← The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
Pádraig Ó Tuama on poetry, conflict resolution, and the Stations of the Cross
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:33]
B
One of the most difficult things for people in conflict to answer sometimes can be, what do you want? And then, of course, there's what people say they want, and then there's what's driving them. They might say, I want peace, but perhaps what's really driving them is, I want to win. So many conflicts that are just about to be resolved fall at the last minute because of the incapacity of people to cope with. What will I do after this? What is my imagination beyond this fight that I'm in? To bring all of those things into the place of prayer is an encounter with self, an encounter with that which we call God. That is the disturbance, that is the emptiness, that is not giving us reassurance, but that is speaking to us in a place where we are listening to the sound of ourself, but perhaps with a different tuning, and something else occurs.
- [01:27]
A
Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I am joined by my poetic producer, Maggie Van Dorn. Maggie, good to be with you today.
- [01:42]
C
It's great to be with you, Jim, and I'm honored by that appellation. And it is certainly a fitting one for our guest today who, who is
- [01:50]
A
none other than Padraig Ottooma, the poet and spiritual master. Can you tell us a little bit about Padraig?
- [01:56]
C
Absolutely. So Padraig Ottuma is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. From 2014 to 2019, he was the leader of the Cory Mila community, which is Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation community. Padraig is the host of On Bing's podcast, Poetry Unbound, which I have personally used in contemplative walks and really love and highly recommend. And he's also published volumes of poetry, essays, a memoir, and theology. Not least of those publications is a book on prayer, which is called Being Prayers for Curiosity, justice and Love. Padraic has also published a poetry collection entitled Kitchen Hymns and an anthology which is called 44 poems on being with each Other, A Poetry Unbound Collection. And this upcoming autumn 2026, Padraig will take up the role as professor in the practice of spirituality at Yale Divinity School. So strap in. This is quite a ride into the world, of course, of spirituality, but it begins in a deeply troubling place. I think he talks about in his teenage years being subjected to conversion therapy. So maybe, Jim, could you start by just explaining a little bit of what conversion therapy is?
- [03:23]
A
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, because it's a very disturbing part of his life and he talks about it very freely. And conversion therapy is basically a sort of an umbrella term for therapies or treatments that are supposed to, in a sense, cure someone of being gay. That's usually what it's used for. And they have been largely discredited. You know, people are simply born that way. They often do a lot of emotional, spiritual, psychological, and even physical damage to people. And sadly, Padraic talks about even undergoing exorcisms. Right. So conversion therapy is also often seen in a religious context. Right. So you go to a Christian counselor or Christian therapist. And so it's really important to say how damaging these practices and these treatments are and really how discredited they have become. And Padraig talks about how harmful it was for his life and what enabled him to move past those really harmful views of himself and really into a more spacious acceptance by loving and understanding God.
- [04:26]
C
And he does move through that terrible experience with the help of Taize poetry, a more expansive spirituality and spiritual practices. And I was thinking about kind of what has undergirded Padraig's work, both his poetic work and also his commitment to peace and reconciliation, as he describes it. The Corymeela community in Northern Ireland. And to me, there is this thread of truth telling, like a fidelity to telling the truth. Even if that's a truth that might be uncomfortable to say, maybe it's bringing forth a truth that has been historically disregarded, or in the case of poetry, it's not being satisfied with easy answers, which I think pertains to the faith life as well.
- [05:20]
A
You know, I think that's a great insight and that really helps frame the conversation. So truth telling in many ways, first of all, truth telling about who he is, you know, as a gay man, that's the first thing. Right. I would say truth telling in terms of poetry. Right. You want to be truthful and honest in your poetry and in his poems, Truth telling in the spiritual life. Right. He talks about God being difficult to understand. Right. It's not easy answers. And really truth telling in action, of course, all those other things are in action, but with other people in the Cory Miller community, where he describes a really interesting experience of, you know, having to admit his own limitations and his own flaws and his own, in a sense, othering of other people, you know, publicly. And so being open to understanding the truth about how you're portraying people, how you are understanding people and being humble enough to admit it right where you might be wrong. So I think you're absolutely right. I think, you know, one of the themes of his life and his ministry and his spirituality and his poetry is just what you say, Maggie, truth telling, which I think makes for a really honest and open conversation that we're about to have.
- [06:26]
C
Absolutely. And then of course, you both take on our audience question, which this week comes from Molly and a little bit of context. You know, Molly wrote in and she said that she has gone on several retreats where she allows the Holy Spirit to guide her, where she prays, walks, journals and so forth. But once home, it can be difficult to incorporate this special time and space back into her daily life. And so her question, which seems at the surface to be quite simple, is quite deep. And that is, what practices can I bring from retreats into my daily life? And, of course, if you'd like to ask Father Jim a question, you can write to us at the spiritual life@americanmedia.com
- [07:15]
A
well, thanks very much to Molly and thank you, Maggie, of course. And now onto our conversation with Padraig Ottooma. So, Padraig Ottuma, welcome to the Spiritual Life.
- [07:32]
B
Thanks very much, Jim.
- [07:33]
A
Thanks for being in our studio. I'm going to start at the beginning. You were born in Ireland and raised Catholic. What were some of your earliest memories of faith or thoughts about God?
- [07:42]
B
Oh, I mean, I think earliest memories are that there was nothing other than religion. I just assumed everybody was Catholic and everybody, you know, we had church holidays and bank holidays off every year. There was class masses and school masses, you know, sacramental education. My parents joined a charismatic Catholic prayer group when I was eight. And so that meant that every Sunday for three hours there was these lengthy prayer services. Everybody would go to mass, and then in the afternoon they would be part of these lengthy prayer services.
- [08:13]
A
Were you yourself charismatic growing up, would you say?
