Padraig O Tuama: a shelter for sensitivity

Be Strong. Fight back. If you disagree with the above two ways of living then say Hello to Sensitivity and Vulnerability! Whoever said vulnerability isn't good, must never have met a poet or an artist. For a long while, the definitions of Strength and Fight gave me pictures of Combat but only when I began reading poetry, I realised strength is holding each other gently - being there for one other, no matter what (my grandfather endorsed the same) and giving each other space no matter how urgent it is for you to barge in to the corridors of their space. And understanding a poem with a sensitivity makes your understanding deeper. 

Padraig O Tuama, from Ireland, is a shelter for sensitivity. A theologian, a poet and the host of the podcast Poetry Unbound, he unpacks poems -- rather, he takes us with him through a poem, understanding its essence, its scent, its meaning, its rhythm, the thought behind it. His process is not perfunctory but like a poem in itself. 

Sample this:

All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs by Christian Wiman 

All my friends are finding new beliefs.
This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.
In a highly literary and hitherto religiously indifferent Jew
God whomps on like a genetic generator.
Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.
Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.

Padraig says:

When I turned forty, I was shocked by what happened. Before that birthday, I had always assumed people invented or performed their age crises. I’d tried it myself: I’m thirty, my god. Or, I’m half of seventy. But all of the year leading up to forty, if anyone asked me what age I was, I said I’ll be forty next birthday. Something was trying to get my attention, but I didn’t know it.

[..]

Christian Wiman’s ‘All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs’ is written about that vast experience of middle age, a stage of life that’s not the same for everyone: some people change dramatically while others seem to change slowly, and others seem barely to change at all.

Source: Poetry Unbound 

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My favorite actor, Shah Rukh Khan, said this "It doesn't matter how big you are - it matters how you make the other feel." Also, Maya Angelou said "More than what you said or did, people remember how you made them feel." Say hello to Feelings.  And Padraig O Tuama does that. 

In his latest book, In the Shelter, sprinkled with his experiences in a monastery in Taize, discourses from religion. I have skimmed through the Bible in the past but have never understood it. Padraig peels it unbiasedly, sharing flaws of the apostles in understanding and misunderstanding Judas who betrayed Jesus. Padraig throws a torchlight on forgiveness and bruised generations from the stories of Bible in this book. He views religion as an idea and a concept. 

Here's a sample:

If religion is going to help us, if our spirituality is going to mean something, then it must help us in our growing up. It must not speed this unnecessarily, but if it does the opposite, if it slows it unnecessarily, or even permanently, then it is a fearsome thing indeed. Hello to growing up.

Source:  In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World

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Padraig O Tuama's books and presentation is a work for a long time but sharing these lessons as I believe that as poets, artists, we must be exposed to all forms of emotions and feelings and I choose sensitivity and wish to seek shelter in it and write my poems from this space.