Transcript: PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA on Finding Uncommon Ground [ENCORE] /241
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Welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pádraig Ó Tuama, originally aired in September of 2019. We hope you enjoy this special encore episode.
Welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Reconciling does not mean to arrive at consensus, reconciling does not mean that we all believe the same thing about who's to blame for the circumstances that we're in. Reconciling is some kind of practice in person and in policy, to pay attention to the society that's pulling itself apart. And that is painful. And the imperative, certainly in the context of Ireland, has been to be in deep relationship with people who represent the thing that you consider to be the opposite of your point of view. And that is costly, it's painful, it might cause you to be called a traitor by some of your own. And you will find yourself in all kinds of unexpected circumstances where you find empathy and sympathy for people coming from different points of view than you.
Ayana Young Today we are speaking with Pádraig Ó Tuama, Pádraig is a poet and theologian. His work centers around themes of language, religion, conflict and art. Working fluently on the page and with groups of people, Pádraig is a skilled speaker, teacher and group worker. His work has won acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, religion, psychotherapy and conflict analysis.
Well, Pádraig, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm truly honored to be talking to you and really fascinated to see where our conversation takes us.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Thanks, Ayana. I'm interested too.
Ayana Young So I want to start off by just speaking to this topic, it feels like it’s too easy to fit “The Troubles” within a timeline of events that took place over a 30 year period or to relegate it as sectarian strife between Catholics and Protestants…In doing so, we fail to acknowledge that British and Irish identity have been brushing up against each other for centuries prior…So I’d love to use this as an opportunity, not only to bring this history into our conversation but to recognize generational trauma…What is the visibility of trauma in Ireland? How are people adapting in the wake of “The Troubles?”
Pádraig Ó Tuama Well, you're very correct to recognize that the Troubles, 68-98 is only the latest iteration in a complicated history regarding the presence of British power and British people on the island of Ireland. You can go back 700 years really and see the beginning of colonial initiatives from that period of time that have severely impacted the question about what independence means in Ireland, what sovereignty means in Ireland, what it means for people to have their own governments, language, polity.
For me, the very first impact of trauma is the fact that the Irish language was removed from the Irish people in the 1800s. That was done through a mixture of policy, as well as then the impact of a famine and again, that famine was also a policy led famine, it wasn't a potato famine, there was plenty of food leaving the country. Far, far more food than was needed to feed us. But still, many of the people who were loading food onto ships died as they were walking home. A million died in three years and a million left. The population went from 9 million in 1845, down to 4 million in 1880. So that leaves a long scar on the question of what independence looks like and your question of what but what Irishness looks like. So that is a deep trauma, not one that I would see necessarily being manifest in human action in the here and now. But certainly in the question about what would our present looked like, had the past been more virtuous in terms of those who had claimed power over the island of Ireland in this project called the United Kingdom. The act of union was set up in 1801. Not with any sense of democratic voting from Irish people, which I should hasten to add. So that is one of the main areas of trauma that I see.
In a more in more recent times, you see some sectarian responses through the IRA through various paramilitary organizations towards Britishness on the island of Ireland, Ireland was partitioned in about 1921, and you can see the deep impact of that manifesting itself throughout this last century, then 1968, to 1998, and various, I suppose Irish paramilitary organizations that saw that they had adjust cause in waging a violent conflict against British targets, and then all kinds of targets Irish, British, people who worked for government authorities, people who didn't work for any kind of government authority and lost their lives during that time were murdered. During that time, you can see once again, the impact of trauma manifesting itself in the continuing diminishment of British Irish relations through the Brexit project, the question as to how Brexit is impacting the island of Ireland, as evidenced really through protests on the borders, recognizing that the border is receiving far too much attention, and sovereignty about the question of the border was given to the people of Ireland, for the island of Ireland, by the 1998 peace agreement. And so that has really diminished in the last few years with all these civic questions through the British system, as they've tried to make sense about what Brexit means for the island of Britain. And then many people seem to have forgotten that Britain continues to have sovereignty and to have jurisdiction over Northern Ireland. And so therefore, Northern Ireland has been once again affected by processes decided on the island of Britain and that is complicated, because so much of what our peace has come to mean, has come to mean something really rich and powerful from the generosity of people of Ireland and people of Britain. And there has been an extraordinary advance in civic relations in the last 20 years, but those have been severely tested in the last couple of years through Brexit.
Ayana Young Thank you so much for sharing with us these issues that are facing Ireland, because I think, especially in the United States, and Canada, this is not something that we hear nearly enough about or are aware about. So I really appreciate hearing from you. And at 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 have so readily adapted is marginal in its nature…And 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 “there is no nation without language,” and similarly, “land without a language, is a land without a soul.” So I’d love to ask you about the history of the Irish language, and the ways in which it has been systematically erased and discredited.
