00:00:00.800For the Wild podcast is made possible by support from our partner, the Calliopeia Foundation.
00:00:08.020Calliopeia honors all life as sacred and works to heal today's issues at their root causes.
00:00:14.700Calliopeia partners with many initiatives around a common vision for a future built with love, reverence, and responsibility for our shared home.
00:00:23.560We are so grateful for Calliopeia's generous support to bring so many inspiring projects to life, and for making our show possible every week.
00:00:33.880Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:00:44.800Reconciling does not mean to arrive at consensus. Reconciling does not mean that you all believe the same thing about who is to blame for the circumstances that we're in.
00:00:52.880reconciling as some kind of practice in person and in policy to pay attention to the society
00:00:59.080that's pulling itself apart and that is painful and the imperative in it certainly in the context
00:01:04.980of Ireland has been to be in deep relationship with people who represent the thing that you
00:01:09.240consider to be the opposite of your point of view and that is costly it's painful it might cause you
00:01:17.380to be called a traitor by some of your own, and you will find yourself in all kinds of
00:01:22.500unexpected circumstances where you find empathy and sympathy for people coming from different
00:02:11.300so i want to start off by just speaking to this topic that it feels like it's too easy to fit
00:02:20.400quote the troubles within a timeline of events that took place over a 30-year period or to just
00:02:27.060relegate it as a sectarian strife between catholics and protestants in doing so we
00:02:33.860fail to acknowledge that british and irish identity have been brushing up against each
00:02:38.660other for centuries prior. So I'd love to use this opportunity not only to bring this history
00:02:45.360into our conversation, but to recognize generational trauma. So what is the visibility
00:02:51.200of trauma in Ireland and how are people adapting in the wake of the Troubles?
00:02:56.800Well, you're very correct to recognize that the Troubles, kind of 68 to 98, is only the latest
00:03:03.780iteration in a complicated history regarding the presence of British power and British people on
00:03:08.980the island of Ireland. You can go back 700 years really and see the beginning of colonial initiatives
00:03:14.700from that period of time that have severely impacted the question about what independence
00:03:19.720means in Ireland, what sovereignty means in Ireland, and what it means for people to have
00:03:23.840their own governance, language, polity. For me, the very first impact of trauma is the fact that
00:03:34.940the Irish language was removed from the Irish people in the 1800s. That was done through a
00:03:39.940mixture of policy, as well as then the impact of a famine. And again, that famine was also a policy
00:03:45.640led famine. It wasn't a potato famine. There was plenty of food leaving the country far, far more
00:03:50.740food than was needed to feed us but still many of the people who were loading food onto ships died
00:03:55.660as they were walking home a million died in three years and a million left population went from nine
00:04:00.860million in 1845 down to we see four million in 1880 so that leaves a long scar on the question
00:04:11.980of what independence looks like and the question of what but what irishness looks like so that is
00:04:18.420a deep trauma, not one that I would see necessarily being manifest in human action in the here and
00:04:24.280now, but certainly in the question about what would our present look like had the past been
00:04:28.960more virtuous in terms of those who had claimed power over the island of Ireland in this project
00:04:34.480called the United Kingdom. The Act of Union was set up in 1801, not with any sense of democratic
00:04:40.820voting from Irish people, which I should hasten to add. So that is one of the main areas of trauma0.65
00:04:46.600that i see um in a more in more recent times you see some sectarian responses through the ira through
00:04:54.060various paramilitary organizations towards britishness um on the island of ireland ireland
00:04:58.780was partitioned in about 1921 and you can see the deep impact of that um manifesting itself
00:05:05.320throughout this last century in 1968 to 1998 and various um i suppose irish paramilitary
00:05:13.000organizations that saw that they had a just cause in waging a violent conflict against British
00:05:19.080targets. And then all kinds of targets, Irish, British, people who worked for government
00:05:26.300authorities, people who didn't work for any kind of government authority and lost their lives
00:05:30.640during that time were murdered during that time. You can see once again, the impact of trauma
00:05:36.060manifesting itself in the continuing diminishment of British Irish relations through the Brexit
00:05:40.460project the question as to how brexit is impacting the island of ireland is evidenced
00:05:44.740really through protests on the borders and recognizing that the border is receiving far
00:05:49.700too much attention and sovereignty about the question of the border was given to the people
00:05:53.840of ireland for the island of ireland by the 1998 peace agreement and so that has really
00:05:59.700diminished in the last few years with all these civic questions through the british system as
00:06:05.680they've tried to make sense about what brexit means for the island of britain and then many
00:06:10.420people seem to have forgotten that Britain continues to have sovereignty and to have
00:06:16.340jurisdiction over Northern Ireland and so therefore Northern Ireland has been once again affected by
00:06:22.040processes decided on the island of Britain and that is complicated because so much of what our
00:06:27.600piece has come to mean has come to mean something really rich and powerful from the generosity of
00:06:33.240people of Ireland and people of Britain and there has been an extraordinary advance in civic
00:06:37.940relations in the last 20 years, but those have been severely tested in the last couple of years
00:06:41.800through Brexit. Thank you so much for sharing with us these issues that are facing Ireland,
00:06:51.160because I think, especially in the United States and Canada, this is not something that we hear
00:06:58.420nearly enough about or are aware about. So I really appreciate hearing from you. And
00:07:03.720At the beginning of your response, you just touched on the language of Ireland. And I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to discuss linguistic colonization with you. I'd love to invite you to speak more about the term Northern Ireland and the ways in which the language we've so readily adapted is marginal in its nature.
