Speaker 1: To force yourself into the lessons that only time can
Speaker 1: tell can be difficult. If somebody has a chronic illness
Speaker 1: and they've had it for five years, that can be
Speaker 1: difficult for people around them to know how to speak.
Speaker 1: But there's something about meeting somebody else who's been through
Speaker 1: that too, where time has done the work in both
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about while other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: podreg Otuma. He's the host of On Being's Poetry Unbound
Speaker 3: and the author of Poetry Unbound, Fifty Poems to Open
Speaker 3: Your Life. Padreg is a poet with interests in language, violence, power,
Speaker 3: and religion. Feed the Beast is his most recent collection,
Speaker 3: with Kitchen Hymns, a volume of original poems, and an
Speaker 3: essayed poetry anthology, Poetry Unbound Poems On Being with each Other,
Speaker 3: both forthcoming in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Hi Padrag, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, nice to be with you.
Speaker 4: I'm really happy to have you on. I've wanted to
Speaker 4: have this conversation for several years now, since I saw
Speaker 4: you at the On Being gathering. I'm glad that we're
Speaker 4: finally able to do it. We're going to be discussing
Speaker 4: a number of your different books, one of which will
Speaker 4: be Poetry Unbound fifty Poems to Open Your World. And
Speaker 4: I know you also have a new work of poetry
Speaker 4: called Feed the Beast also, and we'll have links in
Speaker 4: the show notes to all that. But we'll start like
Speaker 4: we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
Speaker 4: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness. And bravery and love, and the
Speaker 4: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 4: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they
Speaker 4: think about it for a second. They look up at
Speaker 4: their grandparent. They say, well, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 4: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 4: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 4: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 4: you do.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this a little bit eeric in preparation.
Speaker 1: I suppose I'm interested in the hungers of both of
Speaker 1: the wolves. You know, you said greed and hatred and
Speaker 1: fear for the bad wolf, and I think hatred and
Speaker 1: fear are manifestations of some deeper hungers. So yeah, whenever
Speaker 1: I hear that parable, and I've heard it before, I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to go a bit deeper in the hungers
Speaker 1: of both wolves, and to recognize that maybe there's three
Speaker 1: wolves or five or yes, but maybe the hungers of
Speaker 1: some of the wolf that has deemed the bad one
Speaker 1: have intelligences underneath them. Maybe they're directed in a poor way,
Speaker 1: but there's something to be learned from both.
Speaker 4: I suppose, Yeah, that's right. Go well, I agree with you.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's two wolves inside of us. I
Speaker 4: think I've you know, I could probably count thirty without
Speaker 4: even trying to inside me. Say a little bit more
Speaker 4: about that. You've done a lot of work in conflict
Speaker 4: resolution over the years, so you have encountered people who
Speaker 4: hate each other. Yeah, right, they come in hating each other.
Speaker 4: Talk to me a little bit more about the hunger
Speaker 4: underneath that. What have you learned is the hunger that's
Speaker 4: sort of fueling that, or what are some of the
Speaker 4: hungers I'm curious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, in any situation where there's people who are
Speaker 1: representatives of groups that are being brought together, where there's
Speaker 1: longstanding hate and predictable hate occurring, there's many things. There's
Speaker 1: many layers going on. You know, maybe there's deep grief
Speaker 1: and fear about the future, it's fear for safety. Those
Speaker 1: things can go on. But there could also be a
Speaker 1: profound sense of group belonging. You know, I know that
Speaker 1: if I demonstrate my hate for this other group, there's
Speaker 1: another group that will say to me, hey, you really
Speaker 1: belong to us because you perform your hate very well,
Speaker 1: and so hate can be an initiation in that way.
Speaker 1: So underneath the practice of hate. In that way, there
Speaker 1: can be grief and shock and worry, as well as
Speaker 1: a certain intelligence of how it is that we make
Speaker 1: certain sacrifices in order to belong to a group. There
Speaker 1: can be fear as well, in the sense of it
Speaker 1: can be easier to stick with the performance of a
Speaker 1: hate that you know than risk the possibility of opening
Speaker 1: yourself up to learning something about the other that might
Speaker 1: shock you a about them, and then be about yourself
Speaker 1: inside a room. Sometimes I think that you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to people who have had a long standing
Speaker 1: hates towards each other in groups, I suppose occasionally it's
Speaker 1: possible that two groups can have equal but opposite power,
Speaker 1: and usually there's disproportionate power on one side, and then
Speaker 1: usually there's an argument about what the disproportionate power is
Speaker 1: and who has it. Often a group with power doesn't
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge that they have power, because then with
Speaker 1: power comes accountability, you would hope. And so those things
Speaker 1: too are present in a room. So there can be
Speaker 1: a hunger to acknowledge some of the journey of learning
Speaker 1: that you've come on, because that might mean that therefore
Speaker 1: you'd be open to some more accountability, So all of
Speaker 1: those things can be present in a room.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 1: All know this, though you don't just need to be
Speaker 1: a conflict mediator to know. You know this because of
Speaker 1: your friends or your family, or because of where you vote,
Speaker 1: or whether maybe you don't vote, but you know, in
Speaker 1: the environments where polarization happens, there's always a lot of
Speaker 1: dynamics and you can feel them very clearly.
Speaker 4: You can if you're looking to feel them. But many
Speaker 4: people aren't, right, they're happily polarized, you know, their content
Speaker 4: in that space. I think there also probably has to
Speaker 4: be a big element of deep resentment over what's happened
Speaker 4: in the past. Right, There's been a lot of harm
Speaker 4: done or perceived harm anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, harm or perceived harm. But I think even groups
Speaker 1: of people who are very happy in certain performances of polarization.
Speaker 1: You have a group of friends or a family, or
Speaker 1: you know, mostly people have circumstances in their life where
Speaker 1: they do have to live with subtlety. Even those who
Speaker 1: say they don't, there is some relationship in their life
Speaker 1: where they are having to think, well, no, I need
Speaker 1: to think about this in four or five levels, and
Speaker 1: so partly I think that is a great resource for mediation,
Speaker 1: is to say, what are the relationships in your life
Speaker 1: that you have to think about? Their important to you,
Speaker 1: but you have to work at it, have to think
Speaker 1: what are the skills you use there very very naturally,
Speaker 1: and what would it be like to think about using
Speaker 1: those in this room? And what's the risk of using
Speaker 1: those skills in this room? And somebody would go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the person we're talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: my family, but I don't love people here. Or the
Speaker 1: person in my family annoys me, but people here might
Speaker 1: hurt me, you know so, And then suddenly you're talking
Speaker 1: about something very interesting in terms of the multiple skills
Speaker 1: that all of us have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So in
Speaker 4: your book, in the Shelter, you throughout the book are
Speaker 4: saying hello to lots of different things, right, You say
Speaker 4: Hello to the lists and the day and the tiredness
Speaker 4: and the coffee and the coffee. Hello to the happy
Speaker 4: accident of the changing story, Hello to the fear of fear,
Speaker 4: Hello to here, Hello to the storm. It goes on
Speaker 4: and on. I could do one hundred and fifty of them.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of them. What are you saying hello
Speaker 4: to today.