Pádraig Ó Tuama So, tír gan teanga, tír gan anam, is the seanfhocal, the proverb, the old saying that you just quoted there, a land without a language is a land without a soul. I think the integrity of every language is deeply linked to the place where that language evolved. English is an extraordinary language and I love speaking English and it is a beautiful language to reflect on how it has become a global language, how language that grew up, and the beautiful verdant hills and fields of England, and the extraordinary culture of England, how that language through the curiosity and then the abuses of power of empire has gone far and wide and picked up all these other languages in words into which our instance the word taboo, I believe might come from one of the islands of the Pacific, I think it might be some Samoan or Tongan, but it came into English. So English is an extraordinary language populated by many other languages.
The Irish language is beautiful, it corresponds very much to the landscape. And depending as to what dialect of Irish you're speaking, you can often hear the softness or the harshness of landscape through that language. Irish is a very concrete language and so regularly makes reference to the contours of hills and mountains and fields or the body. While my Irish is not brilliant, I have a deep connection with it. I think most things that I say I tend to think through the Irish language. One of the impacts of the colonial project on the island of Ireland was that there began to be this introduction of a hierarchy of access to employment through if you spoke English and were speaking English. And then with the impact of the famine when the population was reduced by 2 million during the famine and then continued to become less than half of what it had been, people flocked to the urban centers, and cities grew enormously. The population of the island of Ireland in 1845 was about 9 million, but there were only 200,000 in the Dublin area. So for the main city that's a very small population. At the moment, for instance, the population is about 7 million and the population in Dublin is 1.2 million, I believe and so that is a huge impact in terms of urban centers, Cork, Galway and Belfast doing some other big cities there.
So, with a with flooding of people towards urban centers, the English language became more and more important. And then there were some measures to criminalize the usage of the Irish language also. And then to introduce names for places, so places in Dublin that are known as Dún Léire, or in Cork Cobh, were then called Kingstown and Queenstown, calling something - something that people locally don't call it as an extraordinary act of invasion, linguistic colonization, is what I’ve always called that, for people to have to learn a second language in order to be able to deal adequately in their own country is a fascinating way you make people feel inadequate, in speaking about questions of power in their own place, where they have to learn a second language in order to go to do. So I'm all for learning second and third languages, but not in the way of making people feel unfluent in circumstances to do with their own agency individually, as well as collectively.
So when Ireland was partitioned in 1921, the Republic of Ireland established a constitution, a bilingual constitution in both English and Irish and so in the Republic of Ireland, Irish is protected, you have to study it in school unless you've worked hard to get an exemption, you can't get into university without having passed exams in English, Irish, and another European language and so language is very important thing here. And yet, to have to learn a language, most people learn Irish as their second language, to have to learn the language of your locality as a mandatory subject in school, can cause all kinds of resentments, unfortunately, rather than it being a breathing language, for many people to do. I've always loved the language. But then unfortunately, for many people also, they might feel like it was just a language that wasn't taught well in school, or the significance of that wasn't taught to, therefore people haven't practiced their own fluency in it.
Ayana Young Speaking of colonization, I’d love to further this conversation into the cost of empire, the re-enactment of colonial empire, and how we live within colonial empire. And to speak of colonization in regards to Ireland, but in doing so with the understanding and framework of the United States as a settler colony, would seem to complicate my own understanding a bit. So can you begin by describing what it means to live within colonial empire in Ireland and how this history if continuously unfolding into the present?
Pádraig Ó Tuama Few enough people these days would call Ireland a colonial empire, I suppose I use the lens of empire to look at the impact of Britishness on Ireland. But people of British identity have been here for so many years now, but I think it is an ungenerous and inaccurate term to use for, I suppose, the fifth of the population on the whole island of Ireland, who have British heritage, that would certainly feel like a ungenerous lens, people have been here for so long, that we are all part of each other now, we are all wrapped with each other, and we can't undo the past and we need to find ways within which we can reflect on the blames we have towards each other, the deep pains that we have towards each other, and then practice some kind of virtue in finding a way to acknowledge, finding a way to let pain be recognized and memorialized, as well as then finding a way within which that can impact our present with each other.
When I think of the project of empire, I think of all of the layers that are part of the project of empire, there are the decision makers, which aren't English people, or Scottish people, or British people. It's a small number of people who make huge decisions that impact the world, those who were already the ruling classes, entitled people with large swathes of land, who were happy to keep people in their own country in indentured service, nevermind people in other countries. And so I see really, that the project of Empire is part of a manifestation of a project of power, and abuse of negative power, selective power that requires the majority to be subjugated at the hands of the small, entitled minority. Then I see another layer of empire is that through the story of Ireland, for instance, Ireland certainly has suffered an enormous amount. However, when Irish people went to what is now called the United States, and lots of Irish people were involved in defending the idea of the slavery project. So many Irish people who have 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 and while they might have been the bottom of the white ladder, they were nonetheless white and 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. So that is a warning from history that just because you've suffered, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can become virtuous. And 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, New Zealand, and Australia.
