The One You Feed - Embracing Life’s Complexities with Curiosity and Questions with Pádraig Ó Tuama

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In this episode, Pádraig Ó Tuama shares what it means to learn to begin embracing life’s complexities with curiosity and questions. He delves into the profound impact of time, highlighting the wisdom that comes from shared experiences. Pádraig’s insightful anecdotes about meeting others who have navigated similar struggles emphasize the transformative power of empathy and connection. Through his poetry, he invites readers to contemplate the layers of meaning and significance in their own lives, fostering a sense of introspection and self-awareness. In this episode, you will be able to: Unlock the transformative power of poetry in your life Understand the nuances of conflict resolution with deeper understanding Embrace life’s complexities by getting curious and asking questions Explore the deep connection between belief, God, and religion Harness the power of truth-telling for personal growth and success To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To force yourself into the lessons that only time can tell can be difficult. If somebody has a chronic illness and they've had it for five years, that can be difficult for people around them to know how to speak. But there's something about meeting somebody else who's been through that too, where time has done the work in both of them. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.

And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app,, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Padraig Otuma. He's the host of On Being's Poetry Unbound and the author of Poetry Unbound, 50 Poems to Open Your Life. Padraig is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. Feed the Beast is his most recent collection with Kitchen Hymns, a volume of original poems, and an essay poetry anthology, Poetry Unbound, poems on being with each other, both forthcoming in 2024.

Hi, Podrig. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Nice to be with you. I'm really happy to have you on. I've wanted to have this conversation for several years now, since I saw you at the On Being gathering. So I'm glad that we're finally able to do it. We're going to be discussing a number of your different books, one of which will be Poetry Unbound, 50 Poems to Open Your World. And I know you also have a new work of poetry called Feed the Beast also, and we'll have links in the show notes to all that, but we'll start like we always do with a parable. In the parable,

there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've been thinking about this a little bit, Eric, in preparation. I suppose I'm interested in the hungers of both of the wolves.

You know, you said greed and hatred and fear for the bad wolf. And I think hatred and fear are manifestations of some deeper hungers. So yeah, whenever I hear that parable, and I've heard it before, I've always wanted to go a bit deeper in the hungers of both wolves and to recognize that maybe there's three wolves or five. Yes. But maybe the hungers of some of the wolf that is deemed the bad one have intelligences underneath them. Maybe they're directed in a poor way, but there's something to be learned from both, I suppose. Yeah.

That's where I go. Well, I agree with you. I don't think there's two wolves inside of us. I think I've, you know, I could probably count 30 without even trying very hard inside me. Say a little bit more about that. You've done a lot of work in conflict resolution over the years. So you have encountered people who hate each other, right? They come in hating each other. Talk to me a little bit more about the hunger underneath that. What have you learned is the hunger that's sort of fueling that or Yeah. predictable hate occurring. There's many things, there's many layers going on. You know, maybe there's deep grief and fear about the future, fear for safety, those things can go on. But there can also be a profound sense of group belonging. You know, I know that if I demonstrate my hate for this other group, there's another group that will say to me, hey, you really belong to us because

you perform your hate very well. And so hate can be an initiation in that way. And so underneath the practice of hate in that way, there can be grief and shock and worry, as well as a certain intelligence of how it is that we make certain sacrifices in order to belong to a group. There can be fear as well in the sense of it can be easier to stick with the performance of a hate that you know, than risk the possibility of opening yourself up to learning something about the other that might shock you. A, about them, and then B, about yourself. Inside a room, sometimes I think that, you know, when it comes to people who have had longstanding hates towards each other in groups, I suppose occasionally it's possible that two groups can have equal but opposite power.

And usually there's disproportionate power on one side. And then usually there's an argument about what the disproportionate power is and who has it. Often a group with power doesn't want to acknowledge that they have power because then with power comes accountability, you would hope. And so those things too are present in a room. things too are present in a room. So there can be a hunger to acknowledge some of the journey of learning that you've come on, because that might mean that therefore you'd be open to some more accountability. So all of those things can be present in a room. Yeah. Yeah. We all know this though. You don't just need to be a conflict mediator to know it. You know this because of your friends or your family or because of where you vote or whether maybe you don't vote,

but you know, in the environments where polarization happens, there's always a lot of dynamics and you can feel them very clearly. You can, if you're looking to feel them, but many people aren't right. They're happily polarized, you know, they're content in that space. I think there also probably has to be a big element of deep resentment over what's happened in the past, right? There's been a lot of harm done or perceived harm anyway. Yeah, harm or perceived harm. But I think even groups of people who are very happy in certain performances of polarization, you have a group of friends or a family or, you know, mostly people have circumstances in their life where they do have to live with subtlety.