00:07:27.200And then I'm also thinking back to a passage I read in your book, In the Shelter, Finding Home in the World, where you reflect on the Irish language's connection to landscape, how, quote, there is no nation without a language, end quote.
00:07:41.500And similarly, quote, land without a language is a land without a soul, end quote.
00:07:47.200So I'd really love to ask you about the history of the Irish language and the ways in which it has been systematically erased and discredited.
00:07:57.200so tir gan tanga tir gan anam is the shanak of the proverb the old saying that you just quoted
00:08:03.540there a land without a language is a land without a soul i mean i think the integrity of every
00:08:08.840language um is deeply linked to the place with that language about uh the english is an extraordinary
00:08:14.300language and i i love speaking english and it is a beautiful language to reflect on how it has
00:08:20.560become a global language how a language that grew up in the beautiful verdant um hills and
00:08:26.740fields of England and the extraordinary culture of England, how that language, through the
00:08:33.500curiosity and then the abuses of power, of empire, has gone far and wide and picked up
00:08:39.520all these other languages and words into it. For instance, the word taboo, I believe, might
00:08:44.700come from one of the islands of the Pacific. I think it might be Samoan or Tongan that
00:08:50.020it came into English through. So English is an extraordinary language populated by many
00:08:54.820other languages. The Irish language is beautiful. It corresponds very much to the landscape and
00:09:01.360depending as to what dialect of Irish you're speaking, you can often hear the softness or
00:09:05.700the harshness of landscape through that language. Irish is a very concrete language and so regularly
00:09:11.200makes reference to the contours of hills and mountains and fields or the body. While my Irish
00:09:18.300is not brilliant, I have a deep connection with it. I think most things that I say I tend to think
00:14:37.080that requires the majority to be subjugated at the hands of the small entitled minority.
00:14:43.620Then I see another layer of empire is that through the story of Ireland,
00:14:47.440for instance, Ireland certainly has suffered an enormous amount.
00:14:50.280However, when Irish people went to what is now called the United States, lots of Irish people were involved in defending the idea of the slavery project.
00:15:00.720So many Irish people who had been treated so poorly through the colonial project at home seemed to think that they had gotten a step up on a ladder of security once they got to the United States.0.63
00:15:10.560And while they might have been the bottom of the white ladder, they were nonetheless white.
00:15:14.820And so Frederick Douglass has an extraordinary quote in one of his books where he reflects on the fact that the Irish who have suffered so much have not allowed that suffering to inform them and to inform our ethical attitudes toward those people who have been enslaved in the United States.0.90
00:15:32.060So that is a warning from history that just because you've suffered, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to become virtuous.
00:15:37.680And I think Irish people love to reflect on the fact that we have suffered a lot, but often I think we enjoy forgetting that we have also been part of inflicting suffering through being secondary leaders of a colonial project when Irish people went overseas to Canada, to the United States, to Jamaica, to New Zealand, to Australia.
00:15:55.760Oh, Patrick, that is such a deep lesson that I think many of us in our ancestral lineages
00:16:04.200have yet to learn. And thank you for bringing that up. And now there's also this question here
00:16:12.260on the burden of shame, whether it be ancestrally, individually, or nationally. So do you think it's
00:16:20.740possible that in reconciling these painful histories and shadows of shame, that we can
00:16:26.480break the supposed circularity of time and repetition of history?
00:16:31.800Well, that's going to be a slow project. I mean, you hear lots of people these days say,
00:16:36.000oh, you know, I don't think I'm racist because I don't use particular terms. And that's,
00:16:40.560okay, fine. It's great that a person isn't using particular terms, but any white person is going
00:16:45.840to benefit from centuries and centuries of white privilege at the expense of people of colour and
00:16:51.940so not using racist language might be a great step one but really there's you know there's a million
00:16:58.260steps to be taken so we shouldn't congratulate ourselves for taking step one. There are shaming
00:17:03.960things to look at in our past and shame has been a term that has gathered a lot of negativity over
00:17:10.560the last while and I am not entirely sure what to do with that because I know that certain forms
00:17:16.020of shame can be like living with a cancer of the soul something that won't die and something that
00:17:20.560keeps you from experiencing flourishing however there are also certain forms of shame that can
00:17:26.880be educational shame when it comes to thinking about what is it that in my family line that we
00:17:32.600have done to other people in order to better ourselves at the expense of other people I'm not
00:17:37.400sure that shame is a bad response to looking at some of the stories of our past.
