Happy Good Friday.
I’m not a particularly religious person, and haven’t regularly-attended any church service since my mother and then-Pope had a falling-out over the meaning of marriage-and-gender-equality, when I was 13.
To her credit, she offered - multiple times - to let us make our own decisions about continuing to pursue faith through that or another means; she said she would drive us whenever we wanted. For me the calculus was no more or less simple than this: I’m 13 years-old + I like sleep + catechism is boring.
In many ways it wasn’t as simple as a snap decision to stop going to the Church in which she had been raised, and which played such a centrifugal role in the lives of Irish Catholics. The animus had been building for a while, and I’m given to understand it played a triggering role in why we left Northern Ireland when we did - I wasn’t to be allowed to go to a neighbourhood school; I would have had to pass that one by and go to the nearest Catholic school.
I have missed, on occasion, the routine and the familiarity of it all. When I go with my Granda or family, I can still recite most of the prayers and the cadence is familiar - if not comfortable - 32 years later.
But not intellectually. I would append a laundry list of my own grievances with the Catholic Church to those cited by my mother.
Which is not to say I’m not a spiritual person, because in very many ways I am. As I think back over my experiences of spirituality, beyond the everyday, they are quite diverse.
I have listened reverentially to the Muezzin call muslims to prayer in Istanbul, Bulgaria, Amman, Abu Dhabi, and New Delhi; visited two of the largest mosques in the world; attended rapturous Black church services in the Southeastern US, and visited ‘mega churches’ in the US Northwest; wandered through the Kyiv Cave Monastery, Pechersk Lavra; been regaled by legends of Buddha in South Korea; meandered the Hutongs of Beijing as the city wakes, and listened to prayers spoken aloud, before visiting the Temple of Heaven; stood at the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro; and spent my fair share of time sitting in, or in the shadow of, graveyards, churches, temples, mosques, and non-denominational airport worship centres around the world.
That’s the primary theme of this letter - to share with you some people (and one in particular) whose work resonates deeply with(in) me, spiritually.
Anchored as they are in spirituality, each of them has a lot to teach us on this Easter weekend - so important in the Christian tradition - and during this Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
I first heard of the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland years ago, when my mom mentioned that one of my cousins was working there.
It was founded in 1965, four years before the Troubles ‘officially’ began. Its work has been crucial over the last 50+ years to building understanding and supporting the work of reconciliation and ‘cross-community’ interaction and engagement; before, during and after the end of the Troubles.
This 5-minute video is a great overview of the organization narrated by Pádraig Ó Tuama, the person I’d like to (briefly) introduce you to today, if you don’t already know his work.
He is involved in many forces for good and beauty, referenced below, and worked at and with Corrymeela for many years.
He also writes
You can learn more about him in this interview with
on her #theexaminedfamily , which was conducted in early March. In it, he answers five questions she posed of him with humour, insight and humility.You may also be familiar with a friend and collaborator of Pádraig’s - journalist and broadcaster Krista Tippett, a founder of the OnBeing Project; familiar to many of us maybe more-so in its podcast form. The story of OnBeing itself is fascinating - have a read.
If you’ve ever listened to OnBeing, you’ll know that she comes by her curiosity honestly. It seeps out of her sonorous, soothing and inviting voice in every interview. This recent interview with Ada Limon is just such an example.
There are many things those behind the OnBeing Project are engaged in, one of which is called Poetry Unbound; curated and hosted by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Its podcast form is like a reprieve from daily life - I’ve listened to it on airplanes, crowded subways, my office, and in the woods.
If you have the time, over this Easter weekend, I hope you’ll listen to the whole OnBeing podcast episode - ‘The Fantastic Argument of Being Alive” (embedded below) from April 28, 2022, in which Krista and Pádraig have an intimate conversation between friends, to which we’re all invited to listen.
It’s wonderful.
I think I’ve listened to it a half dozen or more times in the last year, and I’m still struck by and learning new things from it.
It touches on themes around religiosity, spirituality, reconciliation, poetry, identity, belonging, peace, conflict, post-conflict society, the meaning of ‘home’, and - ultimately - connection. It’s not an uncomfortable introspection, which in another form and with other people it truly could be - it’s an inviting conversation from which you will want to hear and learn more.