Speaker 1: I'm saying hello to COVID booster feeling like I have COVID. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm saying hello to a year that has had a
Speaker 1: grief in it and trying to trans pay attention to
Speaker 1: the way that grief works. I am saying hello to deadlines,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying hello also to the need for asking
Speaker 1: for help. Those are some of the things. Also saying
Speaker 1: hello to a world in war, and saying hello to
Speaker 1: a world that there's war about what the war is about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, those are all things to say hello to.
Speaker 4: You just talked about grief there, and grief is something
Speaker 4: I've been dealing with some of also, And somewhere you
Speaker 4: quote the Irish poet Patrick Kavanaugh and you say that
Speaker 4: he recommends that you live at the heart of the emotion.
Speaker 4: Time has its own work to do, and you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things that I've been reflecting on as
Speaker 4: I go through a difficult time is living at the
Speaker 4: heart of that emotion, like really giving ourselves to it.
Speaker 4: What the work is that time is going to do
Speaker 4: on us isn't obvious at that point, you know, I
Speaker 4: often refer to sort of you know, there's that saying
Speaker 4: when one door closes, another door opens, Right, But I
Speaker 4: often think we don't talk about the dark hallway in between. Right,
Speaker 4: one door closes and the other isn't open yet, and
Speaker 4: you've got a period of walking in the dark and
Speaker 4: having to faith that this is doing something in me
Speaker 4: and for me, but you don't see it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think about that line from Patrick Cavanet every day.
Speaker 1: I actually have it on the mug that I'm drinking
Speaker 1: tea from at the moment. Okay, I got it printed
Speaker 1: on there, but that's only recently. I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: that line for a long time. You know. One way
Speaker 1: of reading it. The line is from a poem of
Speaker 1: his called Having Confessed, and it's instructions to somebody who
Speaker 1: has just been to confession, Catholic confession, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's in a certain sense saying, what would you know
Speaker 1: about the state of your soul? You know, confession The
Speaker 1: idea is to say, here's what I did wrong. And
Speaker 1: Patrick cavin is taking confession very seriously, but also taking
Speaker 1: truth very seriously in a psychoanalytical sense, the sense of
Speaker 1: how difficult it can be to know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So the poem starts off by saying, having confessed, he
Speaker 1: feels like he should go down on his knees and
Speaker 1: beg for forgiveness for having dared to view his soul
Speaker 1: from the outside. Lie at the heart of the emotion.
Speaker 1: Time has its own work did and so I think
Speaker 1: what the poem is is an invitation to notice, to
Speaker 1: pay attention. I don't take it that it's an invitation
Speaker 1: to wallow. I don't think that's a wise thing to do.
Speaker 1: I think it's helpful to notice, and also to find
Speaker 1: something to keep you busy enough. And also I know
Speaker 1: for me, certainly in the last year and has been
Speaker 1: a year of difficulty, there has been a way in
Speaker 1: which it's been a necessity to regularly remind myself of
Speaker 1: the world that I live in a world where I'm
Speaker 1: going through something difficult, but that's just one. There are wars,
Speaker 1: there is hunger, there's climate change, and to not think
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing with my money, or to think
Speaker 1: about how I'm keeping aware of those things, not to
Speaker 1: overwhelm me or not to minimize what I'm going through either,
Speaker 1: but simply to just think, well, here's the world that
Speaker 1: I'm in, and to lie at the heart of the
Speaker 1: emotion of that and lying at the heart of it.
Speaker 1: I love that line. But again I don't see it
Speaker 1: as wallow. I think of it as notice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that's so interesting. It's such a
Speaker 4: nuanced line between wallowing an emotion and being open to it,
Speaker 4: between you know, looking at things outside of us to
Speaker 4: give us perspective versus minimizing, you know, using that to
Speaker 4: minimize what we're going through. These things are very they're
Speaker 4: very nuanced, you know, in your word there, which is
Speaker 4: to notice and pay attention, I think is the key,
Speaker 4: Like is to keep checking in like where okay, where
Speaker 4: am I here? You know, Oh boy, what's happening today?
Speaker 4: They're pretty self involved the last couple of days, like
Speaker 4: completely self involved, okay, trying to turn the direction outward. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh I've been going, going, going for a couple of
Speaker 4: days and haven't even you know, like it just keeps
Speaker 4: shoving the hard thing aside to keep moving. Well, maybe
Speaker 4: it's time to pause and allow that hard thing a
Speaker 4: little bit of time, you know, kind of in my heart.
Speaker 4: And so it's all very nuanced.
Speaker 1: And your question too, was about time. You know, that
Speaker 1: line of time is its own work to do, you know,
Speaker 1: there's jokes about is there an app for that? About anything?
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's anything new in wanting quick solutions,
Speaker 1: but there's something very old and saying quick solutions don't
Speaker 1: last necessarily, and so time has its own work to do.
Speaker 1: There are certain things that I'll only recognize and come
Speaker 1: to terms with when I am the age that somebody
Speaker 1: else was when they went through it. So I'm forty
Speaker 1: eight now, But when I turned thirty two, I began
Speaker 1: to think about my dad in a particular way because
Speaker 1: he was thirty two when I was born. And I
Speaker 1: found myself thinking, you know, when you're younger and you
Speaker 1: have these expectations about how sortid parents should be. And
Speaker 1: then when I started to get to the age that
Speaker 1: my parents were when I was born, or when I
Speaker 1: was ten or twenty, something changed in me where I thought, God,
Speaker 1: am mighty sure, I don't know what I'm doing. What
Speaker 1: kind of a parent would I have been to the
Speaker 1: twenty year old me? Bewildered one, I'm sure that's not working.
