I’ve been pursued by a line I overheard at Northolt Tube Station about 20 years ago. A man on the platform was listening intently on a brick of a mobile phone, and eventually said ‘My friend, the heart is not a bone.’ I’ve wrestled with that phrase ever since, in terms of heartbreak, of love. One day I hope to know enough about love to write the poem/collection that honours that phrase. I keep aiming at it, only to fall short, yet again.
Tina thank you for sharing this. I am struck by the beautiful serendipity of such moments (or perhaps 'Divine appointments'?)... the seemingly random intersection of space and time that creates such profound impact on our lives. Therefore, as much as the comment you heard caused such a profound effect in you, the whole 'event' itself brings cause for wonder and reflection.
Tina, perhaps the heart you’re thinking about is a way of knowing - so much more complex and intense than a physical body part. Keep writing toward your goal of true love.
Authenticity and agency. What is really mine? (Not my family's, not society's, or a partner's, or a friend's...) And how do I live as close as possible to those truths? How do I act on my own behalf? I lived for many years as someone sort of adjacent to myself. I genuinely believe one of our greatest gifts to everyone we know is to show up as the truest, best version of ourselves. These ideas follow me like a shadow.
It's touching to read this phrase "someone adjacent to myself", especially having just offered my own comment about the dream that haunts me of not being my true self.
So, this begins, as it does, over and over, with a lifelong mystery: as a child I would observe and listen to both my mother, and her father, suddenly be sitting at a piano and “becoming” a transformed person. At the piano these two people came alive, sparkled, celebrated something I didn’t quite understand, for years. Who were these piano players? What was there delight? What was the source of this delight?
My version of my family life, from the perspective of a very young person, was that our family dynamic suffocated self-expression. It felt dangerous to have an inner life, and even more dangerous to express this inner vision. Yet now, looking back, I ask: isn’t each of us born to announce ourselves, cultivate and nourish our unique offerings to this world. This urge to create, and express, has been both my pursuer and my pursuit. This “need” to create and express has shaped my life, created a most curious life journey, and most likely, kept me alive and afloat.
The contrast between witnessing transformation in your mother and grandfather and suppressing it in yourself because that's the message you receive (despite the example of your mother and grandfather) is a rich vein for writing. It's sort of another version of 'show, don't tell.'
I recently pulled that poem out and considered sharing with my class on the final day. I hesitated and decided not to. But now it is tracked me back down in your sharing. It reminds me of many of the existentialists—we persist, we share, we suffer, we form ourselves and our world while the beautiful play goes on around us (and to us) and we contribute. And contribute, and contribute.
What has pursued me for years is the fear of not being good enough, and the longing to live a life that feels meaningful and true. These two often walk together. They draw me toward purpose, toward beauty, toward giving myself fully to what matters. Yet beneath that devotion is a quiet anxiety: that I must become worthy before I am allowed to rest. I am learning, slowly, that this fear has shaped me, and that freedom may begin with letting go.
“the fear of not being good enough, and the longing to live a life that feels meaningful and true”—wow that hits home with me. That anxiety is real. Thanks for sharing this and for reminding me that it might be resting that allows us to move forward.
I've been wrestling with the idea of 'enoughness.' In a culture built on a scarcity model, believing in 'enoughness' is an act of resistance to the status quo. It takes courage to believe in inherent 'enoughness.' Believing in being enough invites joy in sharing. Believing in the need to have enough invites a longing for more and more...., and it robs me of the joy of sharing. Paradigm shifts are scary. Resistance requires the wisdom to know which fears to honor and which fears to lay aside.
‘Enoughness’ is a concept that is antithetical to the engagement-consumer way of living. That entire framework is built on getting us to engage with anger, fear, insecurity, anxiety, and believe that we need to optimize our time, consume the next new product, market ourselves—and then we will have enough, appear enough, be enough. But i love the way you framed ‘enoughness’ as “an act of resistance”! How amazing that we are both being sold ‘enoughness’ and striped of its very essence.
Thanks Jonathan. Indeed, the anxiety is very much real — and something that needs our loving attention. I just read another substack entry about this. Sharing here, as well:
Thank you Imee. You as well. I think winter can be that place of resting, silence, and stillness. Dormant and hunkering down. I’ll definitely check out that Substack entry.
But what has pursued me all the days of my life is God — that persistently pursuing love that is perhaps the very thing that helps me let go and fully surrender.
I have been pursued by nature, even since I was a small child. In nature I am enough. The trees, the moss the water, the snow, the dirt, the duff, the creatures all put me at peace.
As I age It is harder get out to wild places . The only thing that comes close to giving me that peace is poetry.
