This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Aristotle insisted that each virtue has at least two affiliated vices. Take Southern politeness as an example. I actually think it's quite a fine virtue, a social embodiment of kindness. Too little, and you can imagine yourself wandering down the street in Moscow. Too much, and you fall prey to mean-spirited conflict avoidance. This latter failing was, has been, often still is, one of my vices. And then I get reminded...
Peace regularly doesn't look very peaceful. Peace looks like complex arguments that happen between people.
That's Padraig O Tuama, one of the North of Ireland's finest poets, and a theologian. He's done years of work trying to facilitate peace in the Northern of Ireland among parties hostile one to the other. Until recently he was the leader of the Corrymeela community, Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation community.
I've been in rooms with people where one person would say, “I'm a member of this organization,” and another person would say, “Well, that organization shot my father,” and then deny that they shot him, or call him a legitimate target. So those are terrible rooms to be in. Where I've seen that kind of dialogue work has been where somebody can speak very truthfully and very bluntly, but with an invitation to say, “We can do this better with each other.”
Our interview with poet Padraig O Tuama, along with some of his poetry, in just a moment.
Grateful today to be interviewing Mr. Padraig O Tuama of the Northern of Ireland, a poet, theologian, and peacemaker. Welcome Padraig.
Thanks very much, Lee. It's nice to be with you.
You've been doing work there in various forms of peacemaking and healing of communities for quite some time. Would you tell us a little bit about Corrymeela and the work that you've done there through the years?
Yeah. So Corrymeela is a reconciliation community that was set up in 1965 by a bunch of students and some older people as well. The first leader was Reverend Ray Davey, who was a Presbyterian minister. He had been a prisoner of war during the Second World War. He had been a volunteer padre with the YMCA. He was captured and imprisoned, then, near Dresden, and his release from that prisoner of war camp came as a result of the bombing of Dresden. And that was of course considered a war crime, that bombing, because of the civilian casualties that were predicted, but they nonetheless went ahead. So he came back traumatized, and also saw an Ireland that had recently been partitioned by the British, and was seeing that people's imagination about what freedom and peace could look like was usually an imagination that imagined that the other, whoever they were, would be annihilated. And so he saw, I suppose, the writing on the wall in terms of where Ireland was going. This was 1945. But already, partitioning a country is a terrible way to ever do anything. Partitioning a country just starts off new wars. So by 1965, these things had gotten worse, so he started off this community of people--not a residential community--a community of people in their ordinary jobs who gathered around volunteer work at a residential center. There were symposiums about politics and peace and how to argue in a way where you weren't seeking to murder each other. And that work has continued. About 10,000 people a year go through the programs at Corrymeela. Most of those people go through on site, up on the very north coast of Ireland. There are programs involving young people, or people from different political points of view, or religious points of view, or community points of view, or economic points of view.
Yeah. I hear in a lot of your work and what I've read about Corrymeela, you're trying to get people to listen well?
Well, yeah. Trying to get people to listen well, you're trying to get multiple versions of the same story to live in a room. You're trying to expose fractures from within communities. Sometimes in a conflict in society like this, you'd think, well, we all think the same, and you all think the same. Often, what you're trying to do is to expose that actually the “we” is made up of all kinds of plurals, and actually we don't all agree. We think very different things. Just on this particular topic, we think we all agree. So sometimes by realizing that the “we” isn't nearly as simple or singular as that, and if I can begin to imagine that I can be in close affiliate relationship with people who actually disagree very seriously on certain topics--just not this one--then I'll begin to imagine that the “you,” the “they,” the other, also has as much complexity within it. And so therefore I'm not thinking that all of you people think all of the same thing about this. I'm beginning to think, you know, maybe on this topic, that other group thinks very similarly, but on other topics they think very differently. And so alliances can become unexpected then, and you can perhaps feel a little bit less loyal to the group belonging that you imagine forms the “us,” and begin to become more curious about the group belonging that forms the “they.” And then suddenly all kinds of unexpected alliances can occur within the context of the group. That's all done within the context of safety, of course. If there's the presence of threat in a room, or an ongoing level of systemic threat, then such conversations are probably preemptive.
You've spoken at some length about agreement not being the basis of relationship. Will you talk a little bit about that?
Well, agreement and common ground for me are not a bad place to start if you're bringing a group of people together who've had a long history of serious fallouts and serious practiced misunderstandings with each other. Having a little bit of agreement or a little bit of common ground at the start might help things get going. So it's not like I think those are bad things. I just don't think that those are the things that will save us. I think that curiosity and a capacity to not agree with each other is something that would really help, and to know what to do when I don't agree. And agree to disagree isn't enough either. That's a pretty boring end point. I'm curious to think, how can I begin to examine: Am I complicit? Am I part of the problem here? Were I stepping outside of the situation, would I realize that actually I'm the enemy, rather than thinking we're mutual enemies? Is the cause of justice against me? Can I ask myself critical questions in public? Can I disagree seriously? Or can I realize actually a fruitful outcome is where I will change my mind and I agree with you that actually I have been on the wrong side of this, and that I have benefited from something that I've denied? So those are very serious civic practices to happen in public. And so you have to create an environment where that can happen carefully. It looks careful and calm, but also it is filled with anger and with pain and with lament and with fury. Peace regularly doesn't look very peaceful. Peace looks like complex arguments that happen between people. And so that requires very careful facilitation, and very careful boundaries, and very focused ways of saying, “We're going to stay on topic to this.”