Speaker 1: Of time has its own work to do, which is
Speaker 1: that to force yourself into the lessons that only time
Speaker 1: can tell can be difficult. If somebody has a chronic
Speaker 1: illness and they've had it for five years. That can
Speaker 1: be difficult for people around them to know how to speak.
Speaker 1: But there's something about meeting somebody else who's been through
Speaker 1: that too, where time has done the work in both
Speaker 1: of them. Not that necessarily their circumstances are in any
Speaker 1: way similar, but there has been a work of time
Speaker 1: in them. Just something like that, And you can always
Speaker 1: recognize when you're around somebody who has a wisdom of
Speaker 1: time in them, where their anxiety isn't pressuring you into
Speaker 1: rushing through something that you haven't been put through yet.
Speaker 4: Exactly makes me think of that rocal line. Have patience
Speaker 4: with everything that remains unresolved in your heart. You know,
Speaker 4: another thing that you do is that if somebody asks
Speaker 4: you if you believe in God, you answer with a
Speaker 4: story from your day. I think I understand that correctly,
Speaker 4: so I can't resist you believe in God.
Speaker 1: I went to a pub last night with a friend,
Speaker 1: and it's a pub that used to be in Irish
Speaker 1: Bar in New York that I used to go to
Speaker 1: fairly regularly before when I lived really nearby. And so
Speaker 1: the woman Joanne, who is the main bartender, recognized me
Speaker 1: when I went in, and it's been over a year
Speaker 1: since I've been in there, so you know, I remind
Speaker 1: her of my name, just because I'm sure she's loads
Speaker 1: of people she recognizes. But I just noticed the skill
Speaker 1: with which she was warm but wasn't asking too much,
Speaker 1: the ease and the welcome, which is about, you know,
Speaker 1: running a good business, but also the way within which
Speaker 1: I think she has practiced the art of deep familiarity
Speaker 1: without in any way asking people to explain themselves. I
Speaker 1: was really struck by the almost therapeutic level of levity
Speaker 1: and familiarity that she holds in her ways of responding
Speaker 1: to people. And I'm assuming that it isn't just me
Speaker 1: who notices that in her put many other people to
Speaker 1: Molly's on Third Avenue at twenty third as the place
Speaker 1: to go if you're in New York, Kay find againness.
Speaker 4: If you need to figure out whether you believe in God,
Speaker 4: head to Mally's. I love the way you respond to
Speaker 4: that question in that way. I'm sure it would leave
Speaker 4: many people unsatisfied with that answer, but I love it.
Speaker 4: That's the answer. Nonetheless, it is.
Speaker 1: The answer today. Yeah, yeah, Do you believe in God?
Speaker 1: Is a question that is that's about asking our minds
Speaker 1: to do something that I suppose I'd like to say,
Speaker 1: I find it difficult from my mind to do, which
Speaker 1: is to imagine something outside of what we understand existence
Speaker 1: to be. It is to go into the mysteries of
Speaker 1: the universe and to ask what the emotion of an
Speaker 1: atom is. It is to ask what the design or
Speaker 1: the intelligence of a quark is. What do I know
Speaker 1: about any of that? And when it comes to theology,
Speaker 1: I've spent many years studying theology, so it isn't that
Speaker 1: I'm just meandering around vaguely. I've thought a lot about it,
Speaker 1: and the more I've thought about it, the more I
Speaker 1: have become convinced that it is the material reality of
Speaker 1: life in terms of what am I doing to help
Speaker 1: others stay alive? What am I doing to stay alive?
Speaker 1: What are we doing for the planet? What am I
Speaker 1: doing to notice the world that I'm in? That this
Speaker 1: is my response to the question of God. I like
Speaker 1: the question of God, not because I believe in God,
Speaker 1: but because I like the attention that asks me to
Speaker 1: pay to meaning, to matter, to vast uncertitude. So therefore
Speaker 1: I always want to answer the question of do you
Speaker 1: believe in God with the story of the day or
Speaker 1: the story of the night before, in case there isn't
Speaker 1: a story of today.
Speaker 4: My primary spiritual practice for a number of years has
Speaker 4: been zen Buddhism, and you know, we do coons and
Speaker 4: zen right, And you know, do you believe in God?
Speaker 4: Is essentially a co on to me? Right, Like you said,
Speaker 4: there isn't an answer answer right, And in a zen
Speaker 4: co on there isn't an answer answer. There's a mystery
Speaker 4: underneath the answer, or there's a realness or immediacy underneath
Speaker 4: whatever the answer might be. A lot of the zen
Speaker 4: coons are about inhabiting a different place than you normally do.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I think, do you believe in God?
Speaker 4: You've turned it into a personal co on in that way,
Speaker 4: which is a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: Christ Tippett has this great thing when she has been
Speaker 1: facilitating public conversations about something that might be divisive, where
Speaker 1: she might have had four people as part of an
Speaker 1: interview and two of them have one particular approach to
Speaker 1: a public issue and two have a different one, and
Speaker 1: she'll say, before we talk about what you're doing, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're not writing a disagreeing but before we
Speaker 1: talk about what we're doing, let's take this public issue
Speaker 1: and tell me what's arounded for you tell me what
Speaker 1: it opens up. And so within the context of that,
Speaker 1: therefore people begin to speak about their own story. They
Speaker 1: begin to speak about a big change that happened in
Speaker 1: their life, something that has been a central meaning in
Speaker 1: their life. And that isn't to say, oh, we'll all
Speaker 1: arrive at nice neutral, middle of the offence, middle of
Speaker 1: the road, fence, dwelling opportunity. No, in a certain sense,
Speaker 1: what it does is it is it sharpens their disagreement
Speaker 1: because there has been the possibility of understanding. When you
Speaker 1: say this, actually you're also saying many other things. So
Speaker 1: what gathers around me in the question of God and
Speaker 1: the question of belief in God is growing up Irish
Speaker 1: and Catholic. I was born in nineteen seventy five and
Speaker 1: is growing up Irish and Catholic and gay and the
Speaker 1: secrecy that religion and Irishness brought along with that. It
Speaker 1: has been living a life that, since I was eleven
Speaker 1: or twelve, has been very heavily influenced by evangelicalism, British
Speaker 1: and American evangelicalism. I've never been in evangelical but I
Speaker 1: have been around a lot of evangelicalism for twenty years
Speaker 1: from i'd say the age of twelve to thirty two.