This resonates with me, too.. with my deep live for the ocean. May our days be filled with beautiful opportunities for wild places that help us dig deeper to the peace we have within. Oh and to more encounters of grace and healing through poetry. Thank you, Alanna 💙
Imee, now that you have the connection to poetry you have already begun to live that freedom from fear. My family was guilty of child worship, so I was raised with aunts and uncles raving over the slightest thing I did. Perhaps that’s an inoculation against the forces telling us we don’t measure up unless we buy, or belong to something they are selling. May your paths be crowded with affirming love.
Oh, Patty, thank you. I appreciate what you just shared… i didn’t realize how my craving for approval/acceptance was deeply rooted from my childhood experiences. I am reminded, too that love that’s true and life-giving is ever-rooted from my Maker. And beginning to live freedom from fear through connection to poetry — this one gives me much hope, as well. Thanks!
The candles on my birthday cake say 81. I make my wish and with a grand breath blow them out. I wish.. I wish .. to open the door and let Love flood in. Right here. Right now. And so it is.
Last night was a great example of what pursues me. We got a significant snowfall and as I was taking my dog out for her final “outing” before bed, I noticed our Christmas lights illuminating the snow around the base of a tree.
When I came back in to get my tripod and camera, my wife asked what I was doing. My response “there’s a beautiful photograph outside.”
Pretty much reflects what pursues me now and what I am also pursuing.
Where’s your sense of values? Outside in the Beauty! Good for you. I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had my phone when I go out to feed the birds in the morning…..before coffee. Rule: BIRDS EAT FIRST
Inferno is a great word for something that chases us down isn't it. Like when you exercise for a while and your muscles burn - oh it burns but it's also a good pain.
Ever since I was a teenager the tensions in the Christian faith I was raised in has chased me all my life (I'm 63 now). I've loved and hated theology, I've believed and given up belief, I've joined and left churches.
But the beauty of this hell is finding that place right at the heart of everything, this moment, this point of balance on a knife edge (meditation, prayer, none of the above?) that acknowledges all of what has gone, doesnt pretend to know what is in the past but simply is.
...just been listening to the Lorna Goodison interview and it struck me how she talks about the sense of exile, this sort of restless, unsettled sense describes how I view my journey around and in and out of belief and faith. There's a home where I grew up but never sure whether I could return with any honesty.
I have been on a journey "in and out of belief and faith," pursued by a longing doubt/ doubtful longing for God or Spirit or some sort of Higher Power, for most of my life. But from the opposite end of the spectrum than you. I was raised in a household by two people who had been wounded by the religion of their childhood and adamantly rejected it, and all forms and varieties of faith. It was an adamantly atheist environment. Our family culture was to fun of religion. We felt superior.
I've also " believed and given up belief, I've joined and left churches." But I've come to accept that such is my path, and I've come to love the not knowing yet still knowing relationship I have with whatever it is that holds me, holds us all. You describe it beautifully-- the place at the heart of everything, this fleeting, endless moment on the knife's edge.
I think you said it better, thank you! - ' I have come to love the not knowing yet still knowing relationship I have with whatever it is that holds me, holds us all'
Steve, you and Kathryn sound like Padraig. His latest podcast interview - You’re Going to Die - he discusses this issue. Maybe this link will work: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jkdb3-19de9f6
Thank you so much for this, in many ways. The 'You Are Going to Die' podcast is excellent - I had many experiences of death as a nurse, a cop and a family member, all the different ways to respond to death. And yes his experience of growing in a religion and that changing expression of that is so relevant. I just read one of his 'Do You Believe in God' poems - I'll post a link to it below:
Story - how we tell it differently on different days, how it shapes our reality and our expectation, how it has the power to imprison us or set us free, how the work of rewriting story can be so healing when we open ourselves to what it wants to tell us.
That in my profession, I *belong* and my *contributions are appreciated*. I’ve felt like an overworked cog in a very large machine that grinds and sputters and promises stability but has gifted me a stable conveyer belt of anxiety. So I guess ‘inferiority’ and ‘insecurity’ stalk me.
Such good word choices! These words of industry, machines and implied economics of civilization. I think so much anxiety comes from that industrialization of life where productivity and consumption come at the expense of holistic work connected to our natural selves and our communities. I think, Jonathan, you have identified a core and universal challenge of contemporary experience.
Thank you Mary. When I wrote it I didn’t see the direct connection to the “industry, machines and implied economics of civilization” that you formulated. Now reading your words, it takes me back to Byung Chul-Han. In a section of the book “The Burnout Society” titled “The Society of Tiredness” he writes: we live now in an “achievement society,” in which human beings as whole become “a performance-machine [Leistungsmaschine] that is supposed to function without disturbance and maximize achievement.” We are incentivized and feel compulsed to become “entrepreneurs” of ourselves so that we can live better, be better, have more, achieve optimize achieve optimize. It is there that I feel the weight of your connection because it is there that I have felt myself both stuck and pursued.