- [08:16]
B
I tried to be, yeah. I mean, being around people who sang choruses that were inspired by agricultural metaphors written in the 1970s, it was a very Catholic experience of charismatic prayer. I started to go along to ecumenical events in my, you know, my teen years. And I suppose I was quite influenced by the Ecumenical charismatic movement. Sometimes because of its mania, I found I'm very glad not to be involved anymore with that. But also there was extraordinary courage when it came to cross border Catholic Protestant dialogue and understanding and discourse. This was in the 80s and 90s in Ireland, when the troubles were complicated and Catholic Protestant dialogue together was sometimes an unusual thing.
- [09:01]
A
In addition to that sort of political appeal, what was the other appeal for you of charismatic Catholicism?
- [09:08]
B
Well, fear, probably. I think it's all I knew. I knew I was gay and I knew that that was a frightening thing and something I had to keep very quiet. And so I probably felt like this was the only way forward. And so I didn't know that there was a different way, a more contemplative way. And I probably felt like I'd be in trouble if I didn't pursue the charismatic approach to things.
- [09:32]
A
That's really interesting. The only way forward as a gay young person, because of why?
- [09:38]
B
Well, because of the threat of being hated by God and being abandoned by your community and losing everything in this life and the next, probably. Like lots of Catholics, I'm a strange mix of a rule follower and a rule breaker. And the fear based part of me was petrified of hell and petrified of punishment and petrified of all of the punishments in this life and the next that I heard from various preachers, some Catholic and some evangelical, about what would happen to gay people.
- [10:04]
A
I see. So you were compelled to follow this way out of fear?
- [10:08]
B
Out of fear. And along the way there were some extraordinary things. I met some people of great courage, people who'd been through atrocities and the troubles, who were people of deep charismatic faith who had found ways forward of discourse and dialogue and understanding. You know, that really shaped my professional life as a conflict mediator later on. And I had a little bit less fear. But my teens and twenties had an enormous amount of fear in them. I started to go along to Taize masses, and that was a great relief, actually. To go to Taize masses where there was a lot more space, a lot more silence, a lot less demand, and the language was more beautiful and more simple when it came to the simplicity of the prayer and the imagination of God that is conveyed and portrayed through their prayer and their liturgies, I found to be much more intellectually stimulating as well as a lot less threatening.
- [11:07]
A
Can you talk about Taize for people that may not be familiar with it, what it is?
- [11:10]
B
Taize is an ecumenical monastery in eastern France, right near the Swiss border, founded by a Swiss man who started initially a small community A Protestant monastic community, and he was sheltering Jews. And he used to leave the house in order to pray so that his prayer wouldn't interfere on people who were already being persecuted and who were fleeing for their lives. And it has flourished and flourished in this little town. So there's thousands of pilgrims coming every year. They have three times of prayer a day, a very simple kind of meditative kind of prayer, where they'll take a simple text from a psalm or from a saint and sing it over and over again in gorgeous harmonies.
- [11:54]
A
Now, getting back to your sort of reaction as a young gay person, did your image of God have to change for you to accept yourself? Or what enabled you to accept yourself in a religious sense?
- [12:06]
B
Actually, I went to Taize to give up on God in 1998. It was exactly when the Good Friday Agreement was passed, being signed to the peace agreement at home, the British Irish Peace Agreement. And I had decided I could no longer bear trying to be a person who believed in God. And with this curiosity and this explosion in me really, of needing to tell the truth about being gay, but knowing that I'd lose because I was working with a charismatic religious organization, knowing that I'd probably lose my job, lose the community in which I was living were I to do that. And my health was suffering, I was in such anguish and distress. And so I went for a two week silent retreat to Taize with the absolute desire to give up on religion.
- [12:52]
A
And how old are you at this point?
- [12:54]
B
1998. I was 22. Something happened to me there, something really powerful. One of the brothers, Frere Emil, he was giving him a morning talk every day. And there was something about the. The way within which he spoke about the text, where he'd take a text and he'd explore it in English and Spanish and Portuguese and Italian and Romanian, all these languages that he spoke just for 15 minutes. I was staying in the house for Men in Silence. And he had a literary approach to the text, where he read it very simply and said, you can ask this question of this text here and look at that word there. You can ask that to question. And it was like a reconciliation. I'd been writing poetry my whole life, and I loved poetry the whole way through school. And it was like some reconciliation happened between the artistic side of me and the side of me that had a curiosity, a hunger, a haunting about God that I thought, somehow the poet in me is allowed to bring forward my curiosity, my hollowness, my doubt, my rage. All of that can find a home in conversation with this Text. It was Easter 1998, and it truly was one of the great conversions of my life. I came away from that with a renewed prayer, with a renewed space for myself to say, I'm gay. And the question of God is too big for my mind to contain. So the burden of belief doesn't have to be on me. But what I certainly know and have evidence for is that I have had a yearning my whole life, and I can give space to that yearning without the demand for certitude. So much was exercised for me. I'd been put through exorcisms when I was 18. They were petrifying.
- [14:34]
A
Actual exorcisms.
- [14:35]
B
Actual exorcisms, yeah. Three of them. To cure you from being gay. Unsuccessful. Gloriously. But there was something that happened where there was so much fear was exercised from me in that moment. I felt capable of looking at the hunger and finding in the hunger something that could speak its own language.
- [14:57]
A
It's really interesting. So our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Right. So this identification of desire for God with true religious experience. Right.