And you're dealing--certainly in the history of Corrymeela--you're dealing with loss of family members, loss of loved ones.
Yeah. Well, all kinds of losses: loss of family members, loss of loved ones, loss of safety, loss of the imagination about what the future can be. Also loss of language, loss of a sense of territory, loss of a sense of historical connection with a history that you love, loss of the name for the place that you love and the introduction of somebody else's name for the place where you are. There's all these various levels of losses. And each of those can manifest itself in different ways. So often we're speaking about different kinds of losses in groups of people with different kinds of experiences and different styles of a relationship with conflict. It's a wonder we get anything done at all.
[Laughs] Would you talk a bit about how, so often, the challenge of listening seems to be burdened with the notion that simply to listen or to seek to understand somehow underwrites complicity?
Yeah. So the words you mentioned there--“listening” and “complicity” and “understand”--they're all words that are gathered around this question of who's right and who's wrong. And who do I believe who's right, and who do I believe who's wrong? Do I have sympathy for somebody who believes something terrible? And if I do have sympathy for somebody who believes or did something terrible, am I on their side just because I have sympathy for them, or can I have sympathy for somebody who did the intolerable? In a certain sense, these are questions that the human condition has been gathered around for years. When you look at the questions at the heart of the Jewish book of Leviticus and the Hebrew Bible, that that book is examining seriously the question of purity: and not just purity in the idea of a God, but purity in the sense of, “Who's going to infect me with something?” or “Who do I think has done something so serious that they need to be removed from us for awhile before they're admitted back in?” So these are ancient questions, and they're manifesting today. You can see them occurring on Twitter very definitely in a small way, but that's got serious consequences. The questions around cancel culture are really the questions that the book of Leviticus is also holding. And the book of Leviticus has a number of different prescriptions as to what should happen in that. The book of Leviticus doesn't have one simple prescription or solution. So often in a situation like here, like in Ireland... and it's really important for me to say that I don't think the practices in Ireland transfer elsewhere. Every place needs to look at the question about how they do this there, so I'll answer it from the point of view of Ireland. From our perspective here, to bring somebody into a room who has lost a member of their family who was killed by the British army, for instance, and then bringing somebody else into the room who has lost a member of their family who was killed by the IRA, you've got these questions of legitimate forces in the room. Who believes what is a legitimate force. Some people in the room will say, “Yeah, here we are in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the United Kingdom.” Somebody else will say, “No, here we are in Ireland, which is occupied territory by the United Kingdom.” How do you have a conversation? And if a person can find the way to listen to somebody else's point of view, they might feel like they're being disloyal to their loved one who was murdered, or they might feel like they're going to have their own group belonging questioned if somebody said, “I heard that you were part of that dialogue program with people from the other side.” You know, “For you to find anything of empathy with somebody from there is to be complicit in the very wrong that you're seeking to overcome through your advocacy for justice.” And so in any one engagement--whether that's friendship, whether that's becoming friends with your neighbor, whether that's engaging in a peer program--you've got all of these conflicting desires happening all at once. And often, the imagination is that there's going to be a single, simple solution to what the outcome of that's going to look like. And I think the work of peace is to recognize that even in every individual, there are so many plurals, and at the same time, you can feel like “I'm glad I met that person from the other side,” as well as feel like “God, it makes me feel a little bit complicit,” as well as to think I learned something, as well as to think I had curiosity, as well as to think that hurt, as well as to think this is a compromise that I think is justifiable in the name of peace, but God, I still wish I didn't have to make that compromise. So all of those things can happen in the one person. And I think part of the imagination that says, “This is all for the good, and the outcome of this is always going to be good and fully good...” I think that puts people into conflict with the many intelligences and the many wisdoms that they're experiencing by being part of something. There's always going to be pain--extra pain--by taking part in peace. And the question is, “Is this pain tolerable for me right now?” And that's not something that you can dictate to a population of people. That's something that individual people have to ask themselves and decide whether they will or won't.