Jonathan, thank you for this. A marvelous and much appreciated follow-up! Your engagement with this topic is creating a space where I can consider how these dynamics trap and pursue me too.
Jonathan, yes. That very conflict of stepping aside and detaching ourselves from the hustle of life that both drains and nourishes us pursues me. Questions pursue me.
Who am I with the filter that I am not enough? Who am I when I believe that I am enough?
"There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread, but it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen: people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread." - William Stafford
This reverberates for me with something on my mind lately, about our agricultural systems, which in modern times are laser focused on creating ingredients, not whole foods. It isn't much of a leap to see human beings being valued only as ingredients, not for their individual wholeness. We all feel this disconnect to some degree, as the "conveyor belt of anxiety" so ably describes.
Well said and so true. Everything is viewed so narrowly as a resource or commodity…the environment, people, ideas, creative property, breeds of plant seeds, data…
Thank you Karen. I hope so too. Though my fear is that in stepping off the conveyor belt I will be detaching myself from both my source of anxiety and my passion.
I been an adjunct philosopher instructor for about a decade now, teaching a mixed of online/offline courses at two different colleges. The demands have gone up, the compensation has not; and opportunities for a full time position have not materialized. So it is at a breaking point. With a heavy heart it will probably mean leaving teaching after next year.
Ugh. I am sorry. I was an adjunct for about 16 yrs without a pay increase for 12years, so I get it. Someday I would like to write a book about it, as I don't think most people understand what an adjunct is and does.
Somehow I got a full time position two years ago. I feel fortunate; however, making the case for writing and reading is getting very tiring in the age of instant gratification.
I have met those who sing of crossing the River Jordan, the hunger for milk and honey on the other side; and those who bathe in the Ganges to cleanse away sin. The Amazon is called “Tears of the Moon,” who perpetually longs for her lover, the sun; but, trapped in her orbit, can never reach him. The Nile is the longest river in the world, the lifeblood of Pharoah and Prophet and ancient civilization. But these days I think of the Mississippi, Paul Robeson’s baritone singing “Old Man River,” and “I gets weary, and sick of trying.” I think of Huck and Jim on a raft – the river the device used by Twain for transformation, for both a young white boy and an escaped slave – the great American novel, because we struggle with them, trapped and scared, then escape and freedom – the sense of liberation when the drunken, sadistic father is found dead in the floating house after the flood – the peace of mind that comes when one knows that there is, at long last, an end to the abuse. The change that’s gonna come – water ever yielding but capable of carving stone.
Ah, Lorna Goodison! I’ve felt somehow pursued–in the best sense of the word–ever since hearing one her poems. About three years ago, after watching the On Being Project video Celebrating “Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World”, where you, Pádraig, interviewed Lorna on her poem ‘Reporting Back to Queen Isabella’, the following night I had a dream sparked by Lorna’s poem and her descriptions of Jamaica… I don’t think the memory of that dream will ever leave me. At the risk of taking myself way too seriously, it felt almost like a mystical experience. And the next morning, I tried(!) to capture what I’d ‘seen’ in a poem. (‘Dear Planet’ later became the first poem, the title, as well as the underlying theme for my debut poetry collection published earlier this year.) So, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Lorna and Pádraig, for all your inspiration!!!!
Ann, Padraig is SO connected to powerful forces in the Universe, ones we're not even aware of! Keep dreaming - honoring the wisdom in our dreams is part of the Story.
Friend, I am curious about something, and so I want to ask far more than I want to share…
You wrote “I have been pursued by the tension between prayer and poetry all my life, and despite trying to run away from the former, it’s haunted me evermore.”
What do you see is the difference between the two? How is it that one pursues you while you run headlong into the other?
I like your questions, Kristen -- and I live into the strangeness of the space between them. There is a difference between them. And there is no difference between them (in how they show up to me). I suppose an underlying question is 'what do I do with my wanting?' -- and the shapes offered by poems and prayers are a way of exploring multiple ways of living in that question.
There's the thing, is it the same, is it not...the beauty seems to be (I just sort of said as much in my own comment) in the tension that exists between them. I guess that tension is what pursues - the tension of spirituality is what pursues me.
I apologize in advance but I feel a sermon coming. I can't help it. My mother birthed a baby theologian but I didn't know that for many many years. I love how you phrase this Padraig. Not, what have we pursued, but what has pursued us?