- [15:10]
B
Yeah. Interestingly, the year after I started, a friend of mine said to me, you're pretty screwed up and you should see a proper therapist. Because up until then, I'd only been guided towards seeing people who were calling themselves Christian counselors, and many of whom had no qualifications and certainly no accountability or professional standards. And so I started to look around and where I was going to Mass there was a sign for a psychotherapist who worked out of a Jesuit center. And I thought, let me go along. So I contacted him. He was a lay man, but he did work out of a Jesuit center for spirituality. And it was my introduction to Ignatius that happened the year after. And, I mean, Ignatius is an old friend of mine now. I think I've thought about Ignatius every day since 1999. So that period of time, in my early 20s, was a great letting go of fear. And somehow I felt embraced by a spaciousness that was able to go beyond the question of definition, that had space for my rage and my doubt and my poetry and the line breaks that a poetry requires. And that felt like, I can find a home here.
- [16:25]
A
Now, here's a question I think a lot of listeners will ask, which is, what did that feel like, and what do you mean by that? So you found a spaciousness in which you could exist and thrive and flourish. Was that intellectual? Was that kind of emotional?
- [16:39]
B
What did you experience? It was bigger. I mean, both of those things are contained on the body, aren't they, the intellect and the emotions, the head and the heart, they're all part of the one flesh of each one of us. And I felt like my curiosity, whatever intelligence I have, whatever pain I had, all of it, could find an ease of expression. My writing began to change. I'd always written poetry, always kept it very quiet. But I began to see in my own writing, my own poetry, something in me that was able to give expression to the experience. And the experience was not one of praise. The experience was often one of resistance or curiosity or pushback or emptiness. I felt alive with language. And the glory of God as a human being, fully alive. From Irenaeus of Lyon gave me a sense to go, well, whatever this is, this feels like glory. And whatever God might be, this feels like that might be found here in an experience of freedom that was far beyond the confines of a kind of a homophobic, enraged, painful, punitive imagination that I had inherited from some very brave people who were doing interesting ecumenical work, but who clearly had profound distaste and disgust for gay people that they had communicated to me very powerfully.
- [18:03]
A
Let's go back. I really want to spend some time on poetry. You said you've. A couple times. You said you've always written poetry. How did it start? What appealed to you? Why poetry and not, you know, just sort of diary entries or fiction or whatnot?
- [18:18]
B
Well, the Irish education system is. And was filled with poetry. So we were learning poems off by heart in two languages from the age of five to 17. And I always loved the sound of it. I loved the contours of it. I found it easy to memorize. You know, there was one poem written by an Aran Islands poet, Martino Deroin. And there was a stanza in the middle of it that said, UIG nukraun ilorn the kyle UIG nuk fil a hard gok dinna. As lonely as a tree is in the middle of the wood, so is the poet among the people. And at the age of 11, I read that and had it memorized immediately and also thought, I don't believe that, but I loved the music of it. You know, I don't think you can compare lonelinesses, but there was something about the unique experience of loneliness that Martino Duran was trying to describe that I found so interesting. And so from the age of 11, I started to write poetry. And I used to hide it. I was kind of embarrassed. Even though it's so prolific in our culture still, to be saying that I spend my free time writing poetry was a little bit embarrassing. Amongst the lads.
- [19:18]
A
Because it wasn't masculine enough.
- [19:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I knew already that I wasn't the boyish kind of boy. You know, I wasn't great at soccer or hurling, and I did like gymnastics. And to. For the accolade of poetry to be added to that would have kind of confirmed my status as a failure of a boy.
- [19:38]
A
When did you, in a sense, come out as a poet?
- [19:42]
B
I suppose when I left school, you know, I, I. When I was 23 or 24, I started to tell people I've got a whole load of poems written. And they were all like, we know. That's all you talk about. So it was a surprise to me to realize that it wasn't a surprise to other people.
- [19:55]
A
Who are your favorite poets?
- [19:57]
B
I have a whole list of.
- [19:58]
A
Yeah, I'd love to hear it.
- [19:59]
B
Yeah. So my favorite dead, grumpy Irish poet, that's one category, is Patrick Kavanagh. I love Emily Dickinson. I find her strange. And I ultimately try to take a safari through her work and hope I get out alive having seen something interesting. I don't read her work trying to comprehend. I read her work trying to explain experience. There's Jamaican poet Kai Miller, whose work I love. He grew up in the environments of Jamaican Pentecostalism and certainly in the charismatic environment that I was in in my teens. I find so much recognizable in that.
- [20:35]
A
I want to go back to Emily Dickinson, maybe the one that most of our listeners will. I love Emily Dickinson. Why do you find her strange? Because, you know, someone might say, well, I can understand her poems, right? I mean, it's not sort of couched in all this difficult language. But why is she strange to you?
- [20:51]
B
Well, she. I mean, the way that she changed poetry. She clearly knew how to rhyme, but she chose not to at times. The inclusion of those capitalizations and those em dashes that are so hard to comprehend. What are they? Is it an intake of breath? And her obsessions, you know, her obsession with fame. She wrote a lot about fame throughout her life. Her interest in death. Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but ourselves and immortality. Who writes that when they're in their 20s? And what did they mean? So she is so filled with interest about the world. Her critique of religion. Oh, Jesus in the Air, she calls him at one point, which. It's hard to know what she means by that, you know. And so I like her independence of mind. I like her knowledge of convention and her deliberate breaking of it.
- [21:42]
A
So you take kind of inspiration from Them more generally to kind of be your own person and be your own poet and be your own self.