For instance, I'll give you an example. Sometimes here, we've done single community engagement, so working with a bunch of Catholics and a bunch of Protestants. Now, I should say those are shortcuts, really, to talking about working with a bunch of people who believe that Northern Ireland is a valid part of the United Kingdom, and working with people who say, “I don't even want to say the word Northern Ireland. I want to call it the North, and it's a part of Ireland.” Catholic and Protestant... here, they're markings for a political understanding, really what you think about British-Irish relations, and what you think about this jurisdiction that was created a hundred years ago by the British: Northern Ireland. Catholic and Protestant are shortcuts to talking about that. So we had a bunch of Catholic people, and we worked with them for 12 or 13 weeks: single identity groups, really to talk about, “How do you disagree with each other? How do you work out with the fact that you don't all agree with each other about what a peaceful solution in the future might look like?” And then at the same time, we were working with a bunch of Protestant people asking the same kind of questions, so that it wasn't just an imagination of, “You people all think the following, and you all disagree with us.” It's kind of realizing, “Oh, we disagree with ourselves,” like I mentioned earlier on. And there was a Catholic woman in the group of Catholic people who was delighted and was a very active part of the 12 weeks of meeting in the Catholic single identity group, and she benefited a lot from it. It was her own choice to participate, but when it came time to meet with the Protestant group, she said, “I'm going to step out of this process now,” which was entirely her own choice. And you could think that that, therefore, is a failure, or a reluctance of her to be part of a project of peace, but that's not the case at all. She had been bereaved three times. Three close members of her family had been murdered. And she knew that Protestant people would probably feel embarrassed to have somebody like her in the room. Now, whether that was accurate or not, that was her, overriding concern, and she thought she didn't want to get in the way of a group having so much discussion when there was somebody who had been known to have carried so much grief in public. So she stepped out of that group with all her best wishes. She wrote a letter for the Protestant folks to say, “I've been part of this. I wish you all the best, but for reasons of my own--and here they are--this is the reason why I'm not taking part in that.” That was her own individual choice to make, and it was filled with wisdom. And my opinion was irrelevant. She had been part of a project, and she demonstrated what it's like for her to take part in a civic engagement. And she did that according to her own terms and made her own mind up. That was brilliant, and my job was not to say what the shape of that should look like. My job was to accompany people as they made their own informed decisions like that. And I think her participation, and then her choice to not continue to participate, was one that the group learned a huge amount from.
I'm reminded of a story that is somewhat comedic and certainly not as serious in its consequences as the case you just indicated, but your story about one of your 11-year-olds that you worked with as a school teacher that asked about God creating Protestants.
Yeah. I was a chaplain, and there was this magnificent 11-year-old who was fantastic at football. I think she'll either grow up to be a footballer or a lawyer, because she had skills in abundance for both of these. She loved to lay out a thesis when she was building something. So I knew her well. And so she said to me, “Padraig, answer me this.” Because I was a chaplain, they called me by my first name. “Answer me this. God made us, right?” And I knew she was just doing the lawyerly thing of establishing an argument. And I was like, “Okay, fine.” I mean, I have questions about what God means and made and all that, but I knew that this was just the opening argument. “So, God made us, right?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah.” “And God loves us all, right?” And again, I have questions about what does that mean to conjugate a verb for the God. Anyway, but I knew that wasn't her final point. And I said, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” And she goes, “Answer me this. Why did God make Protestants?” And that's a serious question. She was born years after the peace agreements, and peace agreements are only the start of something, never the end of something. But I wanted to know why she'd asked that, because she was such a fair-minded individual in her class, and she would not tolerate bullying from amongst her class. But here she was. And I said, “Tell me more about your question.” And she said, “They hate him and they hate us,” as in us, Catholics, and him, God. She's 11, and I just heard that she had been educated very well by a society that had built itself on an imagination that the “they” hate us. And so therefore, because of that imagination, you begin to think that they were made by some other God.
How do you begin to explain that to an 11-year-old? She was very intelligent, but really all she was doing was telling me that she's part of a society that she's part of. And so I said, “I know a lot of Protestants who'd love to have you on their football team.” And she was like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, you're brilliant.” And part of me wanted to think the interruption of this narrative is not going to be theoretical. It's going to be human-based. And I'm saying that within an Irish context. I'm not saying that's the same in the United States, but in an Irish context for her, the interruption of that needed to be societal, and needed to be policy-based, but from her point of view, I think she needed to play football with people who she really liked. And then she said--because Ireland had been beaten by France in football the week before, and a handball had been a last minute goal, and it was discovered later on that it was a handball, but only after the match had finished--so when I told her that there were Protestants that I knew who'd love to play football with her, she said, “Answer me another question. What about French people? What God made them?” [Laughter] And we were all united in our hatred over the French that week because of the Ireland loss. So I was like, “You're definitely right. Some other God made the French.” She was magnificent. She'd be in her twenties now, presumably fighting lots of law cases or scoring goals in football.
Yeah. I've learned from you and Michael McRay about this book, Moving Beyond Sectarianism, and their scale of sectarian danger. Would you talk a little bit about that? I find that just a remarkable sort of construct.