As early as my earliest thoughts I have been pursued by the need to understand how to bridge the gap between belonging and difference. And I have been trying to translate this language into my life for my whole life as a member of one of the most hated minorities in the world, Jews, and also sister and mother to one of the most abhorred and neglected groups in the world, cognitive disabilities: that Balance doesn't mean harmony only; that this ridiculous and deeply embedded definition has brought us to societies that aspire to their own versions of a a sweet little picture of the Garden of Eden or whole economies based on hallmark cards and now digital "perfection"; that there in truth is no balance without tension, the intrusion, the inclusion, of things and people that are "other"; that most of us carry seeds of hate and infinite sparks of gloriousness and everything inbetween and that we are in the dark ages as to how to balance them in a way that moves us in a direction of Life; that we haven't figured out the difference between belonging and conformity, difference and suspicion, love and fear. And this tension takes enormous, infinite curiosity that we have all the tools for but most adults leave behind as we get older. We have conformed to that, and we are so much more than that.
Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. We eat fried foods to represent the Miracle of the oil that lit the reclaimed Temple Menorah for longer than expected. Donuts are legend in Israel and have long been popular sweet treats for the holiday. Donuts are sweet and eating too many of course can kill us. They also have a hole. That's where the light gets in. How to balance what kills us with the sweet? Reduce the dough and increase the hole. Share the dough and spread the light. If only it was that easy
I’m the oldest boy of six siblings with completely overwhelmed parents (my mother was bipolar, and my father dismissive, disengaged and rageful.) I got the message that it was my job as my aunt told me “to not let anything bad happen to your siblings.“ All my life I’ve been pursued by the sense of obligation to the family I grew up in. When I became an adult, I was determined to have as little to do out of a sense of obligation with my family as possible. My youngest sister had cerebral palsy and was essentially shunned by the rest of the siblings because she sucked up so much of the scarce attention of my parents. My sense of obligation made it difficult to indulge in that but by the time I met my wife. I was more or less determined to have as little to do with my family as possible. So on our first Thanksgiving, when my wife discovered that my sister had no one to be with, she suggested that we invite her to stay with us for the holiday. This was perhaps the first time I stated, explicitly my intention to have nothing to do with my family. To which my wife said “but she’s family.“ And so a back-and-forth tussle between me, and my wife began and slowly over many years I have surrendered to this sense of obligation and very nearly embraced it. As a consequence, my youngest sister‘s life has been immeasurably better and recently, with the help of my wife, we have helped my older sister who is also afflicted with bipolar disorder to move close to us from her isolation in New York and begin a new life in her late 70s that has been incredibly enriching for her. But the biggest consequence of this surrender, is that I am no longer haunted by the tension between my sense of obligation and my desire to be free of it. I have a debt of gratitude to my wife on many levels and this is just one example of her good effect on my life.
As I read through this briefest outline of your life, it appears to me you have been long pursued by love.
It has me mulling the inherent bonds between obligation and love; the forms reveal the deeper truths. If we resent being "obliged" this creates degrees of friction (as you describe and I also know too well). But if that obligation springs from love, it becomes an unstoppable flow, and perhaps the highest form of being human, and humane.
Thank you for the insights into the challenges I’ve been facing. Since giving up the fight and embracing my role, I have felt genuinely empowered to act, on what I was previously experiencing as an obligation, with Love.
Whether it has pursued me or I pursued it, I dunno. But it is gathering people for community singing. Getting people who say they enjoy it to commit, in this yang-energy driven mountain valley, is like herding cats. Allocating my own time to practice, prepare and produce takes scheduling ingenuity. Finding affordable venues and then communicating with over-worked business owners and nonprofit administrators takes a patience that sets me in a temper at times. And yet I can’t shake the knowing that shared song, silence, and spoken word is medicine for me, for my song friends, and for our times. So here I sit in the morning darkness, wondering about it all, before heading out to facilitate a Solstice-themed gathering today. With a smiling wish that some of the like-hearted commenters here could join our gathering :)
I’ve been pursued by a line I overheard at Northolt Tube Station about 20 years ago. A man on the platform was listening intently on a brick of a mobile phone, and eventually said ‘My friend, the heart is not a bone.’ I’ve wrestled with that phrase ever since, in terms of heartbreak, of love. One day I hope to know enough about love to write the poem/collection that honours that phrase. I keep aiming at it, only to fall short, yet again.
Tina thank you for sharing this. I am struck by the beautiful serendipity of such moments (or perhaps 'Divine appointments'?)... the seemingly random intersection of space and time that creates such profound impact on our lives. Therefore, as much as the comment you heard caused such a profound effect in you, the whole 'event' itself brings cause for wonder and reflection.
I love this. Thankyou
The heart is a muscle.
Keep going with it - poet!
Tina, perhaps the heart you’re thinking about is a way of knowing - so much more complex and intense than a physical body part. Keep writing toward your goal of true love.
Oh Patty. I think you’ve unlocked an important part of the puzzle for me, with that observation. Thankyou, Thankyou.