Ayana Young Oh, Pádraig, that is such a deep lesson that I think many of us in our ancestral lineages have yet to learn. And thank you for bringing that up. And now there's also this question here on the burden of shame, whether it be ancestrally, individually, or nationally. So do you think it's possible that in reconciling these painful histories and shadows of shame that we can break the supposed circularity of time and repetition of history?
Pádraig Ó Tuama Well, that's going to be a slow project. You hear a lot of people these days say, “Oh, you know, I don't think I'm racist, because I don't use particular terms.” And that's okay. Okay, fine. It's great that a person isn't using particular terms. But any white person is going to benefit from centuries and centuries of white privilege at the expense of People of Color. And so not using racist language might be a great step one, but really, there's, you know, there's a million steps to be taken. So we shouldn't congratulate ourselves for taking step one. There are shaming things to look at in our past. And shame has been a term that has gathered a lot of negativity over the last while and I am not entirely sure what to do with that. Because I know that certain forms of shame can be like living with a cancer of the soul, something that won’t die and something that keeps you from experiencing flourishing. However, there are also certain forms of shame that can be educational shame when it comes to thinking about what is it that in my family line that we have done to other people in order to better ourselves at the expense of other people. I'm not sure that shame is a bad response to looking at some of the stories of our past.
Ayana Young I really resonate with that, that I don't think it's necessary to run away from shame, although I know that it has gotten a bad rap and people feel that shaming people or feeling shame isn't productive in our growth. But I disagree with that. I think that there are shameful things that us humans have done and we need to sit with that in order to grow and learn and to really feel it and embody it. So we hopefully won't repeat it and I'm really happy you brought that up. So-
Pádraig Ó Tuama Yeah, I mean, the shame can be educational, anything can be terribly negative, or wonderfully positive or uncomfortably informative. And so, in a sense, it might be that shame is amoral. And the question is, what are we going to do with shame? If we deny the kinds of things that cause us shame? Well, then we might deny the possibility of the practice of accountability or reparation. And there are serious things that we need to be called to in terms of paying attention to the here and now and to the privileges that some enjoy, and the continued debts that other people are born into.
Ayana Young I absolutely agree. Now, I know that you are stepping down as the leader of Corrymeela this month, but I am hoping you don’t mind me asking some questions that reflect on your time there…For our audience, I’ll preface that Corrymeela is a community center that “believes that people can learn to live and work well together”…It is also “Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation group-
Pádraig Ó Tuama Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation group, from all about, not just in the north.
Ayana Young Okay, thank you for that. And I learned that the founder of Corrymeela, Ray Davey was held as a prisoner of War in Dresden during World War II and that Corrymeela very much grew out of the inhumanity Ray witnessed. So I’d love if you could share a little bit more about Corrymeela, the “existential imperative” of reconciliation, and how our humanity can perhaps be most active amidst times of deep inhumanity?
Pádraig Ó Tuama Yeah. So Ray Davey was born in Belfast, I think in 1915. So he was born before this project called Northern Ireland was imagined, so Ireland was partitioned in 1921 and the North, or what some people call Northern Ireland, or the six countries of the occupied six counties, depending as your politics depends as to what validation, you give this new jurisdiction that was created. Anyway, that was created to the joy of some and to the sadness of others. And really, the most recent iteration of the question of violence on the island of Ireland has come as a result of that partition. So Ray became ordained and then became a volunteer chaplain with the British services in World War II and he was captured in North Africa and brought through a variety of prisoner of war camps, some in North Africa, then through Italy, and then finally outside Dresden and 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, he saw his liberation came at the expense of the annihilation of many.