Speaker 1: That tinged words like Christian. For me, I don't like
Speaker 1: that word because mostly what that meant for the people
Speaker 1: who was asking me was I want was have you
Speaker 1: stopped being yet? They might be happy to hear that
Speaker 1: I have or gay? So yeah, if you stopped being
Speaker 1: Catholic or gay, yes to one. Note to the other,
Speaker 1: not that I've stopped being Catholic. Catholicism is in my DNA.
Speaker 1: If you cut me, I bleed the rosary my God.
Speaker 1: But it's also family, It's also history when it comes
Speaker 1: to the question of God. When you look at the
Speaker 1: question of Irishness in God and irishness and religion, it
Speaker 1: is years and years and years of study, three degrees
Speaker 1: in theology. All of those things are around there for me.
Speaker 1: And it's disappointment with religion as well as having had
Speaker 1: the most beautiful experiences sometimes when going on a retreat
Speaker 1: to a monastery, or still putting on choral music when
Speaker 1: I need some quiet music to accompany me.
Speaker 3: Or yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's all of those things it's going every year
Speaker 1: to handle this Messiah if I can. All of those
Speaker 1: things are all gathered around the question of that I
Speaker 1: don't have children, but it is the recognition that I think,
Speaker 1: were I to have had children, I would have wanted
Speaker 1: to have brought them up in a religion, because I
Speaker 1: think it's really good to have a story against which
Speaker 1: to make your own decisions, to have the conversation within
Speaker 1: the particularity of a tradition in order to be able
Speaker 1: to say, actually, I reject that tradition because what work
Speaker 1: that tradition has done to give you the Because and
Speaker 1: I am a better person for having been so religion
Speaker 1: infused along with all the pain that that brought. I
Speaker 1: am a much better person for having had that, and
Speaker 1: having had the language and the literature of the struggle
Speaker 1: in order to figure out what I think.
Speaker 4: I love that last point because there are a lot
Speaker 4: of people who I know, a lot of people listening
Speaker 4: to this podcast would relate with this, because I've heard
Speaker 4: from many of them that, you know, spirituality is of
Speaker 4: interest to them, but they have really bad experience is
Speaker 4: from a particular tradition. But to look at it in
Speaker 4: that way as if that tradition, like you said, gave
Speaker 4: you something to define yourself. Yeah, not define yourself, it's
Speaker 4: not the right word, but to fight against it, to
Speaker 4: fight against you know, and to see what you really
Speaker 4: believe and see the ways in which it falls short,
Speaker 4: and see the ways in which it really does give beauty.
Speaker 4: There's a nuance in there that is I think, done correctly,
Speaker 4: is helpful in the spiritual path versus the sort of
Speaker 4: I've never really had any belief in any particular thing
Speaker 4: in any particular way. It's just all very nebulous.
Speaker 1: Well, I'd be curious to hear anybody who has never
Speaker 1: had any belief in any particular way as to how
Speaker 1: they'd say it. But certainly, one of the things that
Speaker 1: a religion does is it provides a normative narrative for you,
Speaker 1: a way within which your religion is saying, here's a
Speaker 1: way to look at the world, or way to look
Speaker 1: at time, a way to look at afterlife. If their
Speaker 1: religion believes in that, here's a way to look at
Speaker 1: virtue and ethics and surprise, all of those things. And
Speaker 1: I think everybody has stories that they use to hold
Speaker 1: their life together, and that might be a religion and
Speaker 1: it's and it's parables. It might be a cultural tradition
Speaker 1: and it's parables. It might be the story of survival
Speaker 1: of a people who've been impressed. It might be the
Speaker 1: story of an identity and finding dignity in that. It
Speaker 1: can be any of these things. It could be a
Speaker 1: national constitution. What I think is important is within all
Speaker 1: of those is to have the capacity to ask very
Speaker 1: very serious questions. And if questions aren't allowed, well then
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous system. I applied that equally to Catholicism
Speaker 1: as I do to the LGBTQI community. I've heard some
Speaker 1: people say, you know, when you join the LGBTQI community,
Speaker 1: you know everything's much better because you know everybody there
Speaker 1: is just there for love. Like that's bullshit. No, they're
Speaker 1: not there as ordinary as any community of people, and
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of ambitions and desires and jealousies and
Speaker 1: other things going on. If I can't question the narrative,
Speaker 1: well then it's a dangerous thing because then all kinds
Speaker 1: of threats about betrayal and expulsion and exile come in.
Speaker 1: Are you are proper gay?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: And all of these kinds of things can happen that
Speaker 1: can happen in the local yoga studio as well as
Speaker 1: in the local library, as well as in the environmental
Speaker 1: activism group, as well as in the religiously evangelical group.
Speaker 1: All of those groups will have to pay attention to
Speaker 1: how do we respond to the person within our group
Speaker 1: who asks questions about the story the group tells about itself.
Speaker 1: And that's a test for the group. And suddenly we're
Speaker 1: not talking about the great and moral narrative at all.
Speaker 1: We're talking about what's happening in the room between the people.
Speaker 4: Just this morning, I was listening to a punk band
Speaker 4: I love called Against Me, and they have a song
Speaker 4: called I Was a teenage anarchist and it's about exactly this.
Speaker 4: Like they got into the punk rock community because it
Speaker 4: felt like it was free and it was open. But
Speaker 4: over time, right as soon as the singer Laura Jane Grace,
Speaker 4: as soon as she started to think differently or asked questions,
Speaker 4: she started to be ostracized. Right, the scene grew too
Speaker 4: rigid and the scene itself became the new authority. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, and I think you're right that any group
Speaker 4: I have wrestled with this in my own life in
Speaker 4: finding spiritual community and sanga in that. I think for
Speaker 4: a lot of years I would wander in and I
Speaker 4: would see those same dynamics and they would cause me
Speaker 4: to wander out instead of realizing that any group I
Speaker 4: wandered into was going to have some element of that
Speaker 4: in the question is how is it dealt with? How
Speaker 4: is it handled? Because every group of people is ultimately
Speaker 4: a group of people and in all our messiness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm very interested in taking old stories, biblical stories,
Speaker 1: and I am nobody knew in doing this, but to
Speaker 1: take an old story to try to enter into it
Speaker 1: through a curious pathway over you know, from the writings
Speaker 1: that have come over centuries, people have been doing that.