Authenticity and agency. What is really mine? (Not my family's, not society's, or a partner's, or a friend's...) And how do I live as close as possible to those truths? How do I act on my own behalf? I lived for many years as someone sort of adjacent to myself. I genuinely believe one of our greatest gifts to everyone we know is to show up as the truest, best version of ourselves. These ideas follow me like a shadow.
“…someone sort of adjacent to myself.”—That makes so much sense to me.
It's touching to read this phrase "someone adjacent to myself", especially having just offered my own comment about the dream that haunts me of not being my true self.
Relatable 💜
So, this begins, as it does, over and over, with a lifelong mystery: as a child I would observe and listen to both my mother, and her father, suddenly be sitting at a piano and “becoming” a transformed person. At the piano these two people came alive, sparkled, celebrated something I didn’t quite understand, for years. Who were these piano players? What was there delight? What was the source of this delight?
My version of my family life, from the perspective of a very young person, was that our family dynamic suffocated self-expression. It felt dangerous to have an inner life, and even more dangerous to express this inner vision. Yet now, looking back, I ask: isn’t each of us born to announce ourselves, cultivate and nourish our unique offerings to this world. This urge to create, and express, has been both my pursuer and my pursuit. This “need” to create and express has shaped my life, created a most curious life journey, and most likely, kept me alive and afloat.
The contrast between witnessing transformation in your mother and grandfather and suppressing it in yourself because that's the message you receive (despite the example of your mother and grandfather) is a rich vein for writing. It's sort of another version of 'show, don't tell.'
Relatable 😎
How sad that they didn’t train you to play along with them. May your resourceful and rich inner life - thrive!
I have been pursued by the ghost of Walt Whitman:
“That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
I recently pulled that poem out and considered sharing with my class on the final day. I hesitated and decided not to. But now it is tracked me back down in your sharing. It reminds me of many of the existentialists—we persist, we share, we suffer, we form ourselves and our world while the beautiful play goes on around us (and to us) and we contribute. And contribute, and contribute.
What has pursued me for years is the fear of not being good enough, and the longing to live a life that feels meaningful and true. These two often walk together. They draw me toward purpose, toward beauty, toward giving myself fully to what matters. Yet beneath that devotion is a quiet anxiety: that I must become worthy before I am allowed to rest. I am learning, slowly, that this fear has shaped me, and that freedom may begin with letting go.
“the fear of not being good enough, and the longing to live a life that feels meaningful and true”—wow that hits home with me. That anxiety is real. Thanks for sharing this and for reminding me that it might be resting that allows us to move forward.
I've been wrestling with the idea of 'enoughness.' In a culture built on a scarcity model, believing in 'enoughness' is an act of resistance to the status quo. It takes courage to believe in inherent 'enoughness.' Believing in being enough invites joy in sharing. Believing in the need to have enough invites a longing for more and more...., and it robs me of the joy of sharing. Paradigm shifts are scary. Resistance requires the wisdom to know which fears to honor and which fears to lay aside.
‘Enoughness’ is a concept that is antithetical to the engagement-consumer way of living. That entire framework is built on getting us to engage with anger, fear, insecurity, anxiety, and believe that we need to optimize our time, consume the next new product, market ourselves—and then we will have enough, appear enough, be enough. But i love the way you framed ‘enoughness’ as “an act of resistance”! How amazing that we are both being sold ‘enoughness’ and striped of its very essence.
Enough, compared to what? Is what this raises in me. However we answer that will be compelling.
Thanks Jonathan. Indeed, the anxiety is very much real — and something that needs our loving attention. I just read another substack entry about this. Sharing here, as well:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dostoevskys/p/carl-jung-the-psychology-of-depression?r=2qp83i&utm_medium=ios
May you have a good encounter with resting, silence and stillness, too. 🙏
Thank you Imee. You as well. I think winter can be that place of resting, silence, and stillness. Dormant and hunkering down. I’ll definitely check out that Substack entry.
But what has pursued me all the days of my life is God — that persistently pursuing love that is perhaps the very thing that helps me let go and fully surrender.
How well I know and share this fear with you, Aimee, hoping I might be able to let go.
I have been pursued by nature, even since I was a small child. In nature I am enough. The trees, the moss the water, the snow, the dirt, the duff, the creatures all put me at peace.
As I age It is harder get out to wild places . The only thing that comes close to giving me that peace is poetry.
This resonates with me, too.. with my deep live for the ocean. May our days be filled with beautiful opportunities for wild places that help us dig deeper to the peace we have within. Oh and to more encounters of grace and healing through poetry. Thank you, Alanna 💙
Thank you, Lynn. Learning to let go has been a daily endeavor. My hope and prayer for you, as well 🙏
Imee, now that you have the connection to poetry you have already begun to live that freedom from fear. My family was guilty of child worship, so I was raised with aunts and uncles raving over the slightest thing I did. Perhaps that’s an inoculation against the forces telling us we don’t measure up unless we buy, or belong to something they are selling. May your paths be crowded with affirming love.