00:17:43.300I really resonate with that, that I don't think it's necessary to run away from shame,
00:17:51.640although I know that it has gotten a bad rap and people feel that shaming people or feeling shame
00:17:57.440isn't productive in our growth. But I disagree with that. I think that there are shameful things
00:18:05.120that us humans have done. And we need to sit with that in order to grow and learn and to really
00:18:11.660feel it and embody it. So we hopefully won't repeat it. And I'm really happy you brought that
00:18:16.980up. Yeah. I mean, the shame can be educational. I mean, anything can be terribly negative or
00:18:24.940wonderfully positive or uncomfortably informative. And so in a sense, it might be that shame is
00:18:33.400amoral. And the question is, is what are we going to do with shame? If we deny the kind of things
00:18:38.620that cause us shame, well, then we might deny the possibility of the practice of accountability or
00:18:43.460reparation. And there are serious things that we need to be called to in terms of paying attention
00:18:48.940to the here and now and to the privileges that some enjoy and the continued debts that other
00:18:54.540people are born into. I absolutely agree. Now, I know that you are stepping down as the leader of
00:19:02.260the Cory Mealy this month but I'm hoping you don't mind me asking some questions that reflect
00:19:07.620on your time there so for our audience oh good okay and for our audience I'll just preface that
00:19:13.620Cory Mealy is a community center that quote believes that people can learn to live and work
00:19:18.840well together end quote and it's also quote Northern Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation
00:19:24.500group and Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation group from all of Ireland not just coming north
00:19:30.880Okay, thank you for that. Now, I also learned that the founder of Corey Mealy, Ray Davey, was held as a prisoner of war in Dresden during World War II, and that Corey Mealy very much grew out of the inhumanity Ray witnessed.
00:19:47.540So I'd love if you could share a little bit more about Corey Mealy and the existential imperative of reconciliation and how our humanity can perhaps be most active amidst times of deep inhumanity.
00:20:02.500Yeah. So, yeah, Ray Davey was born in Belfast, I think, in 1915.
00:20:10.460So he was born before this project called Northern Ireland was imagined.
00:20:18.440And the North, or what some people call Northern Ireland,
00:20:21.760or the six counties, or the occupied six counties,
00:20:24.240depending as to your politics, depends as to what validation you give
00:20:27.140this new jurisdiction that was created.
00:20:29.920Anyway, that was created to the joy of some and to the sadness of others.
00:20:34.860And really, the most recent iteration of the question of violence on the island of Ireland has come as a result of that partition.
00:20:42.500So Ray became ordained and then became a volunteer chaplain with the British services in World War II.
00:20:49.340And he was captured in North Africa and brought throughout a variety of prisoner of war camps,
00:20:53.920some in North Africa, then through Italy, and then finally outside Dresden.
00:20:57.060And he was there when Dresden was firebombed. The prisoner of war camp was far enough away from the city of Dresden that the prisoner of war camp wasn't affected by that firebombing, but he certainly witnessed it.
00:21:09.800And he saw that his liberation came at the expense of the annihilation of many. And he returned back to Belfast in about 1945, a man of the age of 30. And that was a complicated thing to come back, being liberated by the annihilation of many.
00:21:25.260and Northern Ireland wasn't even 25 years old by that stage partition it happened in 21 so he got
00:21:31.620back in 45 and you could see really that the the deep divisions sown by any kind of partition
00:21:38.280were seeking to manifest themselves in some kind of civic action and there's always going to be
00:21:43.400the threat that that civic action is going to turn violent and so he began to work with students he
00:21:48.580became the chaplain of Queen's University in Belfast he began to work with students to say
00:21:52.460let's come together in groups of diverse people to talk and argue it out not for the aim of
00:21:57.600consensus but for the aim of relationship across division and so for 20 years really he brought
00:22:03.640students from all kinds of disciplines towards each other they took trips back to Germany took
00:22:09.480trips to other parts of Europe that were trying to pay attention to how the hell did we let
00:22:13.520ourselves get into this how did the churches turn their eyes away from what was so obviously
00:22:19.080happening in terms of the anti-Semitism that was so rife across Europe and so then in 65 he heard
00:22:27.340of a plot of land on the very north coast of Ireland coming up for sale and he had been
00:22:31.840chaplain for 20 years he was a charismatic man and he had a whole bunch of students and a whole
00:22:37.640bunch of adults in the city all part of the ecumenical movement and together they fundraised
00:22:42.760and purchased this piece of land every little kind of plot of six fields in Ireland is called
00:22:48.140townland and all those townlands have a name and so they found out that the name of this plot of
00:22:52.600land that they'd purchased that had an old house in it the name is Coramila which is an old old
00:22:57.020Irish word somebody naive told them that it meant hill of harmony and so they took that as a lovely
00:23:01.680sign for the Coramila community to begin and about 10 years later after which time the troubles had
00:23:07.140already the latest iteration of the troubles had broken out troubles broke out in about 68
00:23:11.220people had been murdered terrible terrible things had happened so about 1975 an actual etymologist
00:23:17.640of Old Irish said, well, the real meaning of Cormilla is unclear, but it's definitely not
00:23:22.080Hill of Harmony. It's probably something closer to Lumpy Crossing Place, by which stage there'd
00:23:27.780been 10 years of the attempt at being a reconciliation community. And they thought
00:23:32.480Lumpy Crossing Place is a far more accurate term for this attempt, this essay, to be a community
00:23:38.800in reconciliation and reconciling towards each other. Reconciling does not mean to arrive at
00:23:45.180consensus. Reconciling does not mean that you all believe the same thing about who is to blame for
00:23:50.380the circumstances that we're in. Reconciling is some kind of practice in person and in policy
00:23:56.000to pay attention to the society that's pulling itself apart. And that is painful. And the
00:24:01.320imperative in it, certainly in the context of Ireland, has been to be in deep relationship
00:24:06.060with people who represent the thing that you consider to be the opposite of your point of view.