There is so much richness in it, but these four observations really stick with me, as I reflect on 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement:
“Suddenly this question of what is home is really complicated.”
This hits very deep vein of exploration for me. As someone who left - was displaced - from my home 40 years ago, I’m truly only beginning to explore all that this means - something I expect to continue to do through to my last breath.
“And Northern Ireland, or the North of Ireland, sometimes they can be loaded terms.” & “Sometime you hear people say ‘oh today’s a great day in this part of Ireland’. And others say ‘today’s a great day in this part of the United Kingdom’.”
These two sentences are so profound - they really strike at the core of what it is at that animates and underlies so much what has ailed Northern Ireland since partition on the island of Ireland in 1921.
Finally: “Life comes with no trigger warning.”
There are many more conversations they have which are enlightening, and thought-provoking - one of which happened in 2018, when Marilyn Nelson and Pádraig spoke with Krista on an episode titled: “So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars.”
My sister Rachael shared this podcast episode with me one day.
I turned it on in the car just after I dropped a kid off at hockey, and was pulled up short when Padraig uttered this line (which I used in homage in the title of this letter): “…there is a phrase in Irish: if you want to say “I trust you” — and, in Irish, we have an understanding that why bother using one word when you can use 10? And so it’s a long phrase to speak about trust. And the phrase is: “Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne” — “You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.”
That is a powerfully-spiritual image of trust.
I have included - with Pádraig’s permission - two of his poems below. There are embedded links where you can purchase the poetry collection they are taken from, Sorry for your Troubles.
I treasure and am awed by both of these poems for their simplicity and power - and hope they may bring some insight to you, as they have to me, about Northern Ireland.
The first helps bring understanding of so many things in the context of place, identity, belonging, nomenclature - and is called
[ t h e ] n o r t h [ e r n ] [ o f ] i r e l a n d.
The second one, The Pedagogy of Conflict, is as powerful an evocation of learning to live during the Troubles as I’ve ever read.
If you want to hear Pádraig read them himself, he does so at about minute 19 of this podcast episode.
He is also responsible for curating this recently-published collection (“Poetry Unbound: 50 poems to Open Your World”) which is both powerful and accessible - you should give it a go, too.
Finally - they are launching a second season of the Corrymeela Podcast, which you can find here.
The Pedagogy of Conflict
I
When I was a child,
I learnt to lie.
When I was a child
my parents said that sometimes,
lives are protected
by an undetected
light lie of
deception
When I was a child,
I learnt to lie.
Now, I am more than twenty five
and I’m alive
because I’ve lied
and I am lying still.
Sometimes,
it’s the only way of living.
II
When I was a child
I learnt that I could stay alive
by obeying certain
rules:
let your anger cool before you
blossom bruises on your brother’s shoulder;
always show your manners at the table;
always keep the rules and never question;
never mention certain things to certain people;
never doubt the reasons behind
legitimate aggression;
if you compromise or humanise
you must still even out the score;
and never open up the door.
Never open up the door.
Never, never, never open up the blasted door.
When I was a child,
I learnt that I could stay alive
by obeying certain rules.
Never open up the door.
III
When I was a child,
I learnt to count to five
one, two, three, four, five.
but these days, I’ve been counting lives, so I count
one life
one life
one life
one life
one life
because each time
is the first time
that that life
has been taken.
Legitimate Target
has sixteen letters
and one
long
abominable
space
between
two
dehumanising
words.
From "Sorry for your Troubles" by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Canterbury Press, 2013. Used with permission of the author.
[ t h e ] n o r t h [ e r n ] [ o f ] i r e l a n d
It is both a dignity and a difficulty to live between these names, perceiving politics in the syntax of the state. And at the end of the day, the reality is that whether we change or whether we stay the same these questions will remain. Who are we to be with one another? and How are we to be with one another? and What to do with all those memories of all those funerals? and What about those present whose past was blasted far beyond their future? I wake. You wake. She wakes. He wakes. They wake. We Wake and take this troubled beauty forward.
From "Sorry for your Troubles" by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Canterbury Press, 2013. Used with permission of the author.
Lovely 😊 very though provoking. Am just back from a trip over and these thoughts would resonate at any time, but feel particularly fresh today