Oh, Patty, thank you. I appreciate what you just shared… i didn’t realize how my craving for approval/acceptance was deeply rooted from my childhood experiences. I am reminded, too that love that’s true and life-giving is ever-rooted from my Maker. And beginning to live freedom from fear through connection to poetry — this one gives me much hope, as well. Thanks!
The candles on my birthday cake say 81. I make my wish and with a grand breath blow them out. I wish.. I wish .. to open the door and let Love flood in. Right here. Right now. And so it is.
The candles on my last cake said 81 as well. I'm glad to be walking these years in your company.
Wow - another 81 from me! Should we form a special subgroup?! I feel so blessed to be part of Padraig’s community.
Last night was a great example of what pursues me. We got a significant snowfall and as I was taking my dog out for her final “outing” before bed, I noticed our Christmas lights illuminating the snow around the base of a tree.
When I came back in to get my tripod and camera, my wife asked what I was doing. My response “there’s a beautiful photograph outside.”
Pretty much reflects what pursues me now and what I am also pursuing.
Me too, this
morning with my smart phone taking pictures of snowfall before making coffee. Beat the snowplow, caught snow on tree branches before the wind arrives.
Before coffee?!?! Impressive!
there’s a beautiful photograph outside ~ that’s so nice !
Thank you!
So relatable!
Where’s your sense of values? Outside in the Beauty! Good for you. I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had my phone when I go out to feed the birds in the morning…..before coffee. Rule: BIRDS EAT FIRST
Inferno is a great word for something that chases us down isn't it. Like when you exercise for a while and your muscles burn - oh it burns but it's also a good pain.
Ever since I was a teenager the tensions in the Christian faith I was raised in has chased me all my life (I'm 63 now). I've loved and hated theology, I've believed and given up belief, I've joined and left churches.
But the beauty of this hell is finding that place right at the heart of everything, this moment, this point of balance on a knife edge (meditation, prayer, none of the above?) that acknowledges all of what has gone, doesnt pretend to know what is in the past but simply is.
...just been listening to the Lorna Goodison interview and it struck me how she talks about the sense of exile, this sort of restless, unsettled sense describes how I view my journey around and in and out of belief and faith. There's a home where I grew up but never sure whether I could return with any honesty.
I have been on a journey "in and out of belief and faith," pursued by a longing doubt/ doubtful longing for God or Spirit or some sort of Higher Power, for most of my life. But from the opposite end of the spectrum than you. I was raised in a household by two people who had been wounded by the religion of their childhood and adamantly rejected it, and all forms and varieties of faith. It was an adamantly atheist environment. Our family culture was to fun of religion. We felt superior.
I've also " believed and given up belief, I've joined and left churches." But I've come to accept that such is my path, and I've come to love the not knowing yet still knowing relationship I have with whatever it is that holds me, holds us all. You describe it beautifully-- the place at the heart of everything, this fleeting, endless moment on the knife's edge.
I think you said it better, thank you! - ' I have come to love the not knowing yet still knowing relationship I have with whatever it is that holds me, holds us all'
Steve, you and Kathryn sound like Padraig. His latest podcast interview - You’re Going to Die - he discusses this issue. Maybe this link will work: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jkdb3-19de9f6
Thank you so much for this, in many ways. The 'You Are Going to Die' podcast is excellent - I had many experiences of death as a nurse, a cop and a family member, all the different ways to respond to death. And yes his experience of growing in a religion and that changing expression of that is so relevant. I just read one of his 'Do You Believe in God' poems - I'll post a link to it below:
https://www.mavismoon.com/blog/kitchen-hymns
Story - how we tell it differently on different days, how it shapes our reality and our expectation, how it has the power to imprison us or set us free, how the work of rewriting story can be so healing when we open ourselves to what it wants to tell us.
Melissa, using the wisdom from poets/poetry creates a lens that helps shape the story.
That in my profession, I *belong* and my *contributions are appreciated*. I’ve felt like an overworked cog in a very large machine that grinds and sputters and promises stability but has gifted me a stable conveyer belt of anxiety. So I guess ‘inferiority’ and ‘insecurity’ stalk me.
Such good word choices! These words of industry, machines and implied economics of civilization. I think so much anxiety comes from that industrialization of life where productivity and consumption come at the expense of holistic work connected to our natural selves and our communities. I think, Jonathan, you have identified a core and universal challenge of contemporary experience.
Thank you Mary. When I wrote it I didn’t see the direct connection to the “industry, machines and implied economics of civilization” that you formulated. Now reading your words, it takes me back to Byung Chul-Han. In a section of the book “The Burnout Society” titled “The Society of Tiredness” he writes: we live now in an “achievement society,” in which human beings as whole become “a performance-machine [Leistungsmaschine] that is supposed to function without disturbance and maximize achievement.” We are incentivized and feel compulsed to become “entrepreneurs” of ourselves so that we can live better, be better, have more, achieve optimize achieve optimize. It is there that I feel the weight of your connection because it is there that I have felt myself both stuck and pursued.