This book, Moving Beyond Sectarianism, published by Columbia Press in 2001, I think, is written by an American Mennonite and a Scottish Catholic nun. Cecelia Clegg is from Scotland, and had lived in Ireland for many years. She is a sociologist extraordinaire and theologian. And Joe Liechty is an American Mennonite who had lived in Ireland for years, too. So they did a sociological study, really, of: What is sectarianism? What does it look like? What's the shape? What motivates it? What are some of the underlying layers? If a person says they hate us and they hate our God, what's underneath that? How do you begin to ask those questions? So it's a very systematic exploration of that. It's absolutely particular to Ireland, and I don't believe in the universal, really. But there are some things about it that apply elsewhere. And one of the things they do is to talk about: What is a scale, from one to 11, of a non-sectarian statement to a sectarian statement? And then they problematize that too, because something that seems very non-sectarian can be full of sectarianism, and then something that seems very sectarian can actually just be being honest as well. The first one they say is “We are different. We believe differently.” And the final one is “You're evil,” or “You are the devil.” What are the steps along the way? It's easy to think, oh yeah, in my lifetime, I definitely just want to be based here, tolerating all differences. But some differences shouldn't be tolerated. So along the way, they have things to say. “Because I disagree so seriously with what you think, I'm going to tell you what I think, so that we can have an honest relationship with each other.” That's a totally reasonable thing to say. It's filled with possibilities of violences that have been enacted in the name of that kind of language, but that doesn't mean that that kind of language shouldn't be used, because we do have serious disagreements with each other. One of the other steps is to say, “You are not who you say you are. We are who you say you are.” That's a very serious thing. I'm a gay man, and I've had people for years say to me, “You're not a proper man.” And from an analytical point of view, one of the things that they're doing is they're taking the possibility of empowered self-determination and self-communication from me, and telling me that I fit into their category for me, not my category for me. That's happening all the time, and when you can begin to look at the ways we speak to each other, through their lens there can be some really helpful wisdoms and analyses that they offer. Again, it's important to say that it doesn't always transfer elsewhere, but there might be some things from it that you can go, “Oh, that bit is really helpful for me in applying this in another situation.”
Right. You already, three or four times, have said, “I'm only speaking for the case in Ireland.” Why the care there?
Because I've seen it so often. I mean, God almighty, we've been plagued with people from overseas here who've arrived here to say, “Oh yeah, I've been in the Balkans. So I understand that, so therefore I understand everything here.” God almighty. Go home. Leave us alone. Or, we've had people who think that the Irish situation can be understood through the lens of Israel and Palestine, or through the lens of the Balkans, or further afield through Korea or South Africa. And there are similar dynamics sometimes, but then there's also always going to be particularities. I've heard some people imagine that because I've worked in conflict resolution here that therefore I'd have solutions for dialogue about race in the United States. God almighty. I mean, the Irish witness in the United States has been one of complicity with slavery and maintaining that. Who the hell would I think I am, that just because I've been working here in these dynamics, that I would have anything other than repentance and learning to do were I in the United States? So questions of power manifest themselves very differently, and I always want to be really careful not to assume that because I've been long practiced in making mistakes here, that necessarily gives me much wisdom for application elsewhere. I suppose I always want things to be a proposal for a conversation rather than an imposition for the idea that I have any imagination about what something should look like in the United States or in other countries.
From the American context, one of the things that we're certainly dealing with, and have dealt with in various waves since the founding of the United States, is various forms of Christianity and nationalism. And obviously Irish Catholicism is in some way a different species of Christianity and nationalism, I suppose. But what are some of your basic observations that you've had there about the ways in which Christianity gets co-opted, and that rightful love for place gets co-opted? What are the things you're learning and seeing, and things you're having to grapple with and struggle with in that regard?
Well, I suppose I want to trouble the word “nationalism” because I don't think there is such a single thing as nationalism. I sometimes hear British people critique Irish nationalism, and I find that both insulting and narrow-minded, as well as being a lack of information. British nationalism, over the course of 700 years in Ireland, has sought to impose a version of nationalism from Britain in Ireland. Irish partial independence came about a hundred years ago. And so I'm always curious as to what practice of colonization and warmaking has the voice that is currently condemning nationalism had over the course of 400 years, and how adequate are they in naming that and dealing with that in their own historical lessons, and their own pedagogy of historical education, and school, and public commemorations. So I see lots of small countries around the world who have been yearning for national independence for centuries suddenly begin to express something about nationalism. And then you have these erstwhile colonial forces--and I do consider the United States in a certain sense, white America, to have had an American interest overseas, imagination that has started wars in many places, as well as Britishness, as well as Frenchness, as well as Spanishness--they are the ones saying, “Oh, nationalism is a dangerous thing.” And part of me wants to go, “How the hell do you know? You've been going around and making wars for 500 years.” Not America, obviously. They've come more lately to the warmaking machine. But therefore, the question is, “What do we mean by nationalism?” When a small country just says, “Do you know what? We'd actually like a little bit of self-determination. We'd like a constitution that we've written in our own language,” that doesn't mean that we're going to be violent to people from other places that want to come in here. Not necessarily. It's usually that the places that have been the most violent are the ones who are being the most critical of their erstwhile colonies that are seeking to find a sense of self-determination and struggle into that articulation. So what we mean by nationalism is something that I think we probably need a variety of different words to refer to that. And I regularly hear people who live in countries that have had a strong public muscularity in the warmaking machine of colonialism be very, very public about their opinion about small independent countries that are seeking to have our own languages, and seeking to have our own determinations.