Even those who say they don't, there is some relationship in their life where they are having to think, well, no, I need to think about this in four or five levels. And so partly, I think that is a great resource for mediation is to say, what are the relationships in your life that you have to think about? They're important to you, but you have to work at it and to think what are the skills you use there very, very naturally. And what would it be like to think about. They're important to you, but you have to work at it and to think what are the skills you use there very, very naturally. And what would it be like to think about using those in this room? And what's the risk of using those skills in this room? And somebody would go, yeah, I love the person we're talking about in terms of in my family, but I don't love people here. Or the person in my family annoys me, but people here might hurt me.

You know, so, and then suddenly you're talking about something very interesting in terms of the multiple skills that all of us have. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So in your book, In the Shelter, you throughout the book are saying hello to lots of different things, right? You say hello to the lists and the day and the tiredness and the coffee and the coffee. Hello to the happy accident of the changing story. Hello to the fear of fear. Hello to here. Hello to the storm. It goes on and on. I could do 150 of them. There's a lot of them. What are you saying hello to today? I'm saying hello to a COVID booster. I'm feeling like I have COVID.

I'm saying hello to a year that has had grief in it and I'm trying to try to pay attention to the ways that grief works. I am saying hello to deadlines and I'm saying hello also to the need for asking for help. Those are some of the things. Also saying hello to a world in war and saying hello to a world that there's war about what the war is about. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all things to say hello to. You just talked about grief there and grief is something I've been dealing with some of also. And somewhere you quote the Irish poet Patrick Cavanaugh, and you say that he recommends that you live at the heart of the emotion. Time has its own work to do. And, you know, one of the things that I've been reflecting on as I go through a difficult time is living at

the heart of that emotion, like really giving ourselves to it. What the work is that time is going to do on us isn't obvious at that point. You know, I often refer to sort of, you know, there's that saying when one door closes, another door opens, right? But I often think we don't talk about the dark hallway in between, right? One door closes and the other isn't open yet. And you've got a period of walking in the dark and having a faith that this is doing something in me and for me. But you don't see it. Yeah.

I think about that line from Patrick Kavanagh every day. I actually have it on the mug that I'm drinking tea from at the moment. Oh, okay. I got it printed on there. But that's only recently. I've been thinking about that line for a long time. You know, one way of reading it, the line is from a poem of his called Having Confessed. a long time. You know, one way of reading it, the line is from a poem of his called Having Confessed,

and it's instructions to somebody who has just been to confession, Catholic confession, you know. And he's in a certain sense saying, what would you know about the state of your soul? You know, confession, the idea is to say, here's what I did wrong. And Patrick Caban is taking confession very seriously, but also taking truth very seriously. In a psychoanalytical sense, the sense of how difficult it can be to know what we're talking about. So the poem starts off by saying, having confessed, he feels like he should go down on his knees and beg for forgiveness for having dared to view his soul from the outside, lie at the heart of the emotion. Time has its own work to do. And so I think what the poem is, is an invitation to notice, to pay attention. I don't take it that it's an invitation to wallow. I don't think that's a wise thing to do. I think it's helpful to notice and also to find something

to keep you busy enough. And also, I know for me, certainly in the last year, and has been a year of difficulty, there has been a way in which it's been a necessity to regularly remind myself of the world that I live in, a world where I'm going through something difficult, but like, that's just one. There are wars, there's hunger, there's climate change. And to, to not think about what I'm doing with my money or to, to think about how I'm keeping aware of those things, not to overwhelm me or not to minimize what I'm going through either, but simply to just think, well, here's the world that I'm in and to lie at the heart of the emotion of that and lying at the heart of it. I love that line, but again, I don't see it as wallow. I think of it as notice.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so interesting. It's such a nuanced line between wallowing in an emotion and being open to it, between, you know, looking at things outside of us to give us perspective versus minimizing, you know, using that to minimize what we're going through. These things are very nuanced, you know. Yeah, yeah. And your word there, which is to notice and pay attention, I think is the key, like is to keep checking in. Like, where, okay, where am I here? You know, oh boy. What's happening today? I've been pretty self-involved the last couple of days, like completely self-involved. Okay. Time to turn the direction outward. Yeah, sure. Oh, I've been going, going, going for a couple of days and having, you know, like it just keeps shoving the hard thing aside to keep moving. Well, maybe it's time to pause and allow that hard thing a little bit of time, you know, kind of in my heart. And so it's all very nuanced. Yeah. And your question too was about time, you know, that line of time is its own work to do. You know, there's jokes about, is there an app for that about anything? And I don't think there's

anything new in wanting quick solutions, but there's something very old in saying quick solutions don't last necessarily. And so time is its own work to do. There are certain things that I'll only recognize and come to terms with when I am the age that somebody else was when they went through it. So I'm 48 now, but when I turned 32, I began to think about my dad in a particular way, because he was 32 when I was born. And I found myself thinking, you know, when you're younger and you have these expectations about how how sorted parents should be. And then when I started to get to the age that my parents were when I was born or when I was 10 or 20, something changed in me where I thought, God almighty, sure, I don't know what I'm doing. What kind of a parent would I have been to the

