Russell Newton: 00:00:05

Hello, listeners and welcome back to The Science of Self.

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Today we have a guest with

us, mark Connor from St.

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Paul, Minnesota.

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And Mark, as is usually the case, I'm

gonna ask you to take a first few minutes

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and introduce yourself to our listeners.

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Mark Connor: Well, hi, as you said,

my name is Mark Connor from St.

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Paul, Minnesota.

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I am a literary pugilist, and when I

say a literary pugilist, that means

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the only two things I've been good

at in my life are boxing and writing.

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So I'm no longer a competitive boxer.

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I'm a boxing trainer and I'm

a writer, and I have a book

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that, we're gonna talk about.

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It's called, it's about time.

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Millions of copies sold for dad.

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published, June 16th for

Father's Day last year.

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it, won the Irish Network, Minnesota,

blooms Day literary award, and it's a

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finalist in the Midwest, book awards.

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which will be announced on, June 28th, in

the religion slash philosophy category.

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And it's, described as a

saga wrapped around a package

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of poems guarded by angels.

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So it's a short autobiography

that reads like a novel and it

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has 20 poems running through it.

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it deals with my life.

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My relationship with my dad, I

wrote it in response, to losing

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him on, September 30th, 2019.

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I didn't actually write it until,

early: 2021

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29th of March is when I finished it.

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I juxtaposed my experiences with,

my Catholic faith growing up.

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talk a little bit about the

Irish, heritage influence, on

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myself and on the city of St.

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Paul, where I live, where I grew up,

and, I talk about my experience with,

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the Native American Indian community.

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I worked, 13 and a half years at a

place called Onai Young, which means

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our home in, Ojibwe Really spent

a lot of time, in the, spiritual

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tradition of the Lakotas and sort

of kinda lean that way for a while.

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but never abandoned my Catholic

faith and kind of had a reimbursement

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of my faith back around 2007.

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So I talk about that in the influence of

it and kind of a re embracing of my faith

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and, reinforcement of my faith as I deal

with, losing my dad and letting go of him.

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That's what the book is about.

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One of the things, we cut corners,

quite a bit on, Preserving ourselves,

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for, activity outside of marriage.

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I make a mention at a certain

point in the book that I started.

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I started to go back and not to follow

all the rules that I grew up with as

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a Catholic of what I'm supposed to do.

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Go and make it to mass every Sunday,

you know, and, just keep basically

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keeping the commandments, you know?

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And I think that, I also tried to.

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Kind of blend things with, because

we have this kind of feeling in

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American culture of, you know.

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if we live our faith, fully

to, how we're supposed to, we

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don't wanna offend others by it.

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We don't want to try to be

forcing others to be following

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the same thing that we follow.

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so sometimes we might.

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Not bear witness, publicly to what,

our behaviors are supposed to be.

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Or we may make excuses, for others to

just, and, you know, you can accept

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someone who doesn't believe the same thing

that you believe or behave the same way

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you behave, but not necessarily, endorse

the behavior or endorse the way of life.

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I was deeply immersed in the Native

American Indian community at the time.

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And I wasn't announcing to people,

I'm re-embracing my Catholic faith,

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but what I really love and respect

about my friends and native community

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is no one was trying to pull me out

of that or discourage me from that.

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They were, and no one was trying to

push me to go to the sweat lodges

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or to pray the way that traditional

Native American Indians prayed.

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but if I prayed with them in

that tradition, it was accepted.

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You know, the fact that

I was respecting them.

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And that was the cool thing about it.

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people will say openly to me, yeah, the

Catholic church is just a cult, right?

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But, you know, when I didn't go to

mass, there was no one knocking on my

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door saying, trying to pull me to mass.

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You know what I mean?

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And why weren't you there on Sunday?

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There was no one trying to.

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wrote, wrote me and said, you can't leave.

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You know what I'm saying?

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It's, it's, it's, and that's really when

you talk about God, I mean, God is love.

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And God loves us,

eternally and to love us.

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He must respect our freedom.

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If you don't respect someone's

freedom, you don't love that person.

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So you can't force

someone to do something.

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You have to make a free will choice

to, to love God, to follow, you

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know, to follow what God's will is.

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And so, that's why Neither tradition

I'm talking about is a cult tradition

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at all, you know, is, or, or

what we would call a cult, right?

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Russell Newton: you talk a lot

about the Native Americans.

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How did you get involved with that?

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Mark Connor: in the early 1990s,

I met this poet in his early

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forties, His name is Kevin O'Rourke.

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And he'd gotten, and I talked to

him after, after this, this poetry,

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and he was, um, telling me that

he was sober and got into sobriety

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and the time he got into sobriety.

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He'd, um, um, been brought to, uh, a

Lakota Sundance ceremony down in, uh,

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uh, Rosebud Reservation, and that he was

involved with this Lakota tradition and

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he said, if you ever, uh, want to, uh,

come down there to, to, uh, to see this

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or to be a part of this, come on down.

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And, um, in the summer of 1995, I,

I went down there with him and that

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kind of, uh, and, and at the same time

also I'd gotten involved with, uh, I

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mentioned here that I joined this, uh,

uh, Irish Catholic organization, um,

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Irish Catholic, uh, fraternal organization

called the Ancient of Hibernians.

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I joined that right around the same

time I, I'd gotten involved with.

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I had met some people that were

involved who were kind of grassroots

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activists involved with, raising

awareness about what was happening and

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advocating for, the Irish Republican

side of the conflict that was going on

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in Ireland at the time, the troubles.

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And, there was a solidarity

that had been built up for over

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the last couple of centuries.

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There's been a solidarity built up between

Irish Republicans and, and, American

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Indians, and I mean, if you can go far

as far back as the Irish famine, when

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the Choctaw raised money with, by selling

some gold to send over to, to Ireland to

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try to help feed people and everything.