I think most of the job of empire and former empire is to demonstrate how they know they have debts, not declarations. D-E-B-T-S. Debts to pay because of the wars they've started, and because of the languages they annihilated, and because of the self-determination, because of this splitting up of communities, because of the famines that they orchestrated and then called natural and they weren't. All of these things are the techniques and technologies of the last few hundred years of European expansion, A) into Europe, and then B) further beyond Europe. And I hear lots of countries deny that they have that, and think, Oh no, that's just the past; we're just talking about today. And I think that most people who have inherited a war-affected past don't see that the past is so far away. We're speaking in English for God's sake. I wish to God that my English were much poorer than it is. And I wish to God my Irish were as fluent as my English were. And that's an ongoing way within which the past is very present today. And then I look to the United States, and I hear the amount of Murphys and McCarthys and O Tuamas and O'Sullivans all around the place, and I think about: How did the Irish who suffered a lot here nonetheless not learn the lessons of suffering, and turn those into the creation of suffering for people on the trail of tears, and the Irish support for the ongoing support for enslavement in the 1800s in the United States? I wish to God that Irish people had been more critical of imperial powers when Irish people left here because of the famine. But unfortunately, typically Irish people joined up with those very forces in oppressing local populations in Jamaica, Montserrat, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada. It's to our shame.
I wrote my master's on the narrative analysis of human encounter in the Gospel of Mark, particularly between Jesus of Nazareth and marginalized people. And I was reading a commentary on Greek. It was a great commentary, and I looked to the back of it to think, What other commentaries has this publishing house published in this series, because it was so good. It was just magnificent. And there were other biblical books written on the cover. They had commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, a commentary on First and Second Peter. There's a commentary on the book of Revelation. There is a commentary on The Facts of Life. There's a commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. So nestled in there was this term, “The Facts of Life,” in the midst of all these biblical commentary books. And seeing that phrase, “The Facts of Life,” just there like that shocked me. I didn't know what to make of it. And this poem is, I'd say, 90% written in the 10 minutes after seeing that. I just couldn't get over: What are the facts of life? And seeing it there made me query. In conflict resolution, you're always thinking about: What are the facts, and what are the perceptions? And the difference between facts and perception is a major element that you're always going to be involved with. And it's not as simple as we think, because we argue about facts and perceptions all the time. And then we can think that perceptions are demoted, and facts are the things that we want. And who decides what a fact is? If somebody says, “I haven't slept a wink since my husband was murdered 30 years ago,” do you want to argue with that on a level of fact? So here's a poem called “The Facts of Life.”
That you were born and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough and sometimes not.
That you will lie if only to yourself.
That you will get tired.
That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose.
That there will be some things that move you more than you can say.
That you will live that you must be loved.
That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of your attention.
That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who once were strangers and may well still be.
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's scarce.
That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.
That the structures that constrict 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 you might as well live and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.
You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. We are most grateful to have you joining us. Please leave us one of those five-star reviews on Apple podcasts and subscribe there or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Remember you can find our links, photos, books, and related videos from our extensive YouTube channel, all at tokensshow.com/podcast.
This is our interview with poet, peacemaker, theologian Padraig O Tuama from the Northern of Ireland. We actually have some lovely video footage of Padraig doing several readings for us on our YouTube channel, available at youtube.com/tokensshow or at tokensshow.com/video. Part two in just a moment.
You're listening to Tokens, and our interview with Padraig O Tuama.
In the work that you're doing, in the sort of encounters that you've described, is there a something that you believe can transcend difference? Is there a sort of intellectual construct, a theological construct, a sociological construct--something beyond all that difference--that somehow makes possible peaceableness, or that makes possible living together in some sort of constructive peace?
Well, I appreciate the question, Lee. And I don't think there is a something. I think there's a practice, and you move in and out of that practice. And sometimes it's too damn tiring to move into that practice. I know that when it comes to my work and working with people who would propose that gay people are demon-possessed or can be cured, for instance, I've got a lot of energy for engaging with that population of people who are public about that, but my partner Paul doesn't. And so sometimes I have invited people who've said utterly hateful things in public to a meal in my house, because part of me thinks, Well, I'll surprise you with hospitality, not to make nice, but to have a serious argument over soup and wine around my table. And Paul agrees that that's a good thing to do, but he'll never be in the house when I have those meals. He'll always leave, because he's not interested. And so those are two very different manifestations of hopefully two moral responses. And his response is moral. My serious doubt is to whether mine is. And so I suppose it's all in the practice. There is no intellectual ascent. There is no theory. And so I don't think that there's any one imagination as to what that looks like.