And he returned back to Belfast, about 1945, a man of the age of 30 and that was a complicated thing to come by being liberated by the annihilation of many. Northern Ireland wasn't even 25 years old by that stage, partition happened in ‘21, he came back in ‘45 and you could see really that the deep divisions sewn by any kind of partition, were seeking to manifest themselves in some kind of civic action. And there's always going to be the threat that civic action is going to turn violent. And so he began to work with students, he became the Chaplin of Queen's University in Belfast, he began to work with students to say, “Let's come together in groups of diverse people to talk and argue without, not for the aim of consensus, but for the aim of relationship across division.” And so for 20 years, really, he brought students from all kinds of disciplines towards each other, they took trips back to Germany, took trips to other parts of Europe that were trying to pay attention to, “How the hell did we let ourselves get into this?” How did the churches turn their eyes away from what was obviously happening in terms of the anti anti semitism, so rife across Europe. And so then, in ‘65, he heard of a plot of land on the very north coast of Ireland coming up for sale, and he had been talking for 20 years, he was a charismatic man. And he had a whole bunch of students and a whole bunch of adults in the city all part of the Ecumenical Movement and together they fundraised and purchased this piece of land, every little kind of plot of sixfields in Ireland is called a town land and all those town lands have a name and so they found out that the name of this plot of land that they purchased that had an old house and the name was Corrymeela, which is an old, old Irish word, somebody naive, told them that it meant hill of harmony and so they took that as a lovely sign for the Corrymeela community to begin.
About 10 years later, after which time the Troubles had already, the latest iteration of the Troubles had broken out and about 68 people had been murdered. Terrible, terrible things that happen. So about 1975, an actual etymologist of old Irish said, “Well, the real meaning of Corrymeela is unclear, but it's definitely not hill of harmony, it’s probably something closer to lumpy crossing place, by which stage they've been 10 years of the attempt at being a reconciliation community. And they thought Olympic crossing places are far more accurate term, for this attempt, this essay to be a community in reconciliation and reconciling towards each other. And reconciling does not mean to arrive at consensus. reconciling does not mean that you all believe the same thing about who was to blame for the circumstances that we’re in. Reconciling is some kind of practice in person and in policy, to pay attention to the society that's pulling itself apart. And that is painful. And the imperative certainly in the context of Ireland has been to be in deep relationship with people who represent the thing that you consider to be the opposite of your point of view. And that is costly, it's painful, it might cause you to be called a traitor by some of your own and you will find yourself in all kinds of unexpected circumstances where you find empathy and sympathy for people coming from different points of view than you. And that has been a mandatory thing really, for us and the question of what reconciliation means between Britishness and Irishness on the island of Ireland.
For 700 years, the question of Britishness has impacted life here linguistically, in power in land distribution, in questions to do with the famine and questions to do with sovereignty and questions to do with power all of these areas have been impacted enormously. That is a long term relationship. We're never going to move away from the fact that to be Irish is going to definitely require navigation and hopefully generous navigation with the question of the British impact on Ireland. And there are so many things about Britain to be celebrated, rich, rich, culture, rich arts, and extraordinary contributions to the human community through the British project. And for us in Ireland, part of the question is to work alongside those who are British and to look at the ways in which we can celebrate shared culture, we can celebrate different culture, we can find ways to mark deep pain, find ways to lament and protest very seriously the things that have been denied. And then find a ways to say that we are still with each other and we will need to be with each other. It is impossible for people to simply leave, we can't undo the past so we need to find a way to practice something called society with each other in the present and find ways in which all of that can be to our mutual flourishing and beneficial co-living together.
Ayana Young I think about the notion of marginalization as a power structure and how in response to ever present marginalization that is sustained by structures and systems, it is then our responsibility to curate spaces of belonging. What is at the foundation of practicing inclusion? And then perhaps, more specifically, what is the function of storytelling in curating these spaces and social movements?
Pádraig Ó Tuama All of these things are practices that are never finished. We do need to find ways to support each other in belonging with each other. Sometimes belonging is created by people who have been through a similar experience and it's a very powerful experience. But belonging can also be practiced together in a positive way, by people who have very little in common. How can we find a way where people who have very little in common can also belong with each other? Because if we think belonging can only happen, when we have a shared experience or a shared identity, well, then very quickly, we begin to measure what those borders of belonging are, those boundaries of belonging, may feel the need to protect the boundaries, and that in the Irish context has not been positive.
So we need to find ways within which we can trouble the idea of belonging and look to the ethics of belonging, certain belongings will always feel natural and fluent and indigenous to us and that's a wonderful way to practice what some kind of human community can look like. But I think that needs to also be in the Irish context that needs to be practiced outside the areas where it feels natural and fluent also, to discover in somebody who might seem like the other, the possibility of flourishing relationship also. Story doesn't just have to be shared story, we can thoroughly enjoy and learn from a story that feels utterly foreign to us. The idea that story is only based on common shared experiences, I think, has a certain idolatry of common ground in it. And I am interested in the kind of stories and belonging that can flourish when common ground does not seem apparent and I'm interested in ways which difference and unsameness can be seen like an invitation, rather than a threat, because otherwise all kinds of sectarianism can begin, Cecilia Clegg and Joe Liechty put together a book called Moving Beyond Sectarianism and they define sectarianism as belonging gone bad, and I love how they define that because it recognizes that belonging is a really powerful force, but even something so powerful can turn rotten, when it necessarily requires an enemy because then it will look for an enemy and if there isn't an enemy to be found it will create an enemy. And so suddenly, even small differences become the reason why a certain form of belonging is based on the marginalization of others.
