On this cross-posted episode from the Unraveling Religion podcast, Pádraig Ó Tuama joins Unraveling Religion's Host, Joel Lesses, and shares a conversation from the heart about poetry, spirituality, community, and communion.

The conversation opens to how Joel and Pádraig met, and what informed Pádraig's life as a Poet and Theologian. Pádraig recalls the influences of Ireland and school and the foundation of poetry in that experience, and poetry as resistance, and the role of Peacemaker in the world.

Pádraig reads from his new book of poetry Kitchen Hymns' poem, 'The Long Table.'

The conversation opens to many faces of poetry and existence:

• Are we irrelevant to the Universe or is the human being the center point of existence?


• Do we understand what Love Is?


• Joel reads from the Mountains and Rivers Sutra of Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo


• Coming together for the point of comprehension and not necessary agreement


• The Church views of LGBTQ+ Community


• Beyond formal belief and nurturing the heart


• Pádraig and mentoring the younger generation


• Pádraig's Kitchen Hymns and On Being's Poetry Unbound Anthology released in 2025: 44 Poems on Being with Each Another 


• Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah


• Kabbalah is for Humankind


• Plato's Soul with Two Faces


• The importance of Good Questions is rooted in Judaism and is applicable to all spiritual traditions


• Midrash in Judaism 


• The body and the erotic in relation to spirituality and the deeper questions of existence


• Star of David deconstructed


• In Judaism a single person is known as half a human being


• The Garments of the Soul: Intention, Thought, Action, and Speech


• The Zohar and the thirst for deeper esoteric secrets


• Pádraig examines the relationship between poetry and prayer


• 'You' in poetry, most prayers include the word 'you'


• Pádraig reads from Kitchen Hymns, 'Do You Believe In God?'


• Close examination of a text will lead you into infinitity 


• Are Jewish soul's always in Jewish bodies?


• Joel reads Gary Synder's 'Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen'


• Poetry transports us to other time and place, poetry as a time-machine


• Rooted spirituality is in the body 


• Joel reads Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Go To The Limits of Your Longing' 

Pádraig closes with Kitchen Hymns' poem, 'Untitled.'

Biography

Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975, Ireland) is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. He is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and has published volumes of poetry, essays, a memoir and theology.  2025 saw the publication of  Kitchen Hymns, a volume of original poems, and the anthology 44 Poems on Being with Each Other; A Poetry Unbound Collection. He is a visiting scholar at the centre for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia university in New York City.

Unraveling Religion Host:

Born in Buffalo, NY, Joel David Lesses has lived in Nepal and Israel, along with hosting Unraveling Religion is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey are the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan “What is the matter with me?” which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. Other passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science and phenomenology shared and disparate in the human experience, and transformative power of self inquiry and introspection through contemplative and meditative practices with a belief that the fundamental transformation of individuals and our collective comes through barreling inward, relentlessly, the question, "Who am I?" or "What am I" or "What is the matter with me?" the latter being his question which after years of examination, shattered a false sense of self, the work of integration of that experience being an ongoing work in progress.