“The Pedagogy of Conflict” is a poem that I wrote following a weeklong encounter with folks from all across Ireland of a whole variety of political and religious points of view, as well as folks from Israel and Palestine from a whole variety of political and religious points of view. And our aim wasn't to come to agreement in the room, but our aim was to practice in the room something that might be beneficial for continuing to be in conversation with each other, to learn from each other, and to educate each other in terms of the pasts that we didn't hear the other comprehend. During that week, I heard so many people refer to their earliest memories where conflict was normalized. And I was thinking about the impact of growing up in conflict or war-impacted societies, where your family has to educate you to say, “Here's what you need to know,” when you're five or less or more. And in the room at one point, somebody said that they'd murdered someone, and they'd served a sentence for that. And somebody else said, “Don't use the word murder,” because they were part of the same political point of view. They said, “Lives were lost in the context of conflict. Don't use the word murder.” That person said, “I'll use whatever word I want.” And somebody else said, “Oh, I killed somebody,” and another person disagreed with that. Somebody else said, “I only ever shot at legitimate targets.” And then somebody else said, “Well, I suppose that made me a legitimate target then, when your organization shot at me when I was a child.” So I found myself thinking about grammar and numbers and words as a result of that. And there's a poem--a longer poem--called “The Pedagogy of Conflict,” and I'll read the third part of it here.
When I was a child, I learnt to count to five one, two, three, four, five.
But these days, I've been counting lives, so I count one life one life one life one life one life because each time is the first time that that life has been taken.
Legitimate Target has sixteen letters and one long abominable space between two dehumanising words.
I hear lots of resonance with a number of your poems--for example, Readings from the Book of Exile where you have these recurring numbers on narrative theology--and your emphasis upon story, taking up a story in which the end of the story is not yet known. Is that sort of a resonant--am I hearing that correctly--of your work? You're saying there's the practice; there's not necessarily a single construct or a single thing, and your own affinity for narrative theology?
Yeah, well, I think narrative theology--I'm on my third degree in theology at the moment--I find it fascinating. I mean, partly, the longer I study theology, the more questions I have about the idea of God, but the more curiosity I have about the great storytelling arc that we find within the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures, as well as other scriptures. I'm interested in how a narrative approach to theology isn't new, but has been around for a very long time. I'm interested in the courage of the Jews to have an entire body of work and practice of work in the Midrash that just asks very serious questions of the text and believes that the text, if it's serious, needs to have serious questions asked of it. And if the text can't cope with that, or if the God can't cope with that, well then it's not a sufficient text or God that you have in your imagination. And I think that that is a magnificent way to go about asking questions about religion. And if religion is important, it cannot be communicated in a simple list of here's what you do, and then don't question. That's not religion. I mean, that's control. Even if it's wise, even if the instructions are wise, to demand action and deny the capacity for curiosity or questioning or pushing, I think, is to deny the project of being human. I'm always interested in the multiple approaches to anything. So whether that's something a politician says or a priest says, both of them, if they want their words to be taken seriously, should be open to being asked serious questions. And when I hear defensiveness of anybody in those public roles like politicians or priests, I just think, if you can't cope with the serious question, perhaps you shouldn't be in your job.
I think for the last bit of conversation here, I would like to turn to one last question about peace with oneself. I noted, especially in Readings from the Book of Exile, for example, “Tis the Gift,” you start, “Tis the gift to be gentle with yourself at the end of a day when you've given of a day when you're spent.”
I've received that as a sort of sweet invitation to be gentle with oneself and to be peaceable with oneself. How does that work with you, and what are your own habits and practices of coming to be at peace with oneself?
That poem is a somewhat presumptuous continuation of the well-known shaker hymn “Tis the Gift to be Simple, Tis the Gift to Be Free.” So it can be sung to that tune if you're a singing person. There's a brewing company in Belfast. I've taken that poem and put it on the side of one of their stouts, which is a great joy. That might be one of my favorite publications ever.
That would be a great joy to me as well.
Yeah, to be on the side of a bottle of stout. I suppose I have never seen a situation in conflict zones and in conflict dialogue where accusing somebody in a way that is built on the imagination of their total demise has ever worked. So if I want you to believe something, accusing you and insulting you--where I only think that I just want to see your ridicule in public--I have never seen that work, even when it's justified. And it often is, because we believe terrible things about each other, and we've done terrible things to each other. And I've been in rooms with people where one person would say, “I'm a member of this organization,” and another person would say, “Well, that organization shot my father,” and then deny that they shot him, or call him a legitimate target. So those are terrible rooms to be in. We need to say difficult things to each other. But partially where I've seen that kind of dialogue work has been where somebody can speak very truthfully and very bluntly, but with an invitation to say, “We can do this better with each other. We don't have to be friends, but I don't want you to have to face the kind of thing that you made us face. I want you to face what you did, and then we can participate in something civic together.” So I've seen that work, and I've seen it powerfully. It's painful. And I suppose I'm interested in, how can I start that with myself? How can I have a spiritual practice that can be blunt in naming wrongdoing of myself, but also have an imagination of the self that is an invitation to a better way of being human, a more moral way of being human? That interests me, and I suppose I'm interested in an inner practice that locates me in the here and now, and locates me also in the face of my pains and my privileges, and asks me to do something interesting in the practice of those things as a person alive today.