Speaker 1: Jewish midrash has been asking questions about the gaps between
Speaker 1: the words for millennia. So there's one here which is
Speaker 1: really about asking questions about belonging and taking the story
Speaker 1: seriously enough to take the story seriously. There's a text
Speaker 1: early in the book in Genesis where the Adam and
Speaker 1: the Eve character you know, have eaten from the tree
Speaker 1: and then they've suddenly realized they've eaten the fruit of
Speaker 1: the tree, and they've suddenly realized they're naked, and the
Speaker 1: God character comes down and is looking for them, and
Speaker 1: they're hiding because they've realized they're naked. And then the
Speaker 1: God character makes some coats of skins for them. The
Speaker 1: text says, now God made Adam and Eve coats of
Speaker 1: skins and dress them. And the poem is called the
Speaker 1: Butcher of Eden. And when he was finished, he scraped
Speaker 1: fat from the backs of stretched skins, wiped the blood
Speaker 1: so the seams, bit the thread with teeth, and said,
Speaker 1: dress yourselves in these. And they said, what is this verb?
Speaker 1: God shoved his knife into the earth and said, it's
Speaker 1: like make believe, but for your body. They looked at
Speaker 1: all the meat, still steaming from when it was alive,
Speaker 1: said eat and watched while beasts sevene and fed on
Speaker 1: beasts of eede.
Speaker 4: Hm, that's beautiful and beautiful as even the wrong word,
Speaker 4: maybe beautiful in a very striking way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what it means to take any story
Speaker 1: that has been part of shaping me and to look
Speaker 1: into his sedges. The story of Ireland, the story of
Speaker 1: you know, Irish nationalism, the story of religion, the story
Speaker 1: of being a man, the story of being a gay man,
Speaker 1: all of these to ask serious questions and to do
Speaker 1: so knowing I can. That's my job, and it can
Speaker 1: be done playfully, it can be done intelligently. It can
Speaker 1: be done, you know. But to become overly defensive of
Speaker 1: those stories is to miss some of the subtlety and
Speaker 1: the brilliance and the wildness that's present in those stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. But the better the story is in
Speaker 1: terms of gathering a community around the wilder it is.
Speaker 4: There is a poem that you love which is also
Speaker 4: one of my favorite poems, and it's called Lost by
Speaker 4: David Wagner. It's one of the few poems I know
Speaker 4: by heart. I know about eight to ten by heart probably,
Speaker 4: and there's a line in there that he talks about,
Speaker 4: you know, you must treat being here as in present,
Speaker 4: in this location and in this place. You must treat
Speaker 4: it as a powerful stranger. And I've heard you talk
Speaker 4: about how that powerful stranger isn't always benevolent. You know,
Speaker 4: that powerful stranger could be challenging, and that to be
Speaker 4: here takes an ability to you say, I think, a
Speaker 4: robust ability to tell the truth. Say a little bit
Speaker 4: more about any aspect of that poem or what I
Speaker 4: just said, or it's one of my favorites, and I
Speaker 4: just when you said it was one of yours, I
Speaker 4: was like, well, we got we should talk about that,
Speaker 4: because that's quite a poem.
Speaker 1: I do love the poem. It's a poem of instruction,
Speaker 1: really to somebody who's lost in the woods. And the
Speaker 1: title is last and the opening sentences just twowards standstill,
Speaker 1: the trees around you and the bushes near you or
Speaker 1: not lost wherever you are, it's called here, and you
Speaker 1: must treat it as a powerful stranger. There's a way,
Speaker 1: and it can be helpful if the circumstances are correct,
Speaker 1: where maybe you could take that and just think, oh,
Speaker 1: let me relax into the moment, let me relax into
Speaker 1: the now and look around them. It's all lovely. And
Speaker 1: when those circumstances lend themselves to that kind of ease
Speaker 1: of heart of looking around, just a readjustment that's pleasant
Speaker 1: and maybe even beneficial. That can be great, and that
Speaker 1: pump can work on that level. But wherever you are
Speaker 1: treated as a powerful stranger is an invitation to recognize that,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that you might be lost in
Speaker 1: might be a global pandemic, it might be a war,
Speaker 1: it might be a relationship that has suddenly changed very
Speaker 1: very seriously. It might be something threatening. And powerful is
Speaker 1: an amoral word. It just says, this thing is a
Speaker 1: powerful stranger. What's happening. You don't know what's happening. To
Speaker 1: be at perhaps to be ready to defend yourself, but
Speaker 1: also to look. And I really like the neutrality of
Speaker 1: that instruction, which is to say, just look, it's a
Speaker 1: powerful stranger. And what's your relationship with that powerful stranger
Speaker 1: going to be? And what can you do during the time,
Speaker 1: what is within your capacity to respond to during the
Speaker 1: time there might be nothing like in the context of
Speaker 1: a global pandemic. You know, for most people, it was
Speaker 1: just you know, try not to get it, try not
Speaker 1: to spread it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't out making the vaccine or you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like what I could do in the response
Speaker 1: to that powerful stranger was to do that, but then
Speaker 1: also to try to support people whose jobs were putting
Speaker 1: them in harm's way while they were trying to help
Speaker 1: people not be in harm's way or all of those things.
Speaker 1: I've got friends who are medics, have got friends who
Speaker 1: you know, a friend who's a firefighter, have got friends
Speaker 1: who were involved in teaching, you know, and that they
Speaker 1: were out and doing work all the time. And the
Speaker 1: question for me is in terms of what can I
Speaker 1: do in response to the powerful stranger of COVID that
Speaker 1: is not getting in the way of the fact that
Speaker 1: their jobs are certainly more demanding. While other people were
Speaker 1: complaining about not being able to leave the house, other
Speaker 1: people were like, I'd like to get back to my
Speaker 1: house because I'm exhausted with the extra work I have
Speaker 1: to do. All of those things come to my mind
Speaker 1: when I think of the powerful stranger that circumstances can be.
Speaker 4: We've given our Instagram account a new look, and we're
Speaker 4: sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else, encouraging
Speaker 4: positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your
Speaker 4: good wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 4: of the show and some of Ginny and Iz's day
Speaker 4: to day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that
Speaker 4: anybody would be interested in. It's also a great place
Speaker 4: for you to give us feedback on the episodes that
Speaker 4: you like, or concepts that you've learned that you think
Speaker 4: are helpful, or any other feedback you'd like to give us.