Marginalization, for me, is always a power structure. I am relatively uninterested in hearing sob stories about somebody who's been marginalized, because that has a way of making them seem pathologized, or criminalized, or medicalized even, I'm much more interested in thinking who's benefiting from marginalization? Some kind of central power is benefiting from this. And so for me, marginalization always needs to be a question back to the center of power. It needs to open us up to the question about who is doing this and who is benefiting from it at the expense of others.
Ayana Young Pádraig there's so much there. I have been thinking about memory, especially in relationship to brutality and conflict, and I am reminded of James Baldwin, who once wrote “It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People, who remember, court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence. People who forget, court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forgot.” I’d love to explore this passage with you in the context of your own experiences. On the one hand, I am discomforted by our propensity to forget and our inability to bear witness, yet on the other, the power of painful memories, if not alchemized properly, is corrosive as well. So, can you speak to the function of memory in reconciliation work?
Pádraig Ó Tuama While you've described it very well. There is a need to have a powerful and creative and lifegiving reckoning with the past and that will need to incorporate all kinds of practices, lament, protest, gathering, learning, openness to the new, openness to change, openness to grief, openness to permanent memorialization, and openness also to the possibility of some kind of civic generosity even in the face of our past. And this is a difficult thing, it requires leadership and I don't just mean in terms of leadership from a figurehead who's elected, I mean, leadership from within the community. And we need to find a way where plurals can coexist, where we aren't just saying, “Okay, we're all going to be part of a civic mass of forgiveness now.” That's not possible. And human flourishing will need to have places of lament, places of grief, places of protest, places of compromise, places of learning, places of debate, and places of difference and dialogue as well.
All of these things are necessary in circumstances like Ireland, where there is so many different versions of the past that we can't agree on who, upon whom the blame lies, often we idolize the past in a way where we think that there can be certainty about the past, but the past is always plural and there's always different places where we can begin the question of blame, and blame can be equally spread in the context of the Irish/British relationship. And you can look at all kinds of reasons why Irish people are to blame, and all kinds of reasons why British people are, but blame won't solve anything. It's an important question to learn where you might apportion blame, but then there comes the civic question of “Okay, and now what?” Even if you believe that your group is less to blame for them, the other group is fine. Now what? What are we going to do? Are you just going to imagine that the other group is incapable of moral or civic action today? How can we coexist in a way that's flourishing and mutual. So all of these things are vital for us to pay attention to?
Ayana Young I would love to candidly ask you about the language that comes from the Earth…I have read that you take qualms with the oversimplification and overt romanticization of the landscape in that it neglects the practicality of a place…In a chapter you wrote titled “The Place Between” in Timothy Cardon’s Neither Here nor There: The Many Voices of Liminality, you talk about how landscapes can have rage or fury…they hold stories of everyday life. I’d love to open this up to you on the implications of language and our relationship with the natural world and how perhaps our severance from the natural world is reflected in this obsession with reflecting the spiritual onto the landscape, rather than the pragmatic.
Pádraig Ó Tuama What so for me, the spiritual and the pragmatic, or possibly both sides of the same thing. I always think that spiritual and I remind myself that spiritual comes from the word spirare, meaning breath, and that I am dead without breath. And so spiritual is an intensely bodily thing and for me, that is where Celtic spirituality begins. I have sometimes found myself very frustrated, when I read what people write about Celtic spirituality, it is the most airy fairy, disembodied, impractical unincarnated language possible. It just seems misty. And I find that to be deeply boring and deeply denying of the linguistic tradition of Irish which is so earthy and bodily. The Irish language takes so many metaphors from actual carnal reality, meatiness is so important.
So kind of a small story of my own rage was told in that chapter where I was once part of an event where somebody looked out over a valley in County Wicklow, which is just south of Dublin, and County Wicklow is called the Garden of Ireland and its valleys are beautiful and filled with the most gorgeous heathers, moss green, purple, yellow, browns, stunning colors, it looks like, it looks like a beautiful Turner painting. And somebody said, “Oh, God, you can just sense the spirituality from the landscape there.” I just thought, what kind of bullshit is this? The people have to live in this valley. And heather, while it's beautiful, is terrible for eating, poor sheep cut their tongues on the thorns of heather. Heather, in Irish is fraoch, which means rage or fury. And so somebody who understood this linguistically that they call their surroundings, beautiful as they were, they call the plant rage. And so for me finding a way to pay attention to the fact that all that thrives around us, and is also in conflict, that plants, that animals, have had to fight for their own survival and to be close to nature is to be close to the question of survival, and survival can be cruel. Annie Dillard writes about this really powerfully in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, where she says, you know, people who talk about wanting to get close to nature don't seem to have spent too much time thinking about what that means. It is a demanding survival tactic and it requires an enormous amount from us. So spirituality that doesn't pay attention to the muscular meaty ways in which we need to pay attention to our body, to our landscape, to the Earth, to my mind is spirituality that is not paying attention to the question of being alive.