- [21:49]
B
Trying to think what the right word is, Jim. Inspiration, maybe. But I suppose I'm looking for something stronger. Sometimes it feels like I'm haunted by her, or that she disturbs me, or that she is asking for my lines to do less predictable work and that she is pushing something more. At one point in a later poem of hers, she's talking about. She's fantasizing about the idea that what would have been like had she been forced to marry young. And she says, this isn't a complete proper quote, but it's something like, marry, amputate my freckled bosom. Who is writing that in the 1860s? Like, what a line. And the adjective of freckled. It's so fresh, funny and shocking. And so I'm not inspired by her. I'm challenged by her. I'm pushed by her. And I'm critiqued by her to say, do something more interesting. Push and push and push. I can read something, if you like, that. This has nothing to do with Emily Dickinson, but it also has everything to do with Emily Dickinson. It goes back to what we were talking about before the exorcism. This is called the Exorcist. I wrote a sequence 20 years after the exorcisms. I wrote a sequence called Seven Deadly Sonnets. Seven sonnets about those awful exorcisms. The first exorcist I had was from the country of California, hence the reference to American here. So I'm sure loads of Americans are lovely. This one wasn't the Exorcist. I wished you weren't American. I wished you didn't see intrinsic evil in me. I wished you hadn't dragged my secret from me. Now I know you knew already. Someone squealed. I wished you didn't put your hands on me while you were screaming at the devils in me. All my homosexualities. I wished you'd never gathered people around instructing them to pray in tongues or read from Revelations or chant, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I wished you'd shut. Shut up. I repeated, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I wished he'd answered. I wished you dead. And I was frightened at the violence in me and the nest of demons in me. I wondered where they lived in my semen, in the dreams I had of being kissed. Why did they breed in me? My God. My Exorcist. Wow. So I couldn't have written that without Emily Dickinson.
- [24:23]
A
You know, I've been thinking, as you were talking and reading that beautiful poem, Whether or not you write poems for yourself or for public consumption. Because I'm thinking of a boy who's gay and who's writing poetry and who's worried about himself in the light of God. Is everything written for the public or are some things written just for you?
- [24:41]
B
Oh, many things are written just for me. I mean, I'll trouble that a little bit, Jim, and probably the same with you. You as a writer, that sometimes you write because you write. It's an event and the purpose of it is unclear. And sometimes it's only as you're writing you realize this is a private encounter that I'm having with something that I need to see on the page. And other times you write, and clearly you think, oh, I could shape this into something that might be part of a body of work. Do you feel the same when you write?
- [25:09]
A
I generally write for public consumption. When I write in my journal, it's just for me, it's usually after a retreat or after a prayer experience or after a interesting conversation. And there are some things that are not meant for public consumption, but they inform what I write a lot of times. But thank you for asking. Let me ask you. I'm going to shift a little bit to prayer. You've written a book called Being Prayers for Curiosity, justice and Love. And I'm going to ask you to read this excerpt, if you don't mind. I'm going to ask you a question. It's this right here.
- [25:40]
B
I don't know if prayers are answered. There's a yes, no imagination that often limits the possibilities of the practice. I think of prayer as a place of encounter, a place of yearning, a place of reckoning, of discerning. I think of prayer as a favorite emptiness, a place where your aloneness is accompanied by a mystery you place your trust in.
- [25:59]
A
Now, I'm a little worried about asking you this question. I always think of the apocryphal story of Beethoven, who plays the sonata, do you know the story? And his friend says, well, what does it mean? And he plays it again and he says, that's what it means.
- [26:13]
B
What does that mean?
- [26:13]
A
That's right. Well, what is prayer for you? You say, I don't know if prayers are answered. You want to unpack that a little bit? Do you know now if prayers are answered?
- [26:22]
B
No, no. I don't know if they're answered. And I don't know if answer is the right one, if the right verb. Prayer, of course, from French, pries to ask. But prayer is more than just asking. Prayer is an Event. Prayer is a gathering in prayer is a way of a certain kind of reflection, a certain kind of sight, silence, a certain kind of meditation, a certain posture, a certain abandonment of acceptance and a certain shoring up of resilience. It can be all of those things and resistance, too. And the idea that prayer can be summed up as to whether it worked by being answered or whether I got what I asked for, that, I think, is a limitation. We're all caught up in prayers that shape and guide and move and thrust our lives in all kinds of directions. Working as a conflict mediator. One of the most difficult things for people in conflict to answer sometimes can be, what do you want? And that is why I love Ignatius also, because of his absolute focus on that, what do you want? And then, of course, there's what people say they want, and then there's what's driving them. They might say, I want peace, but perhaps what's really driving them is I want to win. So many conflicts that are just about to be resolved fall at the last minute because of the incapacity of people to cope with. What will I do after this? What is my imagination beyond this fight that I'm in? Do I have an imagination of a self that is not just caught up in the identity of the fighting person? To bring all of those things into the place of prayer is an encounter with self and an encounter with that which we call God. That is the disturbance, that is the emptiness that is not giving us reassurance, but that is speaking to us in a place where we are listening to the sound of ourself, but perhaps with a different tuning and something else occurs.
- [28:17]
A
Yeah, there's so much there, prayer more as a relationship rather than just this kind of transactional. I ask and I get.
- [28:23]
B
But a relationship with what? That's often the question, because the what is not just a better version of us. God is. Whatever God is, is not that the relationship is sometimes with something profoundly infuriating by its silence.
- [28:37]
A
Sure. Yeah. And yes, I'm laughing because that's my experience. And I think it's a relationship with. With a God that we don't understand, which is very hard for people. I think that's. I think we tend to want to box God in, and I think that's what leads people to this idea of a transactional God. You know, if I do X, God will do. Yeah. And so therefore I can understand God. And when God doesn't, in a sense, do what you want God to do, it's, you know, you sort of Leave it behind sometimes, rather than really engaging in this mystery, which you don't understand. I think that's, for me, I think that's one of the main sort of thrusts of the adult spiritual life, which is to believe in a God you don't understand. You're going to be the professor in the practice of spirituality at Yale soon, so I'm curious what your definition of prayer would be in addition to that poem.