00:24:09.820and that is costly, it's painful, it might cause you to be called a traitor by some of your own
00:24:18.520and you will find yourself in all kinds of unexpected circumstances where you find
00:24:23.320empathy and sympathy for people coming from different points of view than you
00:24:27.080and that has been a mandatory thing really for us in the question of what reconciliation means
00:24:32.620between Britishness and Irishness on the island of Ireland. For 700 years the question of Britishness
00:24:37.920has impacted life here linguistically in power in land distribution in questions to do with the
00:24:44.420famine and questions to do with sovereignty and questions to do with power all of these areas
00:24:48.900have been impacted enormously that is a long-term relationship we are never going to move away from
00:24:54.140the fact that to be Irish is going to definitely require navigation and hopefully generous
00:25:00.080navigation with the question of the British impact on Ireland and there are so many things about
00:25:04.880Britain to be celebrated, rich, rich culture, rich arts, rich, extraordinary contributions
00:25:11.460to the human community through the British project.
00:25:14.680And for us in Ireland, part of the question is to work alongside those who are British
00:25:20.360and to look at the ways in which we can celebrate shared culture, we can celebrate different
00:25:25.560culture, we can find ways to mark deep pain, find ways to lament and protest very seriously
00:25:32.680the things that have been denied and then find a way to say but we are still with each other and
00:25:38.220we will need to be with each other it is impossible for people to simply leave we can't undo the past
00:25:43.860so we need to find a way to practice something called um society with each other in the present
00:25:49.820and find ways in which all of that can be to our mutual flourishing and beneficial
00:27:02.360the notion of marginalization as a power structure and how in response to ever-present
00:27:09.400marginalization that is sustained by structures and systems, it's then our responsibility to
00:27:15.380curate spaces of belonging. So what is the foundation of practicing inclusion? And then
00:27:22.140perhaps more specifically, what is the function of storytelling in curating these spaces and
00:27:27.580social movements? All of these things are practices that are never finished. We do need to find ways
00:27:34.200to support each other in belonging with each other. Sometimes belonging is created by people
00:27:39.160who've been through a similar experience, and it's a very powerful experience. But belonging can also
00:27:43.540be practiced together in a positive way by people who have very little in common. How can we find a
00:27:48.780way where people who have very little in common can also belong with each other? Because if we1.00
00:27:52.240think belonging can only happen when we have a shared experience or a shared identity well then
00:27:57.700very quickly we begin to measure what those borders of belonging are those boundaries of belonging
00:28:03.560might feel the need to protect the boundaries and that in the Irish context has not been positive
00:28:08.760so we need to find ways within which we can trouble the idea of belonging and look to the
00:28:14.300ethics of belonging certain belongings will always feel natural and fluent and indigenous to us and
00:28:19.480that's a wonderful way to practice what um some kind of human community can look like but i think
00:28:26.500that needs to also be in the irish context that needs to be practiced outside the areas where it
00:28:32.360feels natural and fluent also to discover in somebody who might seem like the other the
00:28:38.220possibility of flourishing relationship also um story doesn't just have to be shared story we can
00:28:44.000thoroughly enjoy and learn from a story that feels utterly foreign to us. The idea that story
00:28:50.180is only based on common shared experiences, I think has a certain idolatry of common ground
00:28:57.640in it. And I am interested in the kind of stories and belonging that can flourish when common ground
00:29:03.840does not seem apparent. I'm interested in ways within which difference and unsameless can be
00:29:10.620seem like an invitation rather than a threat because otherwise all kinds of sectarianisms
00:29:16.500can begin. Cecilia Clegg and Joe Lichty put together a book called Moving Beyond Sectarianism
00:29:22.040and they define sectarianism as belonging gone bad and I love how they define that because it
00:29:27.920recognizes that belonging is a really powerful force but even something so powerful can turn
00:29:33.960rotten when it necessarily requires an enemy because then it'll look for an enemy and if
00:29:39.040there isn't an enemy to be founded, but create an enemy. And so suddenly even small differences
00:29:44.520become the reason why a certain form of belonging is based on the marginalization of others.