20 year old me? A bewildered one, I'm sure. That's not working. Time has its own work to do, which is that to force yourself into the lessons that only time can tell can be difficult. If somebody has a chronic illness and they've had it for five years, that can be difficult for people around them to know how to speak. But there's something about meeting somebody else who's been through that too, where time has done the work in both of them. Not that necessarily their circumstances are in any way similar, but there has been a work of time in them. Just something like that. And you can always recognize when you're around somebody who has a wisdom of time in them, where their anxiety isn't pressuring you into rushing through something that you haven't

been put through yet. Exactly. Makes me think of that Roka line, have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your heart, you know? Yeah, yeah. Another thing that you do is that if somebody asks you if you believe in God, you answer with a story from your day. I think I understand that correctly. So I can't resist. Do you believe in God, you answer with a story from your day. I think I understand that correctly. So I can't resist. Do you believe in God? I went to a pub last night with a friend and it's a pub that used

to be an Irish bar in New York that I used to go to fairly regularly before when I lived really nearby. And so the woman, Joanne, who is the main bartender, recognized me when I went in. It's been over a year since I've been in there. So, you know, I remind her of my name just because I'm sure she has loads of people she recognizes. But I just noticed the skill with which she was warm but wasn't asking too much. The ease and the welcome, which is about, you know, running a good business, but also the way within which I think she has practiced the art of deep familiarity without in any way asking people to explain themselves. I was really struck by the almost therapeutic level of levity and familiarity

that she holds in her ways of responding to people. And I'm assuming that it isn't just me who notices that in her, but many other people too. Molly's on 3rd Avenue at 23rd. That's the place to go if you're in New York. Okay. If you need to figure out whether you believe in God, head to Molly's. Head to Molly's. Yeah. I love the way you respond to that question in that way. I'm sure it would leave many people unsatisfied with that answer, but I love that that's the answer nonetheless. It is the answer today, yeah. Do you believe in God is a question that's about asking our minds to do something that I suppose I'd like to say I find it difficult for my mind to do,

which is to imagine something outside of what we understand existence to be. It is to go into the mysteries of the universe and to ask what the emotion of an atom is. It is to ask what the design or the intelligence of a quark is. What do I know about any of that? And when it comes to theology, I've spent many years studying theology. So it isn't that I'm just meandering around vaguely. I've thought a lot about it. And the more I've thought about it, the more I have become convinced that it is the material reality of life in terms of what am I doing to help others stay alive? What am I doing to stay alive? What are we doing for the planet? What am I doing to notice the world that I'm in? That this is my response to the question of God.

I like the question of God, not because I believe in God, but because I like the attention that asks me to pay to meaning, to matter, to vast uncertainty. So therefore, I always want to answer the question of, do you believe in God with the story of the day or the story of the night before, in case there isn't a story of today? My primary spiritual practice for a number of years has been Zen Buddhism. And, you know, we do koans in Zen, right? And, you know, do you believe in God is essentially a koan to me, right? Like you said, there isn't an answer answer, right? And in a Zen koan, there isn't an answer answer. There's a mystery underneath the answer, or there's a realness or a

immediacy underneath whatever the answer might be. A lot of the Zen koans are about inhabiting a different place than you normally do. And so, you know, I think, do you believe in God? You've turned it into a personal koan in that way, which is a really beautiful thing. Christopher Tippett has this great thing when she has been facilitating public conversations about something that might be divisive, where she might have had four people as part of an interview, and two of them have one particular approach to a public issue, and two have a different one. And she'll say,

before we talk about what you're doing, and we're not frightened of disagreeing, but before we talk about what we're doing, let's take this public issue and tell me what's around it for you. Tell me what it opens up. And so within the context of that, therefore, people begin to speak about their own story. They begin to speak about a big change that happened in their life, something that has been a central meaning in their life. And that isn't to say, oh, we'll all arrive at a nice neutral middle of the fence, middle of the road, fence dwelling opportunity.