- [29:26]
B
Years ago, I was in a chapel, and one of the people who had been involved in being a reparative therapist on me. I was forced into reparative therapy when I was 19 and the exorcism hadn't worked. He happened to be in the chapel, and I was in there praying and frightened and burdened. And I saw him, and I was filled with rage. And something happened to me in a split second. I was brought to a place almost like a cavern, where there was a quiet grey light and there was an untouched pure pool in the corner of Absolute Presence and in the Imagination. I was there for a second, and I'm also still there. I have never left it, and so much was removed from me. I became disinterested in him. I became uninterested in the expression of my rage toward him, purely for the expression of rage. I've done a lot of political advocacy for safety for LGBT people, but it came from a deeper place. I was taken in an experience to what Meister Eckhart might call the place in the heart where neither time nor God nor any created thing, thing touches. I don't know where that place was, but it has never left me.
- [30:50]
A
It's beautiful. I love the word disinterested, too. It's very Ignatian.
- [30:54]
B
Right?
- [30:54]
A
You're not attached.
- [30:55]
B
Not attached to that.
- [30:57]
A
I'm really curious. You feel like you're living from that place or you're still in that place? Place of detachment, place of disinterest.
- [31:06]
B
Well, a place of detachment and disinterest from the prison of somebody else's imagination about me. That's what it felt like. It felt like being condemned. And that's not just for LGBTQI people, who feel that so many of us have felt like another person's imagination of us for all kinds of parts of our lives that are the place where spirituality and life should flourish, where we have been condemned for those interests, for those identities. And I suppose I found myself in a place in that experience of prayer that showed me that there's somewhere deeper to go, somewhere where language and silence can flourish.
- [31:45]
A
Well, I also love the idea of not being trapped in someone else's imagination view. Because there can be people whose imagination of us sort of expands us and enlarges us and gives us permission to be who we are. And someone who's a mentor, a teacher, a spiritual director or a parent, right? Who says, you know, I know what you can be. I know who you can be. I know God's calling you to be something more and can really give us a good space, you know, to grow in. And their imagination can help us when we can't see past our own limitations. We're going to pause for a short break, but we will be right back. The Spiritual Life is sponsored by Give Us this Day from Liturgical Press. Our community works for a faith that fuels hope, justice and prayer with voices and perspectives you trust. Like a monthly feature from Father James Martin, Blessed Among Us, and reflections that meet you where you are. Listeners of the Spiritual Life receive 10% off a new subscription at GiveUsThisDay.org Spiritual Life, What are your daily practices? I'm curious.
- [32:58]
B
I've gone through so many in my life. I suppose they have all tended to move towards silence every day. In my 20s, I did the Stations at the Grass. Once during a charismatic prayer session, the idea came to me, you should start to do the Stations. And I thought, what does that mean? I mean, I knew what it meant to do the Stations on Good Friday. It's. It kept on the same with me. And I found a prayer book that my auntie had given me for my confirmation, and it had very, very simple prayers at the back of it, one for each of the Stations. And so I just started to read those and walk around the Stations. And I liked it so much. I did it every day for 10 years.
- [33:33]
A
In a church.
- [33:34]
B
In a church, yeah. But when I couldn't get to a church, I just do it in my mind. I know them forwards and backwards, and I can live my life and reflect on my life through the conversation with the Stations. I love them more than anything. Regarding religion, the Stations are the absolute central point for me.
- [33:54]
A
Do you know, I've been a Jesuit for 37 years. I've done direction for a long time. I've never heard someone say that. Why the Stations of the Cross? I mean, I know the meaning of them. For those who don't know. It's the sort of the journey that Jesus takes during the Passion up to the Crucifixion. But why the Stations for you?
- [34:11]
B
Well, I think some of it might be that you walk around them. I like the Idea of a walking prayer. There is the contours of the art of them wherever you go. There's different shapes of art. Some of them are quite predictable, but some of them are really unusual. There's also the narrative invitation. You're brought in at the start where Jesus is standing before Pontius Pilate and you see an innocent man about to be tortured by Empire. And you think, who am I here? Am I Pontius Pilate? Am I the so called neutral observer who may not be so neutral? Is there a part of me that's being condemned? Am I all of them? You see the threefold falling. You know, I find those deeply moving. You see the hopelessness and the commitment of Mary, who comes to meet Jesus when he meets his beloved mother. You see Veronica as well. You know, she comes, she holds that piece of cloth, you know, viro e cone, true image. But I remember one time having a changed relationship with that particular station. Because thinking, you know, so often when something terrible happens, we struggle to know what to say. You know, somebody goes through a bereavement, you think, what can I do? What can I do? I can't take it away from the person. And I do not imagine Jesus of Nazareth saying to Veronica when she, this mythological character does this for him. Thanks very much, Veronica. That's great. Now go on home and feel happy with yourself. Why go off to be tortured? I think she was doing the only thing she could, if indeed that character is historical. And there's something for me to say, well, be like Veronica. She had a humble thing that she could do and she did it anyway. And I find that really helpful.
- [35:52]
A
Well, I'll share something with you that happened just a couple weeks ago. As you know, my mom died. And I was with her in the hospital room when she was dying. And, you know, she was agitated. I would say she had dementia too, so it was hard for her to communicate. So she was physically agitated. And the nurses were, I would say, attentive, but not perhaps as compassionate as I would have liked. And into my mom's room came a hospice nurse. And of course, hospice nurses are a lot different. And the energy in the room completely changed. And she went up to my mom and said, oh, honey, let me help you, you're so hot. She had pneumonia, so she took out a rag and sort of soaked it in cold water and put it against her forehead. And my mom just relaxed. And I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, it's Veronica. You know, let me wipe your eyes off. Let me wipe your mouth off. I Saw her relax. And I just thought, why didn't I think of doing that right? And maybe in the crowd, people said, why didn't I think of doing that right? You know what Veronica does? I just thought it was so vivid, and it really. Yeah. And I mean, my mom's, you know, last couple of hours were a crucifixion, I think, you know, and people were feeling powerless. And so this. This woman, this hospice nurse, just completely transformed things. You know what I mean?