00:29:52.340Marginalization for me is always a power structure. I am relatively uninterested in
00:29:57.120hearing sob stories about somebody who's been marginalized because that has a way
00:30:01.180of making them seem pathologized or criminalized or medicalized even. I'm much more interested in
00:30:07.980thinking who's benefiting from marginalization some kind of central power is benefiting from
00:30:14.160this and so for me marginalization always needs to be a question back to the center of power
00:30:19.460and needs to open us up to the question about who is doing this and who is benefiting from it
00:30:25.840at the expense of others oh Padraig there's so much there now I've been thinking about memory
00:30:35.660especially in relationship to brutality and conflict and i'm reminded of james baldwin who
00:30:41.080once wrote quote it takes strength to remember it takes another kind of strength to forget
00:30:46.300it takes a hero to do both people who remember court madness through pain the pain of the
00:30:53.360perpetually reoccurring death of their innocence people who forget court another kind of madness
00:30:58.860the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence and the world is mostly divided
00:31:04.580between madmen who remember and madmen who forget, end quote. And I'd really love to explore this
00:31:10.860passage with you in the context of your own experiences. On the one hand, I am discomforted
00:31:17.020by our propensity to forget and our inability to bear witness. Yet on the other hand, the power
00:31:24.980of painful memories, if it's not alchemized properly, is corrosive as well. So I'm wondering
00:31:32.000if you could speak to the function of memory in reconciliation work. Well, you've described it
00:31:37.960very well, Ayanna. There is a need to have a powerful and creative and life-giving reckoning
00:31:45.320with the past, and that will need to incorporate all kinds of practices. Lament, protest, gathering,
00:31:53.160learning, openness to the new, openness to change, openness to grief, openness to permanent
00:31:59.080memorialization and openness also to the possibility of some kind of civic generosity
00:32:05.760even in the face of our past and this is a difficult thing it requires leadership and I
00:32:11.580don't just mean in terms of leadership from a figurehead who's elected I mean leadership from
00:32:15.760within the community and we need to find a way where plurals can coexist where we aren't just
00:32:21.240saying okay we're all going to be part of a civic mass of forgiveness now that's not possible and
00:32:27.540human flourishing will need to have places of lament, places of grief, places of protest,
00:32:34.840places of compromise, places of learning, places of debate, and places of difference in dialogue
00:32:40.580as well. All of these things are necessary in circumstances like Ireland, where there is so
00:32:46.580many different versions of the past that we can't agree upon whom the blame lies. Often we idolise
00:32:52.640the past in a way where we think that there can be certainty about the past but the past is always
00:32:57.640plural and there's always different places where we can begin the question of blame and blame can
00:33:02.540be equally spread in the context of the irish british relationship you can look at all kinds
00:33:06.640of reasons why irish people are to blame and all kinds of reasons why british people are to blame
00:33:10.620but blame won't solve anything it's an important question to land where you might apportion blame
00:33:16.000but then there comes the civic question of okay and now what even if you believe that your group
00:33:22.340is less blameful than the other group fine now what what are we going to do are you just going
00:33:28.500to imagine that the other group is incapable of moral or civic action today how can we coexist
00:33:34.220in a way that's flourishing and mutual so all of these things are are vital for us and to pay
00:33:40.140attention to oh i hear you padrick now i'd really love to candidly ask you about the language that
00:33:48.440comes from the earth. I feel very connected to this. And I've read that you take qualms with
00:33:54.320the oversimplification and overt romanticization of the landscape and that it neglects the
00:34:01.260practicality of a place. And in a chapter you wrote titled The Place Between in Timothy
00:34:07.100Carden's Neither Here Nor There, The Many Voices of Liminality, you talk about how landscapes can
00:34:13.140have rage or fury and they hold stories of everyday life. And I'd really love to open this
00:34:19.540up to you on the implications of language and our relationship with the natural world. And
00:34:24.280so perhaps our severance from the natural world is reflected in this obsession with reflecting
00:34:30.600the spiritual onto the landscape rather than the pragmatic. Well, so for me, the spiritual
00:34:36.260and the pragmatic are possibly both sides of the same thing. I always think that spiritual,
00:34:41.120and I remind myself that spiritual comes from the word spirare meaning breath and that I am dead
00:34:47.600without breath and so spiritual is an intensely bodily thing and for me that is where Celtic
00:34:53.720spirituality begins I have sometimes found myself very frustrated when I read what people write
00:34:59.600about Celtic spirituality it is the most airy fairy disembodied impractical unincarnated
00:35:07.060language possible it just seems misty and I find that to be deeply boring and deeply denying of
00:35:14.620the linguistic tradition of Irish which is so earthy and bodily and the Irish language takes