Ayana Young That was so beautifully spoken Pádraig and I feel that the land holds many stories and representations and it's not all just beautiful or lovely. You know, it does it kind of strips, it strips the depth from the land, it strips the stories and strips the identity of the land, just over simplify it like that. And I really love you speaking about that. Now, I have this question on my mind on the theologies of both joy and sorrow and I haven't quite figured it out. But I'm thinking also about the role of religion, and how we can recognize the complacency of structures that have failed us, but still hold a deep sense of faith that extends beyond its failings.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Say a bit more, I’m fascinated by what you're saying, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about what's on your mind with that.
Ayana Young Yeah, well, I guess just today I see a lot, especially in the United States, this agnostic or atheist movement, a lot of I feel like people are being just so detached from religions of the past, feeling frustrated by what religions have done within power structures, and how they've failed us in the sense of bringing peace or health to the land, health to humans. But at the same extent, I do see there is a deep disconnection when we live this type of postmodern secular life where we don't we don't hold spiritual values, within our lives, within our actions. And 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. So yeah, I wonder, as we're, especially the young ones, are stepping into this world where so many of these power structures and religious structures have failed us in many ways, but at the same time, how do we reconcile with that and hold ourselves within something beyond just a post modern capitalistic framework?
Pádraig Ó Tuama Well, I think the stories of the past are very important, it can seem to some like this is the age when people began to move away from religion and the the imagination, I think, immature imagination, is that moving away from religion, especially toxic religion, would be the thing that leads us towards virtue, but all you have to do is turn the clock back 100 years and look at the story of the eugenics movement in Australia and to recognize that people have been thinking that they've been secular for a long time and been doing terrible things to each other. So there is no movement that can claim the corner on virtuous practice. So science alone will not save us because people thought that eugenics was science and that eugenics was a non religious approach, and that it was free from supremacy and was free from everything, it was just done for the benefit of humankind. And terrible things were done through eugenics, this idea the science of better breeding, so people were sterilized because they were deemed to not be the kind of people who would give birth to virtuous children, children were stolen from families and are forced into marriages to breed the so-called “Indigenous problem” out of Australia. So there's all these ways within which war was being waged on people in the name of this scientific secular project.
So I don't think there's anything alone that will save us. Religion has claimed for a long time that that might be the thing. And we know enough to say that religion has been extraordinarily beautiful and creative, for so many endeavors and extraordinarily disruptive in so many other endeavors. But science too, has a lot of blood in its past and we need to pay attention to that. The secular project, I think, is often misunderstood. Secular means to go into the world with your ideology, to take your ideology and to be in conversation with the world. Secular does not mean anti-religious, or irreligious, secular means to be in dialogue. So I consider myself to be a very secular person, I have the things, the ideologies, the hopes, the faith that I tried to hold on myself, but I consider it to be a virtue and a demanding practice to be secular about those to be in conversation with people in the world, who think very differently and to ask, what does this mean now? Who benefits? From whom was this taken away?
I know you've had john a. powell on your program, and he asks these beautiful questions, demanding questions, who decides? Who wins? Who loses? Those are three questions that he asks. And I think that's a secular question to ask when it comes to my ideology, an ideology, or spirituality that I might feel is very nurturing to me. Who decides who wins, who loses and pays? These are serious questions to ask and I think every worthwhile endeavor should be open to asking itself that.
Snoopy has an extraordinary question in one of the cartoons and Snoopy is sitting on top of his camera typing and Charlie Brown comes along and says, “I hear you're writing a book on theology, I hope you have a good title.” And Snoopy looks up in his fairly pontifical way and says, “I have the perfect title.” And the title of his book of theology suddenly becomes etched in typeface in the sky and it is, “Have You Ever Considered That You Might Be Wrong,” but I think there is such brilliance in that the scientific project, I'm from a family of scientists, and the scientific project is not frightened of asking itself, and thrives really on asking yourself regularly. Are we wrong? Are we limited? Have we reached the final answer? Is there another answer beyond the answer that can improve us, but science has shown in the past that it can be devastating when it chooses to end itself in a certain place and religion also has shown himself in his past that it can be devastating and a power of terror, when it doesn't continue to ask itself that itself might be the place where repentance is needed, rather than projecting repentance onto other people.