No, in a certain sense, what it does is it sharpens their disagreement because there has been the possibility of understanding. When you say this, actually, you're also saying many other things. So what gathers around me in the question of God and the question of belief in God is growing up Irish and Catholic. I was born in 1975 and is growing up Irish and Catholic and gay and the secrecy that religion and Irishness brought along with that. It has been living a life that since I was 11 or 12 has been very heavily influenced by evangelicalism, British and American evangelicalism. I've never been an evangelical, but I have been around a lot of evangelicals for 20 years from, I'd say, the age of 12 to 32. That tinged words like Christian for me. I don't like that word

because mostly what that meant for the people who was asking me was I want was, have you stopped being Catholic yet? They might be happy to hear that I have. Or gay. So yeah, have you stopped being Catholic or gay? Yes to one, no to the other. Not that I've stopped being Catholic. Catholicism is in my DNA. If you cut me, I bleed the rosary. my God. But it's also family. It's also history when it comes to the question of God, when you look at the question of Irishness and God and Irishness and religion. It is years and years and years of study, three degrees in theology. All of those things are around there for me. And it's disappointment with religion,

as well as having had the most beautiful experiences sometimes when going on a retreat to a monastery or still putting on choral music when I need some quiet music to accompany me. Yeah, so it's all of those things. It's going every year to Handel's Messiah if I can. All of those things are all gathered around the question of that. I don't have children, but it is the recognition that I think were I to have had children, I would have wanted to have brought them up in a religion because I think it's really good to have a story against which to make your own decisions and to have the conversation within the particularity of a

tradition in order to be able to say, actually, I reject that tradition because what work that tradition has done to give you the because, and I am a better person for having been so religion-infused, along with all the pain that that brought. I am a much better person for having had that, and having had the language and the literature of the struggle in order to figure out what I think. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the

floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500,

a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no, really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I love that last point because there are a lot of people who I know a lot of them, a lot of people listening to this podcast would of them, a lot of people listening to this podcast would relate with this because I've heard from many of them that, you know, spirituality is of interest to them, but they have really bad experiences from a particular tradition. But to look at it in that way, as if that tradition, like you said, gave you something to define yourself.

Yeah. Not define yourself, that's not the right word, but- To fight against. To fight against, you know, and to see what you really believe and see the ways in which it falls short and see the ways in which it really does give beauty. There's a nuance in there that is, I think, done correctly, is helpful in the spiritual path versus the sort of, I've never really had any belief in any particular thing in any particular way. It's just all very nebulous.

Well, I'd be curious to hear anybody who has never had any belief in any particular way as to how they'd say it. But certainly one of the things that a religion does is it provides a normative narrative for you, a way within which your religion is saying, here's a way to look at the world, a way to look at time, a way to look at afterlife, if their religion believes in that. Here's a way to look at virtue and ethics and surprise and all of those things. And I think everybody has stories that they use to hold their life together. And that might be a religion and its parables. It might be a cultural tradition and its parables. It might be the story of survival of a people who've been oppressed.

It might be the story of an identity and finding dignity in that. It can be any of these things. It could be a national constitution. What I think is important within all of those is to have the capacity to ask very, very serious questions. And if questions aren't allowed, well, then it's a dangerous system. I apply that equally to Catholicism as I do to the LGBTQI community. I've heard some people say, you know, when you join the LGBTQI community, you know, everything's much better because, you know, everybody there is just there for love. And you're like, that's bullshit. No, they're not. They're as ordinary as any community of people. And there's all kinds

of ambitions and desires and jealousies and other things going on. If I can't question the narrative, well, then it's a dangerous thing because then all kinds of threats about betrayal and expulsion and exile come in. Are you a proper gay? You know, all of these kinds of things can happen. That can happen in the local yoga studio, as well as in the local library, as well as in the environmental activism group, as well as in the religiously evangelical group. All of those groups will have to pay attention to how do we respond to the person within our group who asks questions about the story the group tells about itself. And that's a test for the group. And suddenly we're not talking about the great moral narrative at all. We're talking about what's happening in the room between the people.

Just this morning, I was listening to a punk band I love called Against Me, and they have a song called I Was a Teenage Anarchist. And it's about exactly this, like they got into the punk rock community because it felt like it was free and it was open. But over time, right? As soon as the singer, Laura Jane Grace, as soon as she started to think differently or ask questions, she started to be ostracized, right? The scene grew too rigid and the scene itself became the new authority, you know? And I think you're right that any group, I have wrestled with this have some element of that in the question is, how is it dealt with? How is it handled? Because every group of people is ultimately a group of