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Then the following year I

met, the guy who actually, did

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the, cover art for this, book.

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His name's Eric Ke.

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He's a really good

artist, Canadian Ojibwe.

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He got me the job at this

place called And Young.

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It's spelled three words.

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It's spelled A-I-N-D-A-H-Y-U-N-G.

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It's a temporary emergency.

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it's an American Indian program.

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It's a temporary emergency homeless

shelter for youth aged five to 17.

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And it's for all youth, but the

primary, community that serves as

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the Native American Indian community.

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So I worked there in one capacity or

another, for about 13 and a half years.

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And what really made me comfortable

about going to a Native American

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ceremony and witnessing it But,

what made me comfortable about it

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was, one, there's kind of a fatherly

understanding of God that the Lakota have.

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And there's also, the recognition

of the spo, you know, like,

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The word in Lakota for God is

aka, which means, grandfather.

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Great mystery, I believe is, a pretty

close interpretation in English, but also.

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Just the whole idea of Spirit or the

Great Spirit is a parallel to me or

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another understanding of the Holy

Spirit and also in the sweat lodge.

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one thing that I found very

similar to Catholicism is.

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The belief that the ancestors who, who

would come into the sweat lodge when

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they, when they would, uh, when, when

the prayers are happening, and then,

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and listen to the prayers and then at

the end, uh, go back to the creator.

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So they're bringing the prayers

of the people back to God.

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One of the sickest incongruencies of

modern life is that people generally

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are more comfortable publicly sharing

information about their sex lives

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than about their financial lives.

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They're either afraid.

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People will think less of them for

making too little money, or they'll

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try to exploit them or cause them

trouble if they make too much money,

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They're ashamed to admit to

striving for moral chastity.

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Though I told you at the beginning of

the book that I'm Catholic and I said

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that in 2 0 0 7 I fully returned to the

faith, began praying the rosary daily,

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and decided to avoid casual relationships.

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I started following

the rules, all of them.

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So if the text of the poem portrays

a greater or lesser degree of

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intimacy within its story, so long

as you can critically prove it

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with quotes from the text, feel

free to let your mind wander there.

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That's part of the achievement of

universality in a well-written poem.

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No.

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With certainty though, if you try

to assign any autobiographical

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realities between me and the women

about whom I wrote these poems,

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that it never happened with any

of them, especially since 2 0 0 7.

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That has been my choice because I'm a

godfather to my niece and a confirmation

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sponsor to her under brother, and that

is the standard up to which I must live.

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If I fall, I must get back up.

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That's the standard required of

any honest Catholic as it is the

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standard of any honest sun dancer.

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It may seem strange to compare the

honest Catholic to the Honest Sun Dancer.

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The mental, physical, spiritual, and

emotional elements are the four portions

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that comprise each human being, the

medicine wheel, which represents in color.

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Red, white, yellow, and black.

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All the people of the world also

represents each of these four elements.

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The circle is always turning

in one element or another.

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May be the central experience

of the moment, but they're

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all there all the time.

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One point a merger of difference

in unity is the respect for

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family and the value of sex.

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Those who believe sex is

meant for arbitrary enjoyment.

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In the absence of commitment, who

believe in polyamory, approve of

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produce, distribute pornography, and or

broker prostitution do not value sex.

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No.

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Those who value sex are those who

confine it to the commitment of husband

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and wife who making love form family.

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If God ever grants me a wife,

I'm perfectly comfortable going

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through every page with a comma.

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So long as we're natural and open to life,

those who value sex, never put a price on

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it because it cannot be bought or sold.

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Because in fact, sex is not a commodity.

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Humans are not a commodity.

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We are priceless.

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And sex is a gift to be shared only in

love that is never lustful because it

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is never selfish and is always selfish.

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Sex is sacred.

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a lot of times we think of freedom

as being able to do whatever we want,

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but freedom is more, being able to

develop ourselves to the highest, level

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that we can develop as human beings.

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And it takes discipline to do that.

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And, it takes a certain

amount of, anchoring in.

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we have to have a perception of what we

want and what we're going to do, and we

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have to have a structure to get ourselves

into the routine of continuously doing it.

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'cause once you take the first

step, you start to build momentum.

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When you have momentum, you can keep

things going, but you have to be able to.

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have a focus on things to accomplish them.

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So that's the practice of boxing

and the practice of writing.

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That's the similarity to the two of them.

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And the approach that I have, it's the

same principle, applied in both endeavors.

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Russell Newton: We from the books that

we present here is the of don't wait till

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you're motivated to do something, doing

something, getting started on something.

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As you said, taking that

first step is the motivation.

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That's what gets you into the

process, not waiting to feel like

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you need to do it or want to do it.

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Mark Connor: Yeah, I

absolutely agree with that.

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I actually mentioned, a writer, when I'm,

talking about the different poems that

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appear through the book, named, Natalie

Goldberg, who wrote a really popular,

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book about writing and specifically

writing poetry, but creative writing in

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general called Writing Down the Bones.

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She says, you know, is it okay to

say a swear word in this podcast she

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says, the excuses that people have

for not writing this, I write shit.

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And she says, well, so what?

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Then write shit.

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She said, every single.

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Great writer that you have

ever encountered, writes shit.

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You just never see it because over 75%,

maybe even over 90% or more than that

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of what great writers put down on paper,

never sees the light of day The garbage

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is thrown away because you have to have

the momentum to get to the point where

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you write the great thing, you know?

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Russell Newton: Great.

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Fantastic.

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thank you for joining

us this week listeners.

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Hope you'll, Leave some comments if you

have any on the podcast and, thank you for

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joining us and we'll see y'all next week.