re here because we believe the same thing. We probably don’t.

Kate: Seems like a much gentler place to start when you’re really scared that division is going to take us all apart.

Pádraig: Yeah. Divisions everywhere. I’m divided, you know. Division is absolutely everywhere. The question is, what we do with it.

Kate: That’s perfect. That’s a perfect thing to say. Pádraig, thank you so much for doing this with me. I really always wanted to be your friend. This was me just luring you here on false pretenses. We’re actually never going to air this episode. Actually, nobody’s taping this. I hired her. She’s a stranger. Thank you so much for coming.

Pádraig: Thanks Kate for having me. It’s a lovely thing to be with you.

Kate: Pádraig reminds us that peace isn’t a feeling. It’s a practice, a daily choosing a stubborn, sacred hope. But even in our deepest divisions, something new is still possible. So as we move through this Lenten season, may we find the courage to be peacemakers. To stay at the table. To believe, against all odds, that love still has work to do here. And maybe, just maybe, that it starts with us. I really wanted to share an excerpt of one of Pádraig poems, I find it so meaningful, and it’s called The Facts of Life from his collection of poetry Sorry For Your Troubles. Here goes. Also do like how very Canadian I sounded with sorry. Yeah. Sorry for your troubles. All right, here goes. The facts of life by Pádraig Ó Tuama. That life isn’t fair. That life is sometimes good and sometimes better than good. That life is often not so good. That life is real, and if you can survive it, well, survive it well, with love and art and meaning given where meaning scarce. That you will learn to live with regret. That you will learn to live with respect. That the structures that construct you may not be permanently constricting. That you will probably be okay. That you must accept change before you die, but you will die anyway, so that you might as well live and you might as well love, and you might as well love. You might as well love. Bless you, my dears, as you love well. And I loved Pádraig’s prompts for getting stuck on a bus with strangers. It made me want to ask you, what question would you ask a stranger to know them better? Call us and leave us a voicemail at (919) 322-8731. We’ll put together a bunch of your best questions and share them online at @katecbowler. And thank you so much to our funding partners, Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment, and Duke Divinity School, and to the team behind everything happening at Everything Happens. Jess Ritchie, Harriet Putman, Keith Weston, Baiz Hoen, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Iris Greene, Hailie Durrett, Anne Herring, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Elia Zario, Katherine Smith and Megan Crunkleton. Thank you. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.