people and in all our messiness. Yeah, yeah. I'm very interested in taking old stories, biblical stories, and I am, nobody knew in doing this, but to take an old story and to try to enter into it through a curious pathway over, you know, from the writings that have come over centuries, people have been doing that. Jewish Midrash has been asking questions about the gaps between the words for millennia. So there's one here, which is really about asking questions about belonging and taking the story seriously enough to take the story seriously. There's a text early in the book of Genesis, where the Adam and Eve character, you know, have eaten from the tree and then they've suddenly realized they've eaten the fruit of the tree and they've suddenly realized they're naked. And the God character comes down and is looking for them

and they're hiding because they've realized they're naked. And then the God character makes some coats of skins for them. The text says, now God made Adam and Eve coats of skins and dressed them. And the poem is called The Butcher of Eden. And when he was finished, he scraped fat from the backs of stretched skins, wiped the blood, sewed the seams, bit the thread with teeth and said, dress yourselves in these. And they said, what is this verb? God shoved his knife into the earth and said, it's like make-believe, but for your body. They looked at all the meat still steaming from when it was alive. God said, eat, and watched while beasts of Eden fed on beasts of Eden. That's beautiful. And beautiful is even the wrong word. Eden fed on beasts of Eden.

That's beautiful. And beautiful is even the wrong word. Maybe beautiful in a very striking way. Yeah. I'm interested in what it means to take any story that has been part of shaping me and to look into its edges. The story of Ireland, the story of, you know, Irish nationalism, the story of religion, the story of being a man, the story of being a gay man, all of these to ask serious questions and to do so knowing I can, that's my job. And it can be done playfully, it can be done

intelligently, it can be done, you know, but to become overly defensive of those stories is to miss some of the subtlety and the brilliance and the wildness that's present in those stories. Yeah. miss some of the subtlety and the brilliance and the wildness that's present in those stories. That's the thing. But the better the story is in terms of gathering a community around, the wilder it is. There is a poem that you love, which is also one of my favorite poems, and it's called Lost by David Wagner. It's one of the few poems I know by heart. I know about eight to 10 by heart, probably. And there's a line in there that he talks about, you know, you must treat being here as in present in this location, in this place, you must treat it as a powerful stranger. And I've heard you talk about how that powerful stranger isn't always benevolent. You know, that powerful stranger isn't always benevolent you know that powerful stranger could be

challenging and that to be here takes an ability to you say i think a robust ability to tell the truth say a little bit more about any aspect of that poem or what i just said or it's one of my favorites and i just when you said it was one of yours i was like well we got we should talk about that because it's quite a poem. I do love the poem. It's a poem of instruction, really, to somebody who's lost in the woods. And the title is Lost. And the opening sentence is just two words. Stand still.

The trees around you and the bushes near you are not lost. Wherever you are, it's called here. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. There is a way, and it can be helpful if the circumstances are correct, where maybe you could take that and just think, oh, let me relax into the moment. Let me relax into the now and look around and it's all lovely. And when those circumstances lend themselves to that kind of ease of heart of looking around, just a readjustment that's pleasant and maybe even beneficial, that can be great. And that poem can work on that level.

But wherever you are, treated as a powerful stranger is an invitation to recognize that, you know, the thing that you might be lost in might be a global pandemic. It might be a war. It might be a relationship that has suddenly changed very, very seriously. It might be something threatening. And powerful is an amoral word. It just says, this thing is a powerful stranger. What's happening? You don't know what's happening. To be alert, perhaps to be ready to defend yourself, but also to look. And I really like the neutrality of that instruction, which is to say, just look, it's a powerful stranger.

And what's your relationship with that powerful stranger going to be? And what can you do during the time? What is within your capacity to respond to during the time? There might be nothing, like in the context of a global pandemic, you know, for most people, it was just, you know, try not to get it, try not to spread it. You know, I wasn't out making the vaccine or, you know for most people it was just you know try not to get it try not to spread it you know i wasn't out making the vaccine or you know yeah and so like what i could do in response to that powerful stranger was to do that and but then also to try to support people who whose jobs were putting them in harm's way while they were trying to help people not be in harm's way or all of those things i've got friends who are medics. I've got friends who, you know, a friend who's a firefighter. I've got friends who were involved in teaching, you know,

and that they were out and doing work all the time. And the question for me is in terms of what can I do in response to the powerful stranger of COVID that is not getting in the way of the fact that their jobs are suddenly more demanding while other people were complaining about not being able to leave the house. Other people were like, I'd like to get back to my house because I'm exhausted with the extra work I have to do. All of those things come to my mind when I think of the powerful stranger that circumstances can be. We've given our Instagram account a new look and we're sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else. Encour encouraging positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your good wolf, as well as some behind the scenes video of the show and some of Ginny and I's day-to-day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody would be interested

in. It's also a great place for you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If you're on Instagram, follow us at 1 underscore you underscore feed. Those words are all spelled out. 1 underscore you underscore feed to add some nourishing content to your daily scrolling. See you there. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason

Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to attempt to bring two different things together here from that poem and something that you've said. You have mentioned you like to reread things. But you say part of the concern in rereading a text often is that in so doing, you read less and recognize more. You glide over familiar words. You glide over familiar presumptions. And so with time,

you aren't reading what's there. You're reading what you think is there. And another line from two lines from that David Wagner poem are no two trees are the same to Raven, no two branches are the same to Ren, right? There's this newness all the time. And ideally, right? You know, he's positing that for them, that's the way in which to look at things. And I'd love to hear you expound a little bit on some ways in which rereading, which is something that I do in my Zen tradition and other things, ways that we can do that, that give us that perspective of Raven and Ren. Well, partly, I think think if you want to.

I mean, I really like rereading, but I know other people that don't. So, I mean, I don't know enough to know whether people should or shouldn't do it. But if you want to reread something, it can just be helpful to ask yourself, what am I noticing this time that feels new? Or what felt monumental for me the last time I read this book that this time actually doesn't feel so monumental. You know, you might think, oh, I was close to tears when I got to the end of that chapter the first time I read it. Maybe that won't happen this time, but you'll be noticing

something else. You'll be noticing that you've thought about that chapter a lot since in the intervening time. Or it might be that there's a hero character that you have thought to be very fine as you've thought about your own work or your responsibility in your family or whatever. And it might mean in the second time reading it or the third or the 20th that you begin to think, I think that character has flaws, which isn't to decimate them, but it is to see them in a new way. I think to reread something is to bring your own life back into the conversation with the book. And that can be anything from, you know, the Lord of the Rings to a scripture or a country's constitution also. But just, you know, you mentioned, Eric,

that you know poems off by heart. And just because you know them off by heart, it doesn't mean that you've exhausted the possibilities of what those poems can reveal to you. To know something off by heart is to have it ready at your disposal to bring into conversation to the circumstances within which you're brought to recite it. And that's going to change it because the audience is not just you, it's what's happening to you in the moment. And then the timeless words that you're reciting. William Waters has a great book called Poetry's Touch, which is looking at the word you in poetry. And he's saying that poetry seeks an audience and the audience isn't just the first person to read it or the first time that person reads it. It is the changing circumstances of a life as you return

again and again to something that is so important that you've learned by heart or you've kept a bookmark in it or you've had it printed out. Yeah. A couple of things you said there really struck me. And I think that being in conversation with, you know, I was in 12-step programs for a number of years, a recovering heroin addict, and we would have big book meetings, right? The AA big book. And you would read the same chapters again. I mean, if you kept going to the meeting, right? You AA big book. And you would read the same chapters again. I mean, if you kept going to the meeting, right? You kept, sooner or later, you circled back to all of it. And it was somewhat new every time, but I think it was made new by the fact that I knew that I was going to probably have to discuss it. And I was probably going to have to say what it meant to me. And

there was an easy path there, which was to say the same super wise thing I said last time, right? But there's a deeper way in which it says, what does this mean now? And so I think that idea of asking good questions and of considering yourself in conversation with is a really great thing. Like I had never thought of powerful stranger in the way that you referenced it. Right. I think I was more reading the poem in that sense of relax into the woods. Right.

Like be present with what is, but suddenly recognizing like, oh, powerful stranger, that might not be a good thing. Recast the, the entire poem. And so I think there are ways of re-engaging with text and you've helped point out, you know, what several of those are. Yeah. Well, the powerful stranger might be that hungry wolf you're talking about. Yeah. Another thing that you have talked about that I found really intriguing is you talk about in circles of faith or spirituality that we give a lot of time to the testimony, what being involved in that spirituality or

whatever has done for us. And certainly if I reference AA, right, AA is 85% testimony. And that is in many ways a really good thing, right? Me hearing someone else's testimony that they were able to get sober and get through what I got through was really helpful because it gave me hope. But you point out that there's another side to this. And it's that, you know, if someone is saying Jesus fed me when I was hungry, we hear that, but those who are still hungry feel bereft. Or if someone's talking about the deep peace they get from meditation and we meditate and we're not

getting deep peace, right? We feel like there's something wrong with us or we're failing in some way. So say more about that, because I think that's a really nuanced point. That testimony can be either really encouraging, but it can also be deeply discouraging. Yeah. Well, I think any testimonial is a certain form of initiation, which is about, do you have the story of becoming a member of this group or reaffirming your commitment to this group in a way that you can share it with the group and the group will accept. If you're ever in a group like a 12-stripe group or something like that, and somebody comes along and says, oh, this is my first time. And then they share something and it's very powerful. People might go, my God, it feels like you've been one of us for