- [37:18]
B
Just.
- [37:18]
A
Just by that, totally.
- [37:19]
B
It's very moving. And she could be present in a way that showed you how to be present.
- [37:23]
A
Yes. I. You know, I think I learned more about compassion and those three minutes than I did in a year's worth of, like, pastoral counseling classes.
- [37:31]
B
Right.
- [37:32]
A
It's just sort of in action.
- [37:33]
B
And it's the tangible also. It's the raised temperature, it's the rag. It's the cooling effect. And to tend the body is to tend the soul.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah. And just to see my mom, at least for a few seconds, relax a bit, was really healing for me, too. I want to shift a little bit. Oh, you want to read something?
- [37:51]
B
Well, I was going to read. I mean, I've written a poem for each of the stations of the cross. And while we're on, Veronica. So here's a collect I wrote for Veronica. Veronica, your story is doubted, but valuable. You did what you could, even though it was very little. May we do the same, even when we doubt. Amen.
- [38:14]
A
And what you did was a lot.
- [38:16]
B
It was.
- [38:17]
A
Now I want to shift a bit. You were the leader of the Corrymeela community, which is Ireland's oldest peace and reconciliation community. Can you share a little bit about that organization and how that prayer and piecework came together?
- [38:28]
B
Yeah. Coramila was begun in 1965 by a Presbyterian minister. He was the chaplain at the university in Belfast. Ray Davy was his name. He'd been a volunteer padre with the YMCA during the Second World War. And he had been incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp outside Dresden. And he had gotten his freedom when Dresden was firebombed. And so he saw the enemy destroy, destroyed in a way that made him think, this can't be the way that wars end just by destroying the enemy totally. So he came back to Belfast, 1945. Ireland had only been relatively recently partitioned, not quite 25 years at that stage. And he saw the escalation of British Irish tensions. So through his chaplaincy work, he started to bring people of really British Irish identity together. Catholic, Protestant. But those things really Mean stuff to do with. As to whether you think the north of Ireland is British or Irish for dialogue and discourse. In the 1960s, as things were escalating and he could read the writing on the wall that things were going to continue to escalate, he arranged for some people to donate and they purchased a piece of land. And the field on which the piece of land is called is called Corimilla. Nobody quite knows the meaning of it. Some idealists said it probably means Hill of Harmony, so they called it that for a while. But it definitely doesn't mean Hill of Harmony. It probably means something more like lumpy crossing place, which is much more appropriate. It looks out over towards Scotland, 13 miles away. Since 65, it has been a center for people to come to discuss their differences and their difficult differences on a level of politics, on a level of religion, on a level of sexuality, on a level of gender, on a level of race, on a level of experience, of belief or unbelief. So the interest of Corimilla is to be a place where we can approach our difficult differences in a way that seems fruitful. Not trying to convince or convert each other necessarily, but being open to some kind of change in us. And I got involved in the early 2000s and then became poet in residence there on an ad hoc basis and then led Cory Miller from 2014 to 2019.
- [40:33]
A
You know, I didn't know that, Padraig. I thought it was mainly political reconciliation, but it's all sorts of sort of meetings together.
- [40:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, Corrymael for so much of its life has had an interest in bringing people of different learning abilities together, has had a long standing collaboration with l' Arche and being aware of what is it that different experiences of life teach us about ourselves. There's a whole load of organisations from across London and Glasgow and elsewhere where there might be young people who are being caught up into gang life, who will come to Corrymeela. Because obviously the troubles in the north of Ireland were so influenced by paramilitary activity also. So while it's. While paramilitary activity and gang life in London are different and distinct in some ways, there's also ways in which there can be some learnings together.
- [41:20]
A
Now, I'm really curious what kind of spiritual practices are necessary for reconciliation? Because I know, you know, for example, in this country, you know, in terms of polarization, even in the church, and I'm thinking about some of the stuff that happened at the synod. What are some sort of prerequisites for dialogue and reconciliation?
- [41:38]
B
Well, I think a Recognition that as soon as I begin to speak of another population of people as my enemy, that I have attention to pay to the question of my own language. Kormiel is infuriating as a community, to lead and to be a member of. And I said that while I was leading it. And one of the things I love about Coramila is that whoever is speaking, a guest speaker, the leader, a staff member, a community member, if somebody begins to say from the front something that is scapegoating or marginalized, somebody, Somebody will just shout out, you're marginalizing them. You're scapegoating them. They have something to say. They're not here to speak for themselves. What are you doing? It's immediately challenged within the environment, as it happens. And to admit our own sectarianism, not as a. Oh, God, I'm devastated, and I have nothing to say now, but to see my sectarianism is facing me often in public, and I'm being held to account in public by my fellow community members.
- [42:33]
A
Can you give me an example how that would work?
- [42:35]
B
Well, often it was my fellow community members who would call out. One time we were having a reflection on the story in the 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke on the father and the two sons, the prodigal son, it's often called. And I was saying, you know, where's the mother? You know, we don't hear anything about her. And I said, there's no women mentioned here. And Rebecca Dudley, a community member, put her hand up and said, except there are. There are the loose women that the older brother referred to in the accusatory way. And then she said, and unfortunately, like many people, you have seen the women that others consider loose to be ignorable, so much so that you haven't recognized them. And she was correct. I hadn't. And in my desire to say, where's the mother? I was ignoring and forgetting the presence of these women as narrated by the older brother, poorly narrated by the older brother. And it was a fascinating thing. And there was no shock. Nobody was saying, oh, my God. Rebecca Dudley challenged the leader of Karimila. And I wasn't undone or shocked by it either. I just thought, oh, yeah, my God, look at what it is that I wasn't able to see. And I loved that.