So I suppose for me, a spiritual practice is to just greet everything, to say hello to it, to look at every day as the possibility of seeing things that I've anticipated and things I haven't anticipated. Ignatius of Loyola is an old friend of mine, the founder of the Jesuits: dead a long time, but I think about him every day. I think he has helped me a huge amount to be present to life as it is, hopefully more and more of life as it is. And, I think, start off the day by thinking, Well, here's what I know is going to happen today: there'll be an interview with Lee at some point later on today, or there'll be a phone call after that, and then there'll be some poems, and to think about the things that I'm thinking, All those will be lovely, or to think about the things that I think, Oh that will be the highlight of my day, and then to think about the thing that I'm already imagining that's going to be terrible, and to find just a little bit of distance from my imagination of all those things, and to think how I want to be in the presence of all those things. Whether what I'm anticipating to be beautiful is beautiful or not, whether what I'm anticipating to be terrible is terrible or not, there might be a small practice of hospitality in that that can help me be more present, to being more honest and more truthful to myself and to other people in those moments, and to pay attention to the little things that annoy me: the little arguments I have in my head, repetition of an argument, or a fantasy argument with somebody. How can I pay attention to those and go, “What's happening? Why am I inventing an argument that's not even happening, or continuing an argument that's been going on for 15 years in my head? Why am I doing that? Who are these characters that I'm dragging up like an archetype in order to create some kind of visual manifestation of something else that's happening inside of me?” How can I pay attention to those things, not by shouting at myself for saying that I'm a total failure as a human being, but by asking myself to take something seriously, take something playfully, and to consider that to be the meat of spirituality.
Yeah. Immediately following that is what has to be the greatest title of a poem I've ever read, entitled “Of Skinny Dipping, Lonely Nights, Charcoal Fires, Absolution, Loads of Guilt, Breakfast, Bucketfuls of Projection, and Forgiveness (A Longish Reflection on the Last Chapter of the Fourth Gospel).” A brilliant title.
Glad you like that one. I read that chapter every year on my birthday. It's been a very important chapter for me. And every year I find something different in it, some corner of it that the year has brought or the day is bringing in conversation with that chapter. I've done it since I was 18. And it's been a lovely ritual every year on my birthday to do it.
I think one of the reasons I love, love this particular poem of yours so much is that I was raised in a very rationalistic Christian tradition, and so we did not take lightly to claims of mystical experience or charismatic experience or anything like that. And so not necessarily being open to that, I can't say that I've had too many sorts of mystical experiences, but one of the few that I have had was a kind of meditation upon that chapter.
What happened?
The threefold repeated, “Do you love me?” I was actually in a garden in London, and I had taken students over. And so, we had been doing some reading that week about the historical poverty in the east end of London. We had done an outing the day before in trying to grapple with some of those questions. And then we would leave from there to go see our friends in Nairobi, where my wife and I spent a chunk of time in our early married years working at a slum in Nairobi. And so here we were, having read about historical poverty and the struggles in that context, and then getting ready to go see our friends in Nairobi, and I was in this beautiful context, with the sorts of self-loathing and the guilt that may come with that kind of sense of privilege. And so, I was praying and asking, “Is this career, this vocation, God, what you want of me?” And threefold, during that time, I heard, “Do you love me?” And it was a very significant moment for my life. And so I think your depiction here is very beautiful.
That's so moving. I mean, what I hear in that is that one of the things you were doing in your reflection was that you were making a decision in conversation with a text that you knew and loved. And I think that that's one of the powerful things about story, that whether you're returning to Lord of the Rings or the Bible, with texts that we know and love that present moral conundrum and present serious decision-making turning points of our lives--and serious admission of wrongdoing in our lives--that those characters, whether they're fictional or not, can be profound companions to us as we make and look for courage to act in the moment, and look for a way to set priorities. Rather than, “Am I doing the right thing with my career or not,” you heard the question of, “Are you loving?” Amazing reframing of a question, which is basically saying, “Do whatever the hell you want, provided you're loving.”
Let me ask just one more question. You mentioned Ignatius of Loyola being an old friend of yours. And I liked that construct, because I oftentimes find myself thinking that way. And I'll also think in terms of, in the Christian doctrine of Resurrection, I will tell myself about the people I look forward to being friends with at the Resurrection. And so I have my list of people. There's Thomas Merton, or there's Dag Hammarskjold, and so forth. Dorothy Day, if she'll have anything to do with me. But who are other friends of yours in that regard that you enjoy friendship with?
