On the Way Podcast

Being aware of the water in which we swim is not always easy. Dr Peter Kline joins the conversation to help us to see more clearly the culture in which we are immersed that we may understand the way it has constrained our desire, providing the delusion of freedom. More than that, the promises of a neo-capitalist society ultimately can never be fulfilled as we attach our deepest longings to narratives that actually prevent us from attaining what we most deeply desire. Has hyper-individualism and pressure to perform and enjoy our lives robbed us of one another and trained us to buy into the wrong dreams?  Dr Peter Kline is the Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at St Francis College, Milton. He has a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University, with a special interest in negative theology.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pádraig ÓTuama joins On the Way in St John's Cathedral for a live recording of this conversation which explores the power of language to build up or destroy, open us to curiosity or shut down understanding, to wield shame or honour the beauty of human dignity and this embodied life. Pádraig tells some of his story and reads a number of his poems that reveal the power of poetry to tell the truth about our life and humanity. Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centres around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, a podcast that has gained over 10 million downloads since its start in 2020 — and also the author of Poetry Unbound; 50 Poems to Open Your Life.   From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. With undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in theology, multiple professional qualifications in conflict mediation (specialising in groups), he also holds a PhD (Poetry & Theology) from the University of Glasgow.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Human beings are a symbol-making, ritual creating, story-telling creatures, but how do you put words to mystery? Steven Shakespeare joins Dom, Peter and Sue to explore the art of creating liturgy and language around God and our experience of the sacred. While language is so often inadequate, it is also full of wonder and richness that conjures meaning and opens us to new connection and creation. Liturgy structures our movement through sacred space and allows us to be participants, not consumers, held in safety as we travel together touching that which is at the heart of human longing. Steven Shakespeare is a philosopher, writer and priest whose central concern through his work is to “sense how the divine is embodied and expressed in Christ, in creation, and in all the different bodies that make up the community of creatures.” Along with his other publications, Steven is known as a writer of liturgy and prayer through works such as “Prayers for an Inclusive Church” and “The Earth Cries Glory: Daily Prayer with Creation”. He has recently published a collection of ‘prayer poems’ for the Christian Year “Come Holy Gift.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coming out once is challenging, but Jayne Ozanne describes coming out three times: first as gay, then coming out as Christian to her LGBTIQ+ friends, and finally as evangelical to her Christian LGBTIQ+ friends. In this boundary crossing, Jayne has listened to many stories and engaged in dialogue with faith leaders all over the world, from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Through her advocacy, Jayne has steadily cast a more hopeful vision for the church, helping religious groups across the globe develop and promote a positive ethic towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. On her Australian Tour for World Pride, Jayne joins the Dom, Peter and Sue to share her story, explore the difficult territory of division in the church and the hope that can be found in the God who always brings new life to birth, often in surprising ways. Jayne Ozanne is a prominent gay evangelical who works to ensure full inclusion of all LGBTQ+ people, particularly LGBTQ+ people of faith. She is Director of the Ozanne Foundation, which works with religious organisations to eliminate discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did our modern Easter come to look like it does today? Author, anthropologist, and spiritual director Alexander John Shaia returns to the podcast to explore the origins of our current understanding of Easter, as well as the call to deeper union, fellowship, and love that was at its heart. Recorded in-person with Dom in Alexander John's current home town of Muxia on the northwest coast of Spain, this episode is for all of us approaching another Easter wondering how to move beyond that which divides us and discover a more abundant sense of communal life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The way we narrate our past shapes our present and our future, but sometimes our memories are reduced by the generality of the stories we tell- stories shaped by our fears and our wounds and not faithful to the embodied particularity of our lived experience. Too often our spirituality has been dismissive of the body and our religion has conformed to dominant narratives of power that whitewash pain and injustice, leading away from life and freedom. We experience and remember the particularity of both pain and joy in our bodies, however, making a spirituality at home in the body vital if we are to recall the sacred dignity of our humanity and open ourselves to the Spirit’s slow work of healing and liberation. Cole Arthur Riley, creator of Black Liturgies and author of This Here Flesh: Spirituality, liberation and the stories that make us, joins Dom and Sue to talk about the power of an embodied spirituality and the dignity of the stories that make us. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Home is a word that carries so much longing within it. Many artists have explored the foundational homesickness central to the human experience - this sense we each carry of being disconnected or separated in some way from the home we long for. In this episode, Dom returns to his ancestral home of Belfast to share a conversation with author, theologian, and philosopher Pete Rollins about where our longings for home come from, this primal sense of disconnection that we all carry, and why we desire what we do. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The lives of human beings are shaped not only by people and events but also by the narratives that we use to understand ourselves and the world. Join Dom, Sue, and Peter as they explore the implications of allowing ourselves to hold that we have been blessed, loved, and celebrated by God as ‘good’ from the beginning. The idea of ‘Original Blessing’ leads us to a very different place of self-understanding to that imposed by the idea of  ‘Original Sin’. What if we understood Christmass to be God’s act of solidarity rather than a rescue mission?  How would we modify the way we live?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The idea of the multiverse is explained by our guest, David Williams, as both simple and wildly complex: there is not just one story, nor a single universe. Instead of traditional beliefs in linear time and space, the idea of a multiverse posits that there are other realities beyond that which could potentially be seen or explored. David is a pastor, theologian and science fiction writer and joins this surprising conversation to consider the weirdness of science and what that means for faith. Dom, Peter and Sue dive into a conversation that travels through prayer, ethics and philosophy as much as quantum physics, and discover that there can be wondrous new insights possible when we loosen our grip on how we define what is real and allow greater mystery and complexity. In a world where anything is possible, what would that mean for the way we live?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.