- [43:45]
A
What enables you, this is a big question. To not be shut down and to not be embarrassed or humiliated or apologize and to really be open to that, because not everybody could handle that.
- [43:57]
B
Well, I'd just seen loads of people in Corrymeela readily admit their own sectarianism. And at other times, it would have been me, when somebody would have said something about, you know, we all here obviously support the following idea about what perfect education in the north of Ireland would be. I would have been the one to say, except those systems of education don't include the Irish language. So at other times, I was the one challenging people and to see that the challenge is an invitation rather than a shutting down. And I don't wish to see the other person annihilated. I do wish for some piece of information to come into the room. And sometimes it's me who's ignoring the information, and other times it's me who's bringing the information and to find a way where you're contributing that challenge in a spirit of let's move on together with the information that needs to be brought in.
- [44:45]
A
Now, one of the things that helped me at the synod, which was this meeting of Catholics from around the world that met twice in Rome in October 2023 and 2024, was something that Cardinal Radcliffe quoted, and I think I've quoted on this podcast a couple of times, which is from St. John Paul II, which I found really helpful. I'm curious what you think affective collegiality precedes effective collegiality. So his insight was, and I seem to be borne out at the synod, if you really want to have collegiality or, you know, dialogue that's effective, you have to start with friendship. And I noticed that the first session of the synod in October 2023 was, you know, people were pretty cautious and a little suspicious, even. And when we got back together again and we were friends, or at least we knew each other, it was a lot easier to dialogue. So I'm curious how much do you think friendship has to do with reconciliation?
- [45:41]
B
I think it can be very helpful. Yes. But there has to be the possibility of reconciliation, where friendship is not going to be at the end of it either. You know, some of the reconciliation sessions that we would have facilitated in Corrymeala were bringing people together who had been bereaved by murder. And there might have been people in the room who were representatives of the organization that had caused the murder of their loved ones. They're unlikely to be friends. And so often what we're looking at is the capacity to feel like my story's been heard or my story's been understood in the way that I tell it, in the face of somebody who was the perpetrator, or at least the face of the perpetration of that politically or on a paramilitary level, and friendship isn't the outcome there. I don't know what the outcome is because you can't dictate what it's going to be. You're ultimately looking for something like an encounter with self that allows you to find it a little less tortuous to bear the life you've been given to bear. And that, I think, allows for the disparity of power. So often in situations where we're promoting friendship and reconciliation, that can imply, well, we're all coming here as equals, and that seems nice. But when people are coming who bear 90% of the pain but only 10% of the power, well, then friendship feels a little bit like it makes it easier for people who bear 90% of the power and 10% of the pain. And I'm always interested in finding ways to know how it is that we can tell the truth about the power disparities in a room.
- [47:05]
A
Well, let me ask you a question. That's an interesting perspective on it. What enables someone to even sit down with someone who's responsible for, you know, those kinds of things?
- [47:16]
B
It's a great mystery, isn't it? Why would they come? I mean, in any reconciliation initiative, nobody's forced, but there is this recurring desire in people to reconcile or they mightn't use that word. They might say, understand, or to encounter or have their say or to hear, what the hell were you thinking? You know, there can be all these motivations that are there, that are restless in a person and that drive them to. To seek to have some kind of fruitful encounter that is expressing pain, but doing so in a way where something surprising might be the outcome.
- [47:51]
A
Yeah, my limited experience at the synod was I would speak occasionally and sometimes to the plenary session, which was the whole group about LGBTQ people and LGBTQ Catholics. And in response, there were people who were very condemnatory and, you know, even really used, I would say, hateful language, like language that would probably get you banned in different places. And it was kind of a shock. But I, you know, I knew these sort of approaches existed. And one of the cardinals at the Senate said, okay, now it's up to you to go and meet these people that if you really want to be synodal and if you really want to dialogue, go meet them. And so I went and found these people. You know, they were easy to find, and it was. It's tough. It's tough to kind of listen to where they're coming from and tough to kind of take the
- [48:43]
B
abuse.
- [48:44]
A
I would Say, but I think, you know, in terms of the synod and in terms of just dialogue, it's kind of essential. And I thought, well, you know, I can do it and I can listen to people and at least hear where they're coming from. And that's what I think I meant by the affect of collegiality. You can at least listen to them and treat them as human beings. And we didn't change one another's minds. Right. But at least the next time we talked, it was. Was a little easier to dialogue. That was my experience.
- [49:11]
B
Yeah. I mean, I've been in countless environments like that, and I often operate in that idea to think, well, let me be the one who will go up to somebody and say, I heard you say that I found it difficult to hear, and I wonder if we could talk to each other rather than about each other. And what I know, it's just a plain fact, is that I'm exhibiting 100 times more graciousness to somebody who has decimated my dignity in public. And the cost of that, I'll only do it if it doesn't cost me that much. I'm kind of bored by most homophobia because I've heard it all before. But I am critical sometimes of the idea that that's the only face of what reconciliation looks like, because there is a centering of somebody's power when I'm the one then to go and be gracious to them after they've been hateful to me in public. And I'm interested in what it would be like for something to change, what it would be like for them to suddenly be in the debt of me, where they have something to ask me? Maybe they can't, maybe they can't. But wouldn't it be interesting if we had processes where something might work like that? And if the gospel means anything, the gospel is a shock. And that is one of the interesting things of the shock value of Jesus of Nazareth. What interests me enormously is the shock value of his capacity to engage with people and challenge them in the moment. Do, do you see this woman you without the first sin. These are fundamentally challenging to people in positions of power. And when I see myself in positions of power, I know, and this is the Cori Mila community experience, I know that the person that I most have to hold to account is myself. And it bothers me when there are people in senior leadership who so are convinced by their own righteousness that they don't hold themselves to account. And that, I think, is a diminishment of the gospel. If we just think, well, let's just be gracious. I like the idea of love your neighbor, don't be a dick and take no shit. Those are the three things that I live by. And it is really important to me to know that I have to hold myself to account, but to also know that we find something powerful in reciprocal exchange where people are held account for the language they use in public.