years. You see, that kind of affirmation is true and powerful and kind. But I wonder who else is hearing that and thinking, nobody's ever said that to me about my story. And not just the point of view of comparison. There's always going to be reasons to undo your own sense of stability with comparison. But it is to say what is being rewarded and what is being ignored and what is being punished. A testimonial is a certain way of communicating that you're a member of a group. And I'm always interested in a group. Is it easy to join and difficult to join? Is it easy to leave? Is it hard to leave? Does somebody else make you leave? Who gets to say what gets to stay? These are serious questions about what's happening

in any group reaffirmation narrative experience. There is a border around what kind of stories are likely to be told. And the braver groups, I think, allow for the stories that are being told to include elements of deep criticism. People might say, I hate coming to this group. I keep coming because it helps me in this part of my life, but actually certain things really annoy me. And not just because I'm grumpy, but because they really annoy me. That's a really fine capacity that a group can have to hold critique. And what that can do is to signal to other people, oh God, I don't need to drink the Kool-Aid. I can just think, does it help? Rather than do I believe absolutely everything that the group proposes about itself? And testimonial-based groups, I think, always have to pay attention to how much of their own ideology is being affirmed.

It's a certain form of benevolent group hostility, seemingly benevolent group hostility, that can come across if all of the stories that are chosen or are rewarded in a particular way are of a kind that demand obedience or demand stick at it until it works for you. Well, what if it's not going to work? Whatever kind of effort and pain is being demanded of the storyteller to fit in, does the group have the capacity to hear, actually, your demands don't work for everybody? And some groups do. And those groups, I think, can do something very interesting. Yeah, it does strike me as we talk about this, there really are, I hate to use these words, I'll use them for ease of purpose, you know, although I don't even want to use them, good

groups and bad groups. But that's not what I mean to say. But to your point, you know, I can think of groups I've been in where there's absolutely no room for believing anything different, you know, or even questioning. You know, and when I talk about AA, right, I'm not talking about a monolith, right? That's the thing I often think that I want to say to people is, like, don't go to a meeting and think you've experienced AA. You need to go to a bunch of meetings to see, because you know, in my town of Columbus, I could point you to some groups that I think are some of the most beautiful things on the planet. And I could point you to some groups where I'd be like, ah, I didn't really, I wouldn't advise that. But even in some of those groups, people are getting what they need. Exactly. Well, that's the thing. Yeah.

And so, you know, it's really difficult to judge. And the other reason I love groups is I do think that if we can do it, it shines a real light on ourselves and how we respond to other people and what comes up in us. It's a, it's a different opportunity for healing than in one-on-one conversation, because I think we all react to groups. We show up and we're new and we don't know the people and we're instantly judging them and wondering what they think of us. And there's all this stuff going on and that can be really instructive to watch and learn and be like, oh, isn't that interesting? Yeah, for sure. There's no such thing as a perfect group and I wouldn't want to join a perfect group. There groups that are doing really, really important work have to become very self-protective. And one of the consequences

of such self-protection is that maybe they fortify their borders to an extent that might not be needed. Or maybe they say, oh, let's not have that story because that story will query the narrative of healing that we're all about. That narrative will always push its way through. Let there be no doubt the group will face its own hostility. That will always happen. way through. Let there be no doubt, the group will face its own hostility. That will always happen. And so I think in all the flawed groups we're a part of, it's just a good idea to recognize we're not looking for a perfect group. And so therefore, relax. The recognition that the group is complicated is an indication that it's a group and that it's doing its work. And if your group is set up for communication and you find

that actually your group doesn't have great communication, that doesn't mean you're a bunch of hypocrites. It just means you're doing the work. And the question is, can you talk about the lack of communication in your group about communication? If you can't, well, then you have work to do. But if you can, you go, what a brilliant group that can face its own subtleties, face its own hostilities, face its own threats. Those kinds of groups are brilliant. Indeed. What is a poem that is really alive for you now that's not one of your poems?

You've collected 50 of them. You do a podcast. I don't know how frequently you do it called Poetry Unbound, where you bring a poem out and you discuss it. I'm curious, what's really alive for you now? Or I'll give you a choice B on that. What poem has felt really alive to you as you've gone through grief? There's a poem by Lorna Goodison. She's a Jamaican poet.