Ayana Young I'm glad that you made the mention that science also has blood on its hands or something like that. Because I do see when people move away from religion and kind of bring that fanatical feeling into science then and then science is the one true God or science is in a sense, yes, it's about questioning, but it's not to be questioned as the authority and I think that's also extremely limiting. And I've really been questioning science so much these days as much as I've studied science and I've, it's taught me so much and really helped me identify what I care about in a lot of ways. But I, I see this, this savior mentality with science, especially with the environmental movement and climate emergency, and the Anthropocene extinction. There's this energy that somehow science will save us. Science has the answers. And the scientist in a sense has become to me like the priest, when the Bible was in Latin, and the lay people couldn't read that language. It's like a similar thing. Science has this language. The papers are so inaccessible to most people, and then there's this power structure that comes into play, let alone the fact that so much science is being bought out by big corporations, and so on and so forth. And then this intense need to collect data, collect data, collect data in order to prove something. When I feel like so much of what is being proven, we already know, because we can see it observationally. We know that intuition really, we don't need to have data for 30 years on how I you know, something is being poisoned. It's being poisoned, period. And we should look at that and put our energy into stopping the poisoning. So I have so many feelings around science, not that I think it should be thrown out, but not given the amount of I don't know, I don't think it should be given the amount of power that it's given. And I would say science and technology are one in the same for me with that.
Pádraig Ó Tuama I mean, they are all practices of power. And power is amoral. I mean, when you look at the word physics, φύση, meaning nature, from Greek physics is profoundly interested in, in the nature of things, so that the laws of the universe. And I mean, I think that's such a worthy and brilliant endeavor. And the physicists that I can understand, which are very few, are the ones who want to do great work of translation themselves to make themselves intelligible to someone like me. They are filled with the mystery of what they don't know, and filled with the question of the unknowability of certain things. And the question of saying, we need to continue to pay attention to how we do these questions, needs to be guided by the best virtue that we can practice in the here and now. And I think that's a very humble practice. And I am so moved by listening to physicists that I know who practice that in a way to widen wonder, and to open up the question of what it means to be human with each other in the here and now.
Ayana Young I'd love to be able to close on this question around hunger and spiritual decay. And I'm trying to find this connection that I'm feeling in my mind about them both . There's just one part of me that's really wondering about the hunger of our time and how hunger can propel creativity and foster community. And within that community, I'm thinking about peace and how we can be in that place moving forward in this hunger. And there's a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that says “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual decay.” So I'm curious about the notion of uncovering our spiritual decay, and then more specifically, what does this practice of peace look like during this time? You know, how is building peace in our communities imperative, alongside this set uncovering? And where does our hunger fit in to propel us into this work?
Pádraig Ó Tuama Well, there's so much in that question. It really interests me to imagine a response to your question about what current hunger might be. I think one current hunger is a desire for accountability and there is also a current hunger and a desire for purity. Accountability is something that really interests me, purity is something that frightens me somewhat, because I've seen so many attempts, over centuries, to find a way of purity. And we can look back on some of those centuries old attempts for purity, and see the violences that they inflicted. We hope that the attempts for purity now might be less financial. But nonetheless, we have shown ourselves over and over how quickly desires for purity turn sectarian.
Accountability, I think we are filled in an era where there is a desire to reckon with the past, and that the past is truly present in the here and now. I was in England a few weeks ago, and I mentioned something about the partition of Ireland and somebody said to me, “Oh, for God's sake, you're going way into the past now, aren't you dragging that up” and I had no idea it seems like that that very week, I'd gotten a green card to say so that I can drive my car across the border if Brexit happens, that's all to say past is not the past for us in Ireland, the past is very present.
We have two jurisdictions in the place where not everybody wants there to be two jurisdictions. And so the privilege of being able to say, “Oh, god, that's wayin the past” seemed to me to be lacking in accountability or paying attention to the history of a nation that hadn't paid attention to its history. So I think that there is a desire for accountability in the here and now. Accountability of the impact of the powers of the past on the here and now and the privileges that benefit some at the expense of many are being called into question today. And I think that is a profound thing to practice. Certainly the English Irish question I find myself regularly wanting to hold things up regarding the question of the impact of Britishness, but then I look at myself as a cisgendered, able bodied, white man, and granted I am gay and so I've suffered personally, on that level, but on so many levels, I'm filled with the inheritances of privilege, at the expense of others. And so there's a question for accountability for me, in the here and now, in terms of what how, when do I think that my voice is worthy of being heard, and when do I just need to shut the hell up.
Ayana Young This has been so expansive for me. And I know for those who will be listening soon, and I just want to open up the conversation two, 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?