- [51:22]
A
I think that's true. I think it was a challenge for me because you don't want to go up on bended knee and say, please listen to me. I think it was also an opportunity for me to say, here's my point of view, because it's not just listening to them. And in a sense, it was kind of a calling to account of what they said. I also think, practically speaking, in the church now, this is different than Cory Mila in the church right now. You know, that's one of the few ways that's going to happen for LGBTQ people if people who are advocating for LGBTQ people actually go to these people and in a sense, you know, stand up for them. So, yeah, it's imperfect, but, you know, I think, you know, short of that, they're certainly not going to come to me and say, please explain what you meant, because they don't care.
- [52:07]
B
No, they're not.
- [52:08]
A
You know, now we have an audience question.
- [52:11]
B
Okay.
- [52:11]
A
Yes. And it's from Molly. Maybe she's Irish, maybe not. And so I'll answer it first, and then you can answer it. So Molly's question is, what practices can I bring from retreats into my daily life? So that's a bit. I would say, Molly, it's a great question. I'm laughing because I would say pretty much all of them, you know, taking some time away, I think, is really. That's what a retreat is. You're retreating from daily life. And so any chance of sort of spending time one on one with God is really helpful. I think the imaginative prayer that often goes on at Ignatian retreats is very helpful. But I think, you know, one of the hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality, and I'm focusing on that because I'm a Jesuit, is this idea of the contemplative in action. And so, in a sense, look at your daily life, you know, almost as a place to practice the retreat mode. Right. Which is. Which is sort of sort of reflecting on things, not going about things willy nilly. So if you can be a contemplative in action, I think it would help. But I really do think that practice of sort of withdrawing and maybe going into your room or walking somewhere that you find peaceful maybe for 15 minutes or half an hour can be very helpful. So what practices can you bring from retreats? Pretty much anything you experience on retreat, I think is applicable in daily life. How would you answer that question from Molly?
- [53:32]
B
I love in the examine, the daily examine from Ignatius spirituality, that you reflect on the consciousness during the day, but that as part of it, you prepare for the next day to think, what do I think is going to be great about tomorrow? And what do I think I'm dreading about tomorrow? And to create a little bit of distance from that. Because the thing you dread might actually turn out to be okay, and the thing you think is going to be blissful might actually turn out to be ambivalent. And what I love about that small 12, 15 minute package of a container in the evening is that, you know, you can come back to it the next day. And the more I do the examine, the more when things don't go my way, which happens all the time during the day, that I think I have a container that I can bring all of this to tonight.
- [54:14]
A
That's beautiful. Padraig, thank you for your poetry. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for your advocacy for all sorts of groups and your willingness to stand in the middle and take sides when it's important. And thanks for coming on the spiritual life.
- [54:27]
B
My pleasure. Thanks. J.
- [54:35]
A
Well, I just found that fascinating. You know, what I loved is that he was not afraid to disagree with me from time to time, which I like very much.
- [54:43]
C
Well, when you are sitting in community like that, you have to be open to disagreement. Right. So it's a good practice.
- [54:49]
A
I think that's good. I mean, sometimes in Jesuit community, we tend to want to, you know, go along, to get along. You know, times we challenge each other, but not all the time. And that was really helpful. I do want to say one more thing to Molly in thinking about her question. Molly, I would say your question about how to incorporate retreats into daily life, I think part of it is having reasonable expectations about your prayer time as well. So you're not going to be praying for an hour or a couple hours a day, even if you couldn't do like 10 or 15 minutes. Right. I think it's really helpful. So maybe have kind of realistic expectations about the time you're going to pray. So just a little riff on the wonderful audience.
- [55:28]
C
On the audience question.
- [55:29]
A
Yeah, on the wonderful audience question.
- [55:31]
C
Great. So this was an amazing conversation. I am curious, Jim, what you'll write about in your reflection.
- [55:38]
A
Yeah, I'm definitely going to write about poems that I like and how poetry has helped me. I'm not a poet. It's wonderful to talk to a poet and be reminded of how influential poetry can be. And not just spiritual poetry like Mary Oliver or Denise Language Levertov, you know, or the Hound of Heaven. But you know, I would say more secular poetry and how that can open up our minds. So you can go over to americamagazine.org, a link also in the show notes.
- [56:04]
C
Wonderful.
- [56:06]
A
Also, I'd like to let you know that I have a new book out, a memoir called Work in Progress. It's the story of finding work through a variety of crazy summer jobs like busboy, dishwasher, caddy, factory worker, and many more. And eventually finding God. Basically, it's a light hearted spiritual memoir about growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s and is available in print, ebook and audio anywhere. Books are sold. I really hope you enjoy Work in Progress. The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin is produced by Maggie Van Doren, Sebastian Gomes and Margaret myself. Production assistance from Kevin Christopher Robles and Will Gualtieri. Adam Buckmuller engineered the show. The theme score is courtesy of Teddy Abrams and Nate Farrington. You can follow me across social media at jamesmartinsj. Thanks so much and God bless you.