She was the poet laureate of Jamaica for a number of years. And it's an older poem of hers called This Is A Hymn, H-Y-M-N. And it has the cadence of a lullaby, cadence of consolation. And she's basically in the body of the poem looking out to people who have felt overlooked or outside. And she's saying this is a hymn for you. What's great is that it isn't proposing some doxology. It isn't proposing some creed that people should believe in. It isn't proposing religion. It isn't proposing that these individuals were right or wrong, or, you know, it isn't making an enemy out of whoever it is, whatever group that they were wishing to belong to, into which they don't belong. It's just saying, here's a hymn. Here's

a small moment of something that you can recall with a simple melody. Ultimately, that's what a hymn is. It has a simple enough melody that, you know, within hearing your verse and a chorus, you should be able to continue to sing it along. I love the humility that she has to say this is a hymn and not explain what a hymn is. It's like if somebody was to sing, here's your constitution, here's your constitution, here's your constitution. Somebody might say, you need to define what a constitution is. And the response is to say, no, here's yours. Here's yours. And she's offering that out. And I think that is a beautiful, gentle poem, but underneath its gentleness lies a restraint in the writing to not try to justify why she's making the offering. And restraint in that way

is an indication of extraordinary artistic control. And I love the artistic control that Lorna Goodison demonstrates in that old poem of hers. Yeah, you'll find it online. This is a hymn, Lorna Goodison. Well, we will put a link to it in the show notes. So we're nearing the end of our time, but I wanted to end on a topic of prayer. You speak fairly eloquently on prayer, and I could read a bunch of different things that you've written, but I'm going to just tee up one thing. I'm going to let you just then go wherever you want. And you say that true prayer only really needs one thing. And you've said it's a recognition of need.

Say more about where you are with prayer right now, what you believe, that sentence, or anything you want to say about prayer. And maybe even for maybe a slight spin for people who are like, eh, I don't know. Prayer doesn't sound like it's for me. And again, we're not trying to talk anybody into prayer, right? That's not our job, but it is always nice to... I'll talk you out of it. I'm very good at that. Yeah. All right. I've teed it up. You do with it what you like. Well, sometimes I prefer to think about desire than prayer. What is it that you want? What is it that you want to ask for? Prier in French is where we get the word prayer from in English. It means to ask. And yeah,

what is it that you want to ask for? And what's your relationship with your asking? A silly story. At the beginning of COVID, I had been overseas and so I had to very quickly come home to Ireland because at that stage, everybody was worried that the airports in different countries were going to close. So I didn't want to be stuck overseas for a long time. Anyway, my suitcase, a small suitcase got absolutely trashed on the way back irreparably. That's okay. It was a global crisis. So I thought I'm going to need to buy a new suitcase. So there was a particular kind of suitcase that I liked. It's made out of recycled materials. So I kept an eye on the company's website. Nobody was going anywhere. So I was in no rush. And because they

only make from whatever recycled materials they have, the collars tend to all be one collar for a while because they've just gotten a big shipment of something. Anyway, after a while, you know, a couple of months where I checked the website maybe every 10 days or two weeks, a collar came up that I liked, so I bought the suitcase. Lovely. It arrived a week or two later. And to my shock, though, I found myself going back on the website of this company, just looking at what new colors came in, not thinking, oh, I might have chosen the wrong one because I liked the color that I bought, but I missed my looking. I missed my wanting. I missed my desire. But the fulfillment of desire in itself can be a crisis. The silly example of the bag can indicate something much more complicated

for us. It might be that you think I'm looking for the one, a romantic partner. And yet when you find somebody where you think this feels like a great fit, you still might find yourself missing looking. Or you might think that job that I really want, that promotion, that recognition that I really want, when I get it, there will be something in me where my yearning, my desire will be ceased because it will have been gratified. And it probably won't. Your hunger will find a new way to look. And so for me, the question is about prayer is not about where it's going to, but where it's from. And what's my relationship with my desire? What writing, what walking, what thinking, what quietude, what talking to my friends, what being honest about what a damn hypocrite I am, what practices of that kind do I

have to help me acknowledge the complicated way within which desire lives in me and to find something that's good enough to hold that. You can call it prayer. You can call it meditation. You can call it talking to your best friend. You can call it whatever you want, provided it's doing the work. And that I think is necessary because our desires have many levels to them and they can drive us. And the question is, is where will they drive us? That's what comes to mind when I think about prayer. That's beautiful. We're at the end of our time. You and I are going to continue in a post-show conversation where I want to explore this idea of desire and fulfillment and craving and the distinctions of all that.

And we'll also have you read a poem or two of your own. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post show conversations ad free episodes special episode i do each week called teaching song and a poem and the pleasure of supporting something that matters to you you can go to one you feed.net slash join podrick thank you so much this has really been a wonderful conversation i really appreciate it thanks eric it's lovely to be with you. consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level and become a member of the

One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.