00:35:20.340so many metaphors from actual carnal reality meatiness is so important so kind of a small
00:35:29.400story of my own rage was told in that chapter where I was once part of an event where somebody
00:35:34.640looked out over a valley in County Wicklow which is just south of Dublin and County Wicklow is
00:35:40.460called the Garden of Ireland its valleys are beautiful and filled with the most gorgeous
00:35:44.480heathers moss green purple yellow brown stunning stunning colors it looks like a looks like a
00:35:52.960beautiful Turner painting sometimes when you look at it and somebody said oh god you can just0.99
00:35:58.320sense the spirituality from the landscape there and I just thought what kind of bullshit is this0.99
00:36:04.060people have to live in this valley and heather while it's beautiful is terrible for eating0.98
00:36:09.760what poor sheep cut their tongues on the thorns of heather heather in irish is fraich which means
00:36:16.680rage or fury and so there's somebody understood this linguistically that they called their
00:36:23.880surroundings beautiful as they were they called the plant rage and so for me finding a way to pay
00:36:30.700attention to the fact that all that thrives around us and is also in conflict that plants that
00:36:38.380animals have had to fight for their own survival and to be close to nature is to be close to the
00:36:44.160question of survival and survival can be cruel and annie dellard writes about this really powerfully
00:36:50.240in pilgrim at tinkers creek and other others of her works where she says you know people who
00:36:54.900talk about wanting to get close to nature don't seem to have spent too much time thinking about
00:36:59.320what that means it is a demanding survival tactic and it requires an enormous amount from us so
00:37:06.660spirituality that doesn't pay attention to the muscular meaty ways than which we need to pay
00:37:14.520attention to our body to our landscape to the earth to my mind is spirituality that is not
00:37:19.560paying attention to the question of being alive that was so beautifully spoken Padraig and I feel
00:37:25.520that that the land holds many stories and representations and it's not all just beautiful
00:37:33.600or lovely you know it does it kind of strips it strips the depth from the land it strips the
00:37:40.640stories it strips the identity of the land to just uh oversimplify it like that and i really
00:37:46.100love you speaking about that now i have this question on my mind on the theologies of both
00:37:52.840joy and sorrow. And I haven't quite figured it out, but I'm thinking also about the role of
00:37:59.020religion and how we can recognize the complacency of structures that have failed us, but still hold
00:38:04.860a deep sense of faith that extends beyond its failings. Say a bit more. I'm fascinated by what
00:38:12.540you're saying, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about what's in your mind about that.
00:38:16.420Yeah. Well, I guess just, well, I guess today I see a lot, especially in the United States, this
00:38:22.360agnostic or atheist movement, a lot of, I feel like people are being just so detached from
00:38:31.640religions of the past, feeling frustrated by what religions have done within power structures and
00:38:39.860how they've failed us in the sense of bringing peace or health to the land, health to humans.
00:38:46.700But at the same extent, I do see there's a deep disconnection when we live this type of postmodern secular life where we don't hold spiritual values within our lives, within our actions.
00:39:03.240And so there's really nothing to be accountable to, whether that's traditions, family, religion, practices, lineages, especially in America, this kind of homeland of orphans from other places.
00:39:17.180so yeah i wonder as we're especially the young ones are stepping into this world where so many
00:39:24.540of these power structures and religious structures have failed us in many ways but at the same time
00:39:31.160how do we reconcile with that and hold ourselves within something beyond just a post-modern
00:39:38.280capitalistic framework well i i think the stories of the pastor are very important it can seem to
00:39:45.860some like this is the age when people began to move away from religion and the the imagination
00:39:51.600i think immature imagination is that moving away from religion especially toxic religion
00:39:56.800would be the thing that leads us towards virtue but all you have to do is turn the clock back
00:40:00.900100 years and look at the story of the eugenics movement in australia and to recognize that
00:40:06.140people have been thinking that they've been secular for a long time and been doing terrible
00:40:09.780things to each other so there is no movement that can claim the corner on virtuous practice
00:40:17.040so science alone will not save us because people thought that eugenics was science and that eugenics
00:40:23.120was a non-religious approach and that it was free from supremacy and was free from everything it was
00:40:29.380just done for the benefit of humankind and terrible things were done through eugenics this
00:40:34.160idea, the science of better breeding. So people were sterilized because they were deemed to not
00:40:40.120be the kind of people who would give birth to virtuous children. Children were stolen from
00:40:46.160families and forced into marriages to breed the so-called indigenous problem out of Australia.0.91
00:40:52.460So there's all these ways within which war was being waged on people in the name of this
00:40:57.600scientific secular project. So I don't think there's anything alone that will save us.