Jonathan, thank you for this. A marvelous and much appreciated follow-up! Your engagement with this topic is creating a space where I can consider how these dynamics trap and pursue me too.
Jonathan, yes. That very conflict of stepping aside and detaching ourselves from the hustle of life that both drains and nourishes us pursues me. Questions pursue me.
Who am I with the filter that I am not enough? Who am I when I believe that I am enough?
"There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread, but it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen: people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread." - William Stafford
This reverberates for me with something on my mind lately, about our agricultural systems, which in modern times are laser focused on creating ingredients, not whole foods. It isn't much of a leap to see human beings being valued only as ingredients, not for their individual wholeness. We all feel this disconnect to some degree, as the "conveyor belt of anxiety" so ably describes.
Well said and so true. Everything is viewed so narrowly as a resource or commodity…the environment, people, ideas, creative property, breeds of plant seeds, data…
Oh Jonathan, a “conveyer belt of anxiety” is such a description. I hope that the belt grinds to a halt and you are able to step off.
Thank you Karen. I hope so too. Though my fear is that in stepping off the conveyor belt I will be detaching myself from both my source of anxiety and my passion.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your keen insight and bold honesty.
Definitely can relate to this. And now the student evaluations and semester justifications.
Yup. I see the waters rising; my dingy is ready.
I have so many questions, but good luck! Let me know how it is if you choose to do something else!
I been an adjunct philosopher instructor for about a decade now, teaching a mixed of online/offline courses at two different colleges. The demands have gone up, the compensation has not; and opportunities for a full time position have not materialized. So it is at a breaking point. With a heavy heart it will probably mean leaving teaching after next year.
Ugh. I am sorry. I was an adjunct for about 16 yrs without a pay increase for 12years, so I get it. Someday I would like to write a book about it, as I don't think most people understand what an adjunct is and does.
Somehow I got a full time position two years ago. I feel fortunate; however, making the case for writing and reading is getting very tiring in the age of instant gratification.
Best of luck to you!
The River Justice
I have met those who sing of crossing the River Jordan, the hunger for milk and honey on the other side; and those who bathe in the Ganges to cleanse away sin. The Amazon is called “Tears of the Moon,” who perpetually longs for her lover, the sun; but, trapped in her orbit, can never reach him. The Nile is the longest river in the world, the lifeblood of Pharoah and Prophet and ancient civilization. But these days I think of the Mississippi, Paul Robeson’s baritone singing “Old Man River,” and “I gets weary, and sick of trying.” I think of Huck and Jim on a raft – the river the device used by Twain for transformation, for both a young white boy and an escaped slave – the great American novel, because we struggle with them, trapped and scared, then escape and freedom – the sense of liberation when the drunken, sadistic father is found dead in the floating house after the flood – the peace of mind that comes when one knows that there is, at long last, an end to the abuse. The change that’s gonna come – water ever yielding but capable of carving stone.
Ah, Lorna Goodison! I’ve felt somehow pursued–in the best sense of the word–ever since hearing one her poems. About three years ago, after watching the On Being Project video Celebrating “Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World”, where you, Pádraig, interviewed Lorna on her poem ‘Reporting Back to Queen Isabella’, the following night I had a dream sparked by Lorna’s poem and her descriptions of Jamaica… I don’t think the memory of that dream will ever leave me. At the risk of taking myself way too seriously, it felt almost like a mystical experience. And the next morning, I tried(!) to capture what I’d ‘seen’ in a poem. (‘Dear Planet’ later became the first poem, the title, as well as the underlying theme for my debut poetry collection published earlier this year.) So, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Lorna and Pádraig, for all your inspiration!!!!
Amazing and wonderful Ann! Congratulations!
Ann, Padraig is SO connected to powerful forces in the Universe, ones we're not even aware of! Keep dreaming - honoring the wisdom in our dreams is part of the Story.
Friend, I am curious about something, and so I want to ask far more than I want to share…
You wrote “I have been pursued by the tension between prayer and poetry all my life, and despite trying to run away from the former, it’s haunted me evermore.”
What do you see is the difference between the two? How is it that one pursues you while you run headlong into the other?
Are they not one and the same?
I like your questions, Kristen -- and I live into the strangeness of the space between them. There is a difference between them. And there is no difference between them (in how they show up to me). I suppose an underlying question is 'what do I do with my wanting?' -- and the shapes offered by poems and prayers are a way of exploring multiple ways of living in that question.
And I like your question.
It’s uncomfortable.