Speaker 4: If you're on Instagram, follow us it at one underscore
Speaker 4: you underscore feed and those words are all spelled out
Speaker 4: one underscore you underscore feed to add some nourishing content
Speaker 4: to your daily scrolling. See you there. I'm going to
Speaker 4: attempt to bring two different things together here from that
Speaker 4: poem and something that you've said. You have mentioned you
Speaker 4: like to reread things, but you say part of the
Speaker 4: concern in rereading a text often is that in so
Speaker 4: doing you read less and recognize more. You glide over
Speaker 4: familiar words, you glide over familiar presumptions, and so with
Speaker 4: time you aren't reading what's there, you're reading what you
Speaker 4: think is there. And another line from two lines from
Speaker 4: that David Wagner poem, are no two trees are the
Speaker 4: same to Raven, No two branches are the same? En right,
Speaker 4: there's this newness all the time and ideally right, you
Speaker 4: know he's positing that for them, that's the way in
Speaker 4: which to look at things. And I'd love to hear
Speaker 4: you expound a little bit on some ways in which rereading,
Speaker 4: which is something that I do in my Zen tradition,
Speaker 4: and other things ways that we can do that that
Speaker 4: give us that perspective of Raven and wren.
Speaker 1: Well partly, I think if you want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really like rereading what I know other people that don't,
Speaker 1: so I mean I don't know enough to know whether
Speaker 1: people should or shouldn't do it. But if you want
Speaker 1: to reread something, it can just be helpful to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what am I noticing this time that feels new, or
Speaker 1: what felt monumental for me the last time I read
Speaker 1: this book that this time actually doesn't feel so monumental.
Speaker 1: You know, you might think, oh, I was close to
Speaker 1: tears when I got to the end of that chapter
Speaker 1: the first time I read it. Maybe that won't happen
Speaker 1: this time, but you'll be noticing something else. You'll be
Speaker 1: noticing that you've thought about that chapter a lot since
Speaker 1: in the intervening time. Or it might be that there's
Speaker 1: a hero character that you have thought to be very fine,
Speaker 1: as you've thought about your own work or your responsibility
Speaker 1: and your family or whatever. And it might mean in
Speaker 1: the second time reading it, or the third or the twentieth,
Speaker 1: that you begin to think, I think that character has flaws,
Speaker 1: which isn't to decimate them, but it is to see
Speaker 1: them in a new way. I think to reread something
Speaker 1: is to bring your own life back into the conversation
Speaker 1: with the book, and that can be anything from you know,
Speaker 1: the Lord of the Rings, to a scripture or a
Speaker 1: country's constitution. Also because just you know, you mentioned Eric
Speaker 1: that you know poems off by heart, and just because
Speaker 1: you know them off by heart, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you've exhausted the possibilities of what those poems can reveal
Speaker 1: to you. To know something off by heart is to
Speaker 1: have it ready at your disposal, to bring into conversation,
Speaker 1: to the circumstances within which you're brought to recite it.
Speaker 1: And that's going to change it because the audience is
Speaker 1: not just you, it's what's happening to you in the moment,
Speaker 1: and then the timeless words that you're reciting. William Waters
Speaker 1: is a great book called Poetry's Touch, which is looking
Speaker 1: at the word you in poetry, and he's saying that
Speaker 1: poetry seeks an audience, and the audience isn't just the
Speaker 1: first person to read it or the first time that
Speaker 1: person reads it. It is the changing circumstances of a
Speaker 1: life as you return again and again to something that
Speaker 1: is so important that you've learned it by heart or
Speaker 1: you've kept a bookmarkting it or you've had it printed out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, A couple of things you said there really struck me.
Speaker 4: And I think that being in conversation with you, know,
Speaker 4: I was in twelve step programs for a number of
Speaker 4: years of recovering heroin addict, and we would have big
Speaker 4: book meetings, right, the AA big book, and you would
Speaker 4: read the same chapters again. I mean, if you kept
Speaker 4: going to the meeting, right, you kept sooner or later
Speaker 4: you circle back to all of it, and it was
Speaker 4: somewhat new every time. But I think it was made
Speaker 4: new by the fact that I knew that I was
Speaker 4: going to probably have to disc us it and I
Speaker 4: was probably going to have to say what it meant
Speaker 4: to me. And there was an easy path there, which
Speaker 4: was to say the same super wise thing I said
Speaker 4: last time, right, But there's a deeper way in which
Speaker 4: it says what does this mean now? And so I
Speaker 4: think that idea of asking good questions and of considering
Speaker 4: yourself in conversation with is a really great thing. Like
Speaker 4: I had never thought of Powerful Stranger in the way
Speaker 4: that you referenced it, right. I think I was more
Speaker 4: reading the poem in that sense of relax into the
Speaker 4: Woods right, like be present with what is, but suddenly
Speaker 4: recognizing like, oh, powerful stranger, that might not be a
Speaker 4: good thing, recast the entire poem. And so I think
Speaker 4: there are ways of re engaging with text, and you've
Speaker 4: helped point out, you know what several of those are.
Speaker 1: Well, the powerful stranger might be that hungry wolf you're
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Another thing that you have talked about that I
Speaker 4: found really intriguing is you talk about in circles of
Speaker 4: faith or spirituality that we give a lot of time
Speaker 4: to the testimony what being involved in that spirituality or
Speaker 4: whatever has done for us. And certainly, if I reference
Speaker 4: AA right, AA is eighty five percent testimony, and that
Speaker 4: is in many ways a really good thing. Right Me,
Speaker 4: hearing someone else's testimony that they were able to get
Speaker 4: sober and get through what I got through was really
Speaker 4: helpful because it gave me hope. But you point out
Speaker 4: that there's another side to this, and it's that you know,
Speaker 4: if someone is saying Jesus fed me when I was hungry,
Speaker 4: we hear that, but those who are still hungry feel bereft.
Speaker 4: Or if someone's talking about the deep piece they get
Speaker 4: from meditation, and we meditate and we're not getting deep peace, right,
Speaker 4: we feel like there's something wrong with us or we're
Speaker 4: failing in some way. So say more about that, because
Speaker 4: I think that's a really nuanced point that testimony can
Speaker 4: be either really encouraging, but it can also be deeply discouraging. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think any testimonial is a certain form of initiation,
Speaker 1: which is about do you have the story of becoming
Speaker 1: a member of this group or reaffirming your commitment to
Speaker 1: this group in a way that you can share it
Speaker 1: with the group and the group will accept. If you're
Speaker 1: ever in a group like a twelve stre group or
Speaker 1: something like that, and somebody comes along and says, oh,
Speaker 1: this is my first time, and then they share something
Speaker 1: and it's very powerful. People might go, my god, it
Speaker 1: feels like you've been one of us for years. You see.