That's a lovely question. Wangari Maathai comes to my mind so regularly. She was the first East African woman to get a PhD. She got the Nobel Peace Prize for her Green Belt Movement. She only died a few years ago. She had gone back to the place where she'd grown up, and seen that the stream she'd played in was now barely a trickle. So much of that was as a result of the Catholic missionaries--plenty of whom were Irish, I'm sure--having come to her part of Kenya, and ripped up the fig tree, because the fig tree was seen to be a kind of religious symbol for the local religion, the Kikuyu religion, I think it was. But the fig tree had deep roots, and so by killing these trees that were indigenous to the area, a lot of erosion happened, and so a lot of water shortage happened, and a lot of conflict arose as a result of this water shortage. So she started the Green Belt Movement. I might get the numbers wrong, but from what I remember, she said she planted seven trees as a kind of restorative process to this erosion, and five died. And so she planted 52 million, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize 12 or 15 years ago or so. She's died since. So anytime I look at trees, and anytime I think of the relationship between place and conflict, and place and the peoples who are living in that place, I turn to her for her analysis, as well as her joy. She has a great singing voice. Krista Tippett interviewed her years ago, which is how I came across her work and came across her practice. And she finishes the interview with singing a song. She says, “Can I sing?” So, it's beautiful. I just think that there is such a synthesis of humor, of gratitude, of love for her grandmother's religion as well as for the Catholicism that she grew up with, love for science, love for analysis, love for priorities, love for music. So she's certainly one.
Ignatius, absolutely. Perhaps highest among all is Judas. I think Judas is an extraordinary character, and he is a friend that I turn to as I think of how wrong my desires can be, and how I can get in the way of myself, and then also how terrible people can be in the name of treating somebody who's done wrong. I think Judas knows a lot about that. I think of Ruth and Orpah and Naomi. I think that trinity of women know a lot about each other, and know a lot about the human condition, and about borders and law. And I live in a place where borders and law are on my mind all the time, so I've spent a lot of time in conversation with them. I mean, if I start naming the poets who I consider to be friends--some of them are living, but I'd never be in touch with them, as well as all the dead poets--I'd be here a long time. Emily Dickinson is one. I love Emily Dickinson's work because it's so strange. It's like some other being wrote it. And I love her letters, because they're so full of warmth and humor and birds and flowers and compassion. Her letters of condolence to anybody who's recently been bereaved are a thing of great beauty.
This poem was written, “Shaking Hands,” for a time when the British queen, Queen Elizabeth II, and Martin McGuinness, who was the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, met and shook hands, and each of them considered each other an enemy. There's reasons why, and they hadn't shaken hands in public before. I was invited to this event, and I was thinking a lot about shaking hands, and I suppose I wanted to think about what the impact of shaking hands could be and what it could look like: its humble possibilities as well as its huge possibilities altogether. It's much longer than what I'll read. I'll only read a selection.
Shaking Hands.
27ú lá Meitheamh, 2012.
Because what's the alternative?
Because of courage.
Because of loved ones lost.
Because no more.
Because it's a small thing; shaking hands; it happens every day.
Because I heard of one man whose hands haven't stopped shaking since a market day in Omagh.
Because it takes a second to say hate, but it takes longer, much longer, to be a great leader.
Much, much longer.
Because shared space without human touching doesn't amount to much.
Because it is tough.
Because it is meant to be tough, and this is the stuff of memory, the stuff of hope, the stuff of gesture, and meaning and leading.
Because it has taken so, so long.
Because it has taken land and money and languages and barrels and barrels of blood.
Because lives have been lost.
Because lives have been taken.
Because to be bereaved is to be troubled by grief.
Because more than two troubled peoples live here.
Because I know a woman whose hand hasn't been shaken since she was a man.
Because shaking a hand is only a part of the start.
Because I know a woman whose touch calmed a man whose heart was breaking.
Because privilege is not to be taken lightly.
Because this just might be good.
Because who said that this would be easy?
Because some people love what you stand for, and for some, if you can, they can.
Because solidarity means a common hand.
Because a hand is only a hand; so hang onto it.
So join your much discussed hands.
We need this; for one small second.
So touch.
So lead.
Well, it's been a privilege to be with you, Padraig. Thank you, and I'm grateful for your work, and grateful for your witness in the world, and the beauty of your words, and the beauty of your work. We thank you.
Thanks very much.
[“Tis the Gift to be Simple, Tis the Gift to be Free” plays]
You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. Thanks so much for joining us, and please remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and please remember to refer us to a fellow podcast listener. Feedback? Well, we do love hearing from you. Email us text or attach a voice memo, and send it to the address podcast@tokensshow.com.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that make this podcast possible. Executive producer and manager Christie Bragg, Bragg Management. Co-producer Jacob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. Associate producer Leslie Thompson of Rogue Creative Marketing and Media. Associate producer Ashley Bayne. Engineer Cariad Harmon. Production assistant Cara Fox. Music beds by Zach and Maggie White. And our live event team at Stonebrook Media led by Phil Barnett.
Special thanks to creative filmmaker, Sam Kwan, who facilitated our interview with Padraig in Ireland. You can learn more about sam at thesamkwan.com. The live performance on this episode was from a so-called “Class and Grass” segment, performed by the most outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys with Aubrey Haynie, Buddy Green, Pete Huttlinger, Chris Brown, Byron House, and Jeff Taylor, along with the Annie Moses Band with vocals by Annie Wolaver.
Thanks for listening, and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.