00:41:02.860religion has claimed for a long time that that might be the thing and we know enough to say
00:41:08.040that religion has been extraordinarily beautiful and creative for so many endeavors and extraordinarily
00:41:14.000destructive in so many other endeavors but science too has a lot of blood in its past
00:41:20.560and we need to pay attention to that the secular project i think is often misunderstood secular
00:41:26.460means to go into the world with your ideology to take your ideology and to be in conversation with
00:41:31.300the world. Secular does not mean anti-religious or irreligious. Secular means to be in dialogue.
00:41:37.660So I consider myself to be a very secular person. I have the things, the ideologies, the hopes,
00:41:43.040the faiths that I try to hold on myself, but I consider it to be a virtue and a demanding
00:41:49.100practice to be secular about those, to be in conversation with people in the world
00:41:53.100who think very differently and to ask, what does this mean now? Who benefits? From whom
00:41:58.680is this taken away? I know you've had John A. Powell on your program, and he asks these
00:42:03.360beautiful questions, demanding questions. Who decides who wins, who loses? Those are the three
00:42:09.120questions that he asks. And I think that's a secular question to ask when it comes to my
00:42:14.040ideology, an ideology or spirituality that I might feel is very nurturing to me. Who decides who wins,
00:42:20.240who loses, who pays? These are serious questions to ask. And I think every worthwhile endeavor
00:42:26.660should be open to asking itself that. Snoopy has an extraordinary question in one of the
00:42:32.960cartoons, and Snoopy is sitting on top of his kennel typing, and Charlie Brown comes along and
00:42:38.040says, I hear you're writing a book on theology. I hope you have a good title. And Snoopy looks up
00:42:42.800in his fairly pontifical way and says, I have the perfect title. And the title of his book of
00:42:48.140theology suddenly becomes etched in typeface in the sky, and it is, have you ever considered that
00:42:52.720you might be wrong. And I think there is such brilliance in that. The scientific project,
00:42:58.540I'm from a family of scientists, and the scientific project is not frightened of asking itself that
00:43:03.300and thrives really on asking itself regularly, are we wrong? Are we limited? Have we reached
00:43:09.060the final answer? Is there another answer beyond the answer that can improve us? But science has
00:43:14.080shown in the past that it can be devastating when it chooses to end itself in a certain place.
00:43:19.840and religion also has shown itself in its past that it too can be devastating and a power of
00:43:25.060terror when it doesn't continue to ask itself that it itself might be the place where repentance
00:43:31.340is needed rather than projecting repentance onto other people. I'm glad that you made the mention
00:43:38.600that science also has blood on its hands or something like that because I do see when people
00:43:45.480move away from religion and kind of bring that fanatical feeling into science then and then
00:43:55.360science is the one true god or science is in a sense yes it's about questioning but it's not to
00:44:01.620be questioned as the authority and i think that's also extremely limiting and i've really been
00:44:08.680questioning science so much these days as much as i i've studied science and i've it's taught me so
00:44:15.880much and really helped me identify what i care about in a lot of ways but i i see this this
00:44:22.820savior mentality with science especially with the environmental movement and climate emergency
00:44:28.800and the anthropocene extinction there's there's this energy that somehow science will save us
00:44:35.880science has the answers and and the scientists in a sense have become to me like the priest
00:44:41.600when the bible was in latin and the lay people couldn't read that language it's like a similar
00:44:47.460thing science has this language uh the papers are so inaccessible to most people and then there's
00:44:54.720this uh power structure that comes into play let alone the fact that so much science is being bought
00:45:00.760out by big corporations and so on and so forth and then this intense need to collect data collect
00:45:07.460data collect data in order to prove something when i feel like so much of what is being proven
00:45:13.240we already know because we can see it observationally we know it intuitionally we don't need
00:45:18.420to have data for 30 years on how you know something is being poisoned it's being poisoned
00:45:24.400period and we should look at that and put our energy into stopping the poisoning so i i have
00:45:30.100so many feelings around science not that i think it should be thrown out but not given the amount of
00:45:37.280i don't know i i don't think it should be given the amount of power that it's given and i would
00:45:44.440say science and technology are one and the same for me with that oh yeah with that feeling i mean
00:45:50.160they are all practices of power and power is amoral i mean when you look at the word physics
00:45:55.540phusus meaning nature from greek physics is profoundly interested in the nature of things
00:46:01.540the laws of the universe and i mean i think that's such a worthy and brilliant endeavor
00:46:06.340and the physicists that i can understand which are very few is the ones who do great work of
00:46:12.720translating themselves to make themselves intelligible to someone like me and they are
00:46:17.480filled with the mystery of what they don't know and filled with the question of the unknowability
00:46:22.820of certain things and the question of saying we need to continue to pay attention to how we do
00:46:28.340these questions needs to be guided by the best of virtue that we can practice in the here and now
00:46:34.040and I think that's a very humble practice and I'm so moved by listening to physicists that I know
00:46:39.020who practice that in a way to widen wonder and to open up the question of what it means
00:46:44.640to be human with each other in the here and now.