Speaker 1: That kind of affirmation is true and powerful and kind.
Speaker 1: But I wonder who else is hearing that and thinking
Speaker 1: nobody's ever saidcted me about my story and not just
Speaker 1: the point of view of comparison. There's always going to
Speaker 1: be reasons to undo your own sense of stability with comparison,
Speaker 1: but it is to say what is being rewarded and
Speaker 1: what is being ignored and what is being punished. A
Speaker 1: testimonial is a certain way of communicating that you're a
Speaker 1: member of a group, and I'm always interested in a group.
Speaker 1: Is it easy to join and difficult to join? Is
Speaker 1: it easy to leave? Is it hard to leave? Does
Speaker 1: somebody else make you leave? Who gets to say? What
Speaker 1: gets to stay? These are serious questions about what's happening
Speaker 1: in any group reaffirmation narrative experience. There is a border
Speaker 1: around what kind of stories are likely to be told,
Speaker 1: and the braver groups, I think, allow for the stories
Speaker 1: that are being told to include elements of deep criticism.
Speaker 1: People might say, I hate coming to this group. I
Speaker 1: keep coming because it helps me in this part of
Speaker 1: my life, but actually certain things really annoy me, and
Speaker 1: not just because I'm grumpy, but because they really annoy me.
Speaker 1: That's a really fine capacity that a group can have
Speaker 1: to whole critique, and what that can do is to
Speaker 1: signal to other people, oh God, I don't need to
Speaker 1: drink the kool aid. I can just think does it help,
Speaker 1: rather than do I believe absolutely everything that the group
Speaker 1: proposes about itself? And testimonial based groups, I think always
Speaker 1: have to pay attention to how much of their own
Speaker 1: ideology is being affirmed. It's a certain form of benevolent
Speaker 1: group hostility, seemingly benevolent group hostile ability that can come
Speaker 1: across if all of the stories that are chosen or
Speaker 1: are rewarded in a particular way are of a kind
Speaker 1: that demand obedience or demand and stick at it until
Speaker 1: it works for you. Well, what if it's not going
Speaker 1: to work. Whatever kind of effort and pain is being
Speaker 1: demanded of the storyteller to fit in, does the group
Speaker 1: have the capacity to hear? Actually, your demands don't work
Speaker 1: for everybody, and some groups too, and those groups I
Speaker 1: think can do something very interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does strike me as we talk about this,
Speaker 4: there really are I hate to use these words. I'll
Speaker 4: use them for ease of purpose, you know, although I
Speaker 4: don't even want to use them. Good groups and bad groups.
Speaker 4: But that's not what I mean to say. But to
Speaker 4: your point, you know, I can think of groups I've
Speaker 4: been in where there's absolutely no room for believing anything different,
Speaker 4: you know, or even questioning. You know, when I talk
Speaker 4: about AA right, I'm not talking about a monolith. Right.
Speaker 4: That's the thing I often think that I want to
Speaker 4: say to people is like, don't go to a meeting
Speaker 4: and think you've experienced AA. You need to go to
Speaker 4: a bunch of meetings to see because you know, in
Speaker 4: my town of Columbus, I could point you to some
Speaker 4: groups that I think are some of the most beautiful
Speaker 4: things on the planet, and I could point you to
Speaker 4: some groups where I'd be like, I really I wouldn't
Speaker 4: advise that. But even in some of those groups, people
Speaker 4: are getting what they need exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so you know, it's really difficult to judge.
Speaker 4: And the other reason I love groups is I do
Speaker 4: think that if we can do it, it shines a
Speaker 4: real light on ourselves and how we respond to other
Speaker 4: people and what comes up in us. It's a different
Speaker 4: opportunity for healing than in one on one conversation because group,
Speaker 4: I think we all react to groups. We show up
Speaker 4: and we're new, and we don't know the people, and
Speaker 4: we're instantly judging them and wondering what they think of us.
Speaker 4: And there's all this stuff going on, and that can
Speaker 4: be really instructive to watch and learn and be like, oh,
Speaker 4: isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there's no such thing as a perfect group,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't want to join a perfect group. Some
Speaker 1: groups that are doing really, really important work have to
Speaker 1: become very self protective. And one of the consequences of
Speaker 1: such self protection is that maybe they fortify their borders
Speaker 1: to an extent that might not be needed. Or maybe
Speaker 1: they say, oh, let's not have that story because that
Speaker 1: story will query the narrative of healing that we're all about.
Speaker 1: That narrative will always put its way through that There'd
Speaker 1: be no doubt the group will face its own hostility.
Speaker 1: That will always happen. And so I think in all
Speaker 1: the flawed groups are part of It's just a good
Speaker 1: idea to recognize we're not looking for a perfect group,
Speaker 1: and so therefore relax. Yes, the recognition that the group
Speaker 1: is complicated is an indication that it's a group and
Speaker 1: that it's doing its work. And if your group is
Speaker 1: set up for communication and you find that actually your
Speaker 1: group doesn't have great communication, that doesn't mean you're a
Speaker 1: bunch of hypocrites. It just means you're doing the work.
Speaker 1: And the question is is can you talk about the
Speaker 1: lack of communication in your group? About communication? If you can't,
Speaker 1: well then you have work to do. But can you
Speaker 1: go what a brilliant group that can face its own subtleties,
Speaker 1: face its own hostilities, face its own threats. Those kinds
Speaker 1: of groups are brilliant.
Speaker 4: Indeed, what is a poem that is really alive for you?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 4: That's not one of your poems. You've collected fifty of them.
Speaker 4: You do a podcast I don't know how frequently you
Speaker 4: do it called Poetry Unbound, where you bring a poem
Speaker 4: out and you discuss it. I'm curious what's really alive
Speaker 4: for you now? Or I'll give you a choice b
Speaker 4: on that what poem has felt really alive to you
Speaker 4: is you've gone through grief.
Speaker 1: There's a poem by Larna Goodison. She's a Jamaican poet.
Speaker 1: She was the poet Lauriate of Jamaica for a number
Speaker 1: of years, and it's an older poet of hers called
Speaker 1: this is a Hymn hymn and it has the cadence
Speaker 1: of a lullaby, cadence of consolation. And she's basically in
Speaker 1: the body of the poem looking out to people who
Speaker 1: have felt overlooked or outside, and she's saying, this is
Speaker 1: a hymn for you. What's great is that it isn't
Speaker 1: proposing some doxology. It isn't proposing some creed that people
Speaker 1: should believe in. Isn't proposing religion. It isn't proposing that
Speaker 1: these individuals were right.