Pádraig Ó Tuama A small story, I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago, and I was visiting with a friend of mine, I was his best man, he got married, and he has a teenage son, 16. And we got chatting, the son and I, over a meal one evening, a family evening and he was telling me about how he's been drawn to poetry through learning in school. And I find myself over and over realizing that for me, a life without poetry, would feel a little bit like death. For me, poetry is so physical, and so much linked to me to the question of breathing. A Day Without poetry for me is a day when I don't feel like I have been in my body and it is certainly lower than the question of, you know, justice, eating and drinking. But it's certainly high up there in terms of daily priorities for me. And I find myself thinking that poetry is not just for people who feel like they know lots about poetry. Poetry is for those of us who are experiencing the desire to have some kind of language that makes some kind of sense for us in the here and now. I'm talking to the 16 year old for whom he was discovering, or learning and school or 18th century poets, and he was finding so much richness in them. And I found it really moving, that he knew stuff about old poets that I know nothing about. And he was quoting to me, as we discussed over dinner, these powerful lines from poetry that were making sense to him as a 16 year old in Melbourne, in Australia. And that was really moving to witness the ongoing way within which old texts can nurture us. And I find myself wanting to prescribe poetry to everybody.
Ayana Young Oh, I love that and it really makes me feel strongly about the importance of reincorporating poetic language and nonlinear vocabulary, in relationship to our well being, our expression, and perhaps even in our conflict resolution.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, I find some some broadcasting and then some journalism seems to imagine that its consumers are stupid and so they need attention grabbing clickbait headlines that minimalize a subtlety, that they won’t get it if it’s subtle. And I find that imagination that the readers or listeners of media are stupid to the patronizing imagination, people are so rich, and people have so much subtlety. We all cope with our own lives with their own friendship circles with their families. And often there's difficulty in those. So we're perfectly capable of navigating subtle experiences of being human with each other and I find that poetry has a respect for the readers of poetry because poetry doesn’t say “Oh, here is how to read me. Here’s how to understand me.” Poetry is filled, I hope, with the kind of imagination that says, look, it's possible to take meanings from this, or these, the poetry that I turned to is filled with the possibility of seeing this can mean many things all at once. And it might mean something that was never imagined by the poet. And I think any art worth its salt is not telling you how it should be interpreted, but it is there as a small act of survival and remembrance, in the hope that it might create an echo on someone else to help them pay attention to the circumstances of their life too.
Ayana Young Oh my goodness, that was so beautiful. And thank you for raising that awareness around the way that we communicate with others, especially around topics that are so deeply important and meaningful and unnecessary to talk about these times when we see social media and mainstream media, yeah, patronize us and kind of think of us, us as consumers that can't understand, that don't have the time. That kind of idea that we, our attention spans can't handle anything more than a few seconds and we're seeing social media, cut, cut, cut, cut, even the length of videos. And I think if we keep believing in that, and then perpetuating that, even amongst each other, and the way that we share our ideas and our feelings, it is really a huge disservice to our capacity for creativity and understanding and I think this clickbait culture is so tied in with the resource extraction culture of just quickly get in, get out, don't really go into the depth and then we can't make our way out if we don't trust each other enough and give each other the opportunities to be in wonder to be in question. And to not feel like we have to move through things so quickly. Like it's another thought I've been having a lot about just slowing down because the clickbait culture, it's about fast, fast, fast. If you can click bait something or if you can click something quickly, then that means you can click a lot of things quickly. But we don't need I don't think we need as much as is being thrown at us all the time. And I actually think it's to our disadvantage. So there's so much there and I love that story and how you worded that so beautifully about poetry and makes me want to pick up a book of poetry today and just be able to sit with it.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Well, you should, I can recommend a few. First Joy Harjo’s 2015 book, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, and then Richard Blanco's book from earlier on this year How to Love a Country. Marie Howe’s book Magdalene is an extraordinary book, Faisal Mohyuddin’s book The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, Danez Smith’s book Don’t Call Us Dead. Those are just some recommendations. But they're all extraordinary.
Ayana Young Thank you for those. Well, Pádraig, thank you again for this conversation. I hope we get to have a second one at some point in the future because it felt so good to speak with you and I hope that we cross paths in the future.
Pádraig Ó Tuama Be wonderful. Okay, all the very best.
Hannah Wilton Thank you for listening to another episode of For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was from Peia and our theme music is from the late and great Kate Wolf. I'd like to give a shout out to our team, podcast production and editing Andrew Storrs, writing and lead research Francesca Glaspell, outreach and research Aiden McRae and Hannah Wilton, podcast music Carter Lou McElroy, digital community organizing Eryn Wise and Suzanne Dhaliwal, graphic and web design Erica Ekrem and Melanie Younger with partnerships and media.