00:47:22.820I'd love to be able to close on this question
00:47:49.120around hunger and spiritual decay, and I'm trying to find this connection that I'm feeling in my
00:47:56.660mind about them both. There's this one part of me that's really wondering about the hunger of
00:48:02.180our time and how hunger can propel creativity and foster community. And within that community,
00:48:08.040I'm thinking about peace and how we can be in that place moving forward in this hunger.
00:48:15.020And there's a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that says, quote, a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual decay, end quote.
00:48:27.920So I'm curious about the notion of uncovering our spiritual decay.
00:48:32.380And then more specifically, what does this practice of peace look like during this time?
00:48:38.260You know, how is building peace in our communities imperative alongside this said uncovering?
00:48:43.860And where does our hunger fit in to propel us into this work?
00:48:50.480Well, there's so much in that question.
00:48:54.140It really interests me to imagine what a response to your question about what current hungers might be.
00:49:01.380I think one current hunger is a desire for accountability.
00:49:05.280And there is also a current hunger in a desire for purity.
00:49:09.380Accountability is something that really interests me.
00:49:12.280Purity is something that frightens me somewhat because I've seen so many attempts over centuries
00:49:27.680We hope that the attempts for purity now might be less violent, but nonetheless, we've shown
00:49:32.680ourselves over and over how quickly Desires for Purity turns sectarian.
00:49:36.560accountability i think we are filled in an era where there is a desire to reckon with the past
00:49:44.780and that the past is um truly present in the here and now i was in england a few weeks ago and i
00:49:52.100mentioned something about the partition of ireland and somebody said to me oh for god's sake you're
00:49:56.820going way into the past now aren't you dragging that up and they had no idea it seems like that
00:50:02.020that very week i'd gotten a green card to say that so that i can drive my car across the border
00:50:08.440if brexit happens so the past is not the past for us in ireland the past is very present we have two
00:50:14.740jurisdictions in a place where not everybody wants there to be two jurisdictions and so the the
00:50:21.180privilege of being able to say oh god that's way in the past seemed to me to be lacking in
00:50:25.560accountability of paying attention to the history of a nation that hadn't paid attention to its
00:50:29.180history so i think that there is a desire for accountability in the here and now um accountability
00:50:35.500of the impact of the powers of the past on the here and now and the privileges that benefit some
00:50:41.720at the expense of many are being called into question today and i think that is a profound
00:50:47.360thing to practice um certainly in the english-irish question i find myself regularly wanting to hold
00:50:52.780things up regarding the question of the impact of britishness um but then i look at myself as a
00:50:57.880cisgendered, able-bodied white man. And grand, I'm gay. And so I've suffered personally on that
00:51:03.960level. But on so many levels, I am filled with the inheritances of privilege at the expense of
00:51:09.440others. And so there's a question for accountability for me in the here and now in terms of when do I
00:51:15.880think that my voice is worthy of being heard? And when do I just need to shut the hell up?
00:51:20.860Oh, Padraig, this has been so expansive for me. And I know for those who will be listening soon,
00:51:27.000And I just want to open up the conversation to anything that you want to mention that maybe hasn't been covered or any last thoughts that you're having at this time that you feel is important to share with us.
00:51:40.880A small story. I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago and I was visiting with a friend of mine.
00:51:48.400I was his best man and he got married and he has a teenage son 16 and we got chatting the son and I
00:51:55.220over a meal one evening a family meal and he was telling me about how he's been drawn to poetry
00:52:00.360through learning from school and I find myself over and over realizing that for me a life without
00:52:06.500poetry would feel a little bit like death for me poetry is so physical and so much linked to me
00:52:14.360to the question of breathing a day without poetry for me is a day when I don't feel like I have
00:52:19.420been in my body and it is certainly lower than the questions of you know justice and eating and
00:52:29.040drinking but it's certainly high up there in terms of daily priorities for me and I find myself
00:52:34.640thinking that poetry is not just for people who feel like they know lots about poetry poetry is
00:52:40.200for those of us who are experiencing the desire to have some kind of language that makes some kind
00:52:46.260of sense for us in the here and now. I'm talking to the 16-year-old for whom he was discovering or
00:52:51.920learning in school about 18th century poets and he was finding so much richness in them and I found
00:52:56.900it really moving that he knew stuff about old poets that I know nothing about and he was quoting
00:53:02.060to me as we discussed over dinner these powerful lines from poetry that were making sense to him
00:53:08.980as a 16-year-old in Melbourne in Australia.
00:53:11.940And that was really moving to witness the ongoing way
00:53:15.480within which old texts can nurture us.
00:53:17.960And I find myself wanting to prescribe poetry to everybody.