Speaker 4: Or wrong, or you know.
Speaker 1: It isn't making an enemy out of whoever it is,
Speaker 1: whatever group that they were wishing to belong to, into
Speaker 1: which they don't belong. It's just saying, here's a hymn.
Speaker 1: Here's a small moment of something that you can recall
Speaker 1: with a simple melody. Ultimately, that's what a hymn is.
Speaker 1: It has a simple enough melody that you know, within
Speaker 1: hearing your verse and a chorus, you should be able
Speaker 1: to continue to sing it wrong. I love the humility
Speaker 1: that she has to say this is a hymn and
Speaker 1: not explain whether him is. It's like somebody was just saying,
Speaker 1: here's your constitution, here's your constitution, here's your constitution. Somebody
Speaker 1: might say you need you to find what a constitution is,
Speaker 1: and the response is to say, no, here's yours.
Speaker 4: Here's yours.
Speaker 1: And she's offering that out. And I think that is
Speaker 1: a beautiful, gentle poem, But underneath its gentleness lies a
Speaker 1: restraint in the writing to not try to justify what
Speaker 1: she's making. The offering and restraint in that way is
Speaker 1: an indication of extraordinary artistic control. And I love the
Speaker 1: artistic control that Laura Godis demonstrates in that old poem
Speaker 1: of herse. Yeah, you'll find it online. This is a
Speaker 1: hymna goodis Well.
Speaker 4: We will put a link to it in the show notes.
Speaker 4: So we're nearing the end of our time, but I
Speaker 4: wanted to end on a topic of prayer. You speak
Speaker 4: fairly eloquently on prayer, and I could read a bunch
Speaker 4: of different things that you've written, but I'm going to
Speaker 4: just tee up one thing and I'm going to let
Speaker 4: you just then go wherever you want. And you say
Speaker 4: that true prayer only really needs one thing, and you've
Speaker 4: said it's a recognition of need. Say more about where
Speaker 4: you are with prayer right now, what you believe that sentence,
Speaker 4: or anything you want to say about prayer, and maybe
Speaker 4: even for maybe a slight spin for people who are like, eh,
Speaker 4: I don't know, prayer doesn't sound like it's for me.
Speaker 4: And again, we're not trying to talk anybody into prayer,
Speaker 4: right that's not our job. But it is always nice too,
Speaker 4: I'll talk you out of it.
Speaker 1: I'm very good at that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, I've teed it up. You do with
Speaker 4: it what you like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I prefer to think about desire than prayer. What
Speaker 1: is it that you want? What is it that you
Speaker 1: want to ask for? Prier in French is where we
Speaker 1: get the word prayer from an English it means to ask,
Speaker 1: and yeah, what is it that you want to ask for?
Speaker 1: And what's your relationship with your asking? A silly story.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of COVID, I had been overseas and
Speaker 1: so I had to very quickly come home to Ireland
Speaker 1: because at that stage everybody was worried that the airports
Speaker 1: in different countries were going to close, so I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be stuck overseas for a long time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: my suitcase, a small suitcase, got absolutely trashed on the
Speaker 1: way back, irreparably.
Speaker 4: That's okay.
Speaker 1: It was a global crisis, so I thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to need to buy a new suitcase. So there was
Speaker 1: a particular kind of suitcase that I liked. It's made
Speaker 1: out of recycled materials, so I kept tony on the
Speaker 1: company's website. Nobody was going anywhere, so I was in
Speaker 1: no rush, and because they only make from whatever recycling
Speaker 1: materials they have, the collors tend to all be one
Speaker 1: collar for a while because they've just gotten a big
Speaker 1: shipment of something. Anyway, after a while, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of months where I checked the website maybe every
Speaker 1: ten days or two weeks, a color came up that
Speaker 1: I liked, so I bought the suitcase. Lovely. It arrived
Speaker 1: a week or two later, and to my shock, though,
Speaker 1: I found myself going back on the website of this
Speaker 1: company just looking at what new colors came in, not thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I might have chosen the wrong one because I liked
Speaker 1: the color that I bought. But I missed my looking,
Speaker 1: I missed my wanting, I missed my desire. That the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of desire in itself can be a crisis. The
Speaker 1: silly example of the bag can indicate something much more
Speaker 1: complicated for us. It might be that you think I'm
Speaker 1: looking for the one they were a romantic partner, and
Speaker 1: yet when you find somebody where you think this feels
Speaker 1: like a great fit, you still might find yourself missing looking.
Speaker 1: Or you might think that job that I really want,
Speaker 1: that promotion, that recognition, that I really want. When I
Speaker 1: get it, there will be something in me where my yearning,
Speaker 1: my desire will be ceased because it will have been gratified,
Speaker 1: and it probably won't. Your hunger will find a new
Speaker 1: way to look. And so for me, the question is
Speaker 1: about prayer is not about where it's going to, but
Speaker 1: where it's from. And what's my relationship with my desire?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: Writing? Walking?
Speaker 4: What thinking?
Speaker 1: What quietude? What talking to my friends? What being honest
Speaker 1: about what a damn hypocrite I am? What practices of
Speaker 1: that kind do I have to help me acknowledge the
Speaker 1: complicated way within which desire lives in me and to
Speaker 1: find something that's good enough.
Speaker 3: To hold that.
Speaker 1: You can call it prayer, you can call it meditation,
Speaker 1: you can call it talking to your best friend, you
Speaker 1: can call it whatever you want, provided it's doing the work.
Speaker 1: And that I think is necessary because our desires have
Speaker 1: many levels to them, and they can drive us, and
Speaker 1: the question is where, oh they drive us? That's what
Speaker 1: comes to mind when I think about prayer.
Speaker 4: That's beautiful. We are at the end of our time.
Speaker 4: You and I are going to continue in a post
Speaker 4: show conversation where I want to explore this idea of
Speaker 4: desire and fulfillment and craving and the distinctions.
Speaker 2: Of all that.
Speaker 4: And we'll also have you read a poem or two
Speaker 4: of your own. Listeners. If you'd like access to the
Speaker 4: post show conversations AD free episodes special episode I do
Speaker 4: each week called Teaching Song and a Poem and the
Speaker 4: pleasure of supporting something that matters to you, you can
Speaker 4: go to one feed dot net slash join Padreck. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much. This has really been a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, It's love good to be with you.
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