I’ve only known it a few hours, but each time I approach it, it asks me for something new.
As though it wants…
As though it wants me to see myself. As though it wants me to realize how powerful wanting is, that all things are born from desire.
I wonder.
What good can we make?
When I was in graduate school, my most beloved professor asked me the question, "why is wanting important?" The question informs so much of my life.
There's the thing, is it the same, is it not...the beauty seems to be (I just sort of said as much in my own comment) in the tension that exists between them. I guess that tension is what pursues - the tension of spirituality is what pursues me.
I apologize in advance but I feel a sermon coming. I can't help it. My mother birthed a baby theologian but I didn't know that for many many years. I love how you phrase this Padraig. Not, what have we pursued, but what has pursued us?
As early as my earliest thoughts I have been pursued by the need to understand how to bridge the gap between belonging and difference. And I have been trying to translate this language into my life for my whole life as a member of one of the most hated minorities in the world, Jews, and also sister and mother to one of the most abhorred and neglected groups in the world, cognitive disabilities: that Balance doesn't mean harmony only; that this ridiculous and deeply embedded definition has brought us to societies that aspire to their own versions of a a sweet little picture of the Garden of Eden or whole economies based on hallmark cards and now digital "perfection"; that there in truth is no balance without tension, the intrusion, the inclusion, of things and people that are "other"; that most of us carry seeds of hate and infinite sparks of gloriousness and everything inbetween and that we are in the dark ages as to how to balance them in a way that moves us in a direction of Life; that we haven't figured out the difference between belonging and conformity, difference and suspicion, love and fear. And this tension takes enormous, infinite curiosity that we have all the tools for but most adults leave behind as we get older. We have conformed to that, and we are so much more than that.
Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. We eat fried foods to represent the Miracle of the oil that lit the reclaimed Temple Menorah for longer than expected. Donuts are legend in Israel and have long been popular sweet treats for the holiday. Donuts are sweet and eating too many of course can kill us. They also have a hole. That's where the light gets in. How to balance what kills us with the sweet? Reduce the dough and increase the hole. Share the dough and spread the light. If only it was that easy
Thank you, Amy, for your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments!
I’m the oldest boy of six siblings with completely overwhelmed parents (my mother was bipolar, and my father dismissive, disengaged and rageful.) I got the message that it was my job as my aunt told me “to not let anything bad happen to your siblings.“ All my life I’ve been pursued by the sense of obligation to the family I grew up in. When I became an adult, I was determined to have as little to do out of a sense of obligation with my family as possible. My youngest sister had cerebral palsy and was essentially shunned by the rest of the siblings because she sucked up so much of the scarce attention of my parents. My sense of obligation made it difficult to indulge in that but by the time I met my wife. I was more or less determined to have as little to do with my family as possible. So on our first Thanksgiving, when my wife discovered that my sister had no one to be with, she suggested that we invite her to stay with us for the holiday. This was perhaps the first time I stated, explicitly my intention to have nothing to do with my family. To which my wife said “but she’s family.“ And so a back-and-forth tussle between me, and my wife began and slowly over many years I have surrendered to this sense of obligation and very nearly embraced it. As a consequence, my youngest sister‘s life has been immeasurably better and recently, with the help of my wife, we have helped my older sister who is also afflicted with bipolar disorder to move close to us from her isolation in New York and begin a new life in her late 70s that has been incredibly enriching for her. But the biggest consequence of this surrender, is that I am no longer haunted by the tension between my sense of obligation and my desire to be free of it. I have a debt of gratitude to my wife on many levels and this is just one example of her good effect on my life.
As I read through this briefest outline of your life, it appears to me you have been long pursued by love.
It has me mulling the inherent bonds between obligation and love; the forms reveal the deeper truths. If we resent being "obliged" this creates degrees of friction (as you describe and I also know too well). But if that obligation springs from love, it becomes an unstoppable flow, and perhaps the highest form of being human, and humane.
Thank you for the insights into the challenges I’ve been facing. Since giving up the fight and embracing my role, I have felt genuinely empowered to act, on what I was previously experiencing as an obligation, with Love.
Whether it has pursued me or I pursued it, I dunno. But it is gathering people for community singing. Getting people who say they enjoy it to commit, in this yang-energy driven mountain valley, is like herding cats. Allocating my own time to practice, prepare and produce takes scheduling ingenuity. Finding affordable venues and then communicating with over-worked business owners and nonprofit administrators takes a patience that sets me in a temper at times. And yet I can’t shake the knowing that shared song, silence, and spoken word is medicine for me, for my song friends, and for our times. So here I sit in the morning darkness, wondering about it all, before heading out to facilitate a Solstice-themed gathering today. With a smiling wish that some of the like-hearted commenters here could join our gathering :)
I wish I could join it; sounds lovely!