On Being with Krista Tippett

I just re-read this week your first book, Born Again, which was your story and it was an important book at the time.

Well you have to remember, my book Born Again, which you just referred to kindly came out in 1976.

The title was Born Again. It came out during the New Hampshire primary. Someone ran up to Jimmy Carter who was then an obscure governor running for president held the book cover up and he said, oh yeah I'm Born Again.

I just re-read this week, your first book, Born Again, which was your story and it's a fascinating book. And it was an important book at the time.

My book Born Again, which was referred to kindly, came out in 1976.

I just re-read this week, your first book, Born Again, which was your story and it's a fascinating book. And it was an important book at the time.

My book Born Again, which was referred to kindly, came out in 1976.

Beginning with his cherished essay collection, The Book of Delights, he began to accompany many in learning, I would say, as an everyday spiritual discipline to practice delight and cultivate joy.

So you grew up between, you were born in Youngstown, Ohio and grew up in Leavittown, Pennsylvania. A lineage of farmers and teachers. So interesting to me also, your parents were a mixed race couple. I guess they got married in the era of Loving vs. Virginia.

Your last two books are The Book of Delights and the Catalog of Unabashed Gratitudes.

You promised yourself to write a mini essay every day starting on your 42nd birthday, going to your 43rd.

And you love words and I love words, so I just want to... We're going to get into the book, but I'll just tease this out because I did not know that the word essay in French means to try or to attempt.

This is from The Book of Delights. Yeah. Among the most beautiful things I've ever heard anyone say came from my student Bethany, talking about her pedagogical aspirations or ethos, how she wanted to be as a teacher, and what she wanted her classrooms to be.

It's like you developed a delight radar or a delight muscle.

That was really quick, you know? And I wasn't sure, like, I was a little bit like, this would be hard, you know, to just like have something delightful happen every day, you know?

how quickly the, the study of delight made delight more evident.

I am a man in love with nature. I am an eco addict consuming everything that the outdoors offers in its all you can sense seasonal buffet. I'm a wildling born of forests and fields and more comfortable on unpaved back roads and winding woodland paths than in any place where concrete, asphalt and crowds prevail.

Why does my blood run wild?

I am as much a scientist as I am a black man. My skin defines me no more than my heart does. But somehow my color often casts my love affair with nature and shadow.

So, as I believe you know, I often start my interviews with a question about the spiritual background of a life or a childhood because I find that that is such a soft searching place in us. And it's often a place where a lot of the questions that we end up pursuing for the rest of our lives emerge.

Which Have Touched Millions.

And that spiritual background can be anything. It can be a presence, it can be an absence, but there's something there.

I actually think of Kate Bowler every time I look at the coffee cup in my office that she sent me, which says, No Cure for Being Human, which is the title of another of her books.

There's this. Again today. Lodge. I think one of the things I like most about you and I like lots of things about you. Is the fact that you this whole thing with your daughter really cracked you open to everybody's pain and not just your own.

Right. And like you mentioned in your book, there is No Cure for Being Human.

Her new book in September, 2021 is No Cure for Being Human and Other Truths I Need to Hear.

There's this. Again today. Lodge. I think one of the things I like most about you and I like lots of things about you. Is the fact that you this whole thing with your daughter really cracked you open to everybody's pain and not just your own.

Right. And like you mentioned in your book, there is No Cure for Being Human.

There's a phrase that that was really meaningful for me. Earlier in my life, it's actually from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen says, it's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

it's a poor memory that only works backward

it's a poor memory that only works backward

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen's beloved books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings have been translated into 23 languages.

Her beloved books include Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings.

It's true. That would have been your orthodox rabbi grandfather. And student of Kabbalah.

He was a flaming mystic and he was also a magnificent storyteller.

This is a very important story for our times that we heal the world one heart at a time. And this task is called Tikkun Olam in Hebrew.

They're exactly the same. I didn't know. I did not know that those two come together. Tikkun Olam is the restoration of the world.

And this is of course a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born.

Her book is The Age of Dignity.

In the book, one thing I really love is that you have pictures that open many of the chapters. The first, I believe this is the first one in the book, the first chapter is with your, this is your grandmother, right?

That's my grandmother, yeah.

Yeah, and you say, Mrs. Sun, how you refer to her, is an immigrant from China living in Los Angeles County with her two adult sons and husband. She works as a caregiver for my grandmother and is an invaluable presence in my family. We are a team and my grandmother is at the heart of it all, living life fully on her terms at 87.

Nothing about the relational aspects of caregiving makes it any less of a real job.

Caregiving is most definitely work, physically strenuous, rigorous work that requires discernment and flexibility.

As with all forms of labor, you put a hard day's work, and you expect to be appreciated and compensated. You strive to do better and learn more, and you expect to advance over the course of a full career.

You take pride in your work and expect to be rewarded. You take pride in your work and expect to be able to support your family.

But we're failing these employees, these laborers in our midst, these neighbors and fellow humans.

Aviva Zornberg's book about Exodus is called The Particulars of Rapture.

She's also the author of The Beginning of Desire about the book of Genesis, Bewilderments about the book of Numbers and most recently, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, Reflections on the Book of Leviticus.

Noah is indeed a man of his world and his time. He shares in the prevailing pathology. He is saved more for what he may be than for what he is. We have only to consider the central fact of his silence.

From the beginning to the end of the flood narrative, Noah says not a word.

What fascinates me is Noah's lack of love for life. Something is lacking in him, and it's called the lack of the word.

It's called the exile of the word.

Noah is indeed a man of his world and his time. He shares in the prevailing pathology. He is saved more for what he may be than for what he is. We have only to consider the central fact of his silence.

From the beginning to the end of the flood narrative, Noah says not a word.

What fascinates me is Noah's lack of love for life. Something is lacking in him, and it's called the lack of the word.

In her book, The Beginning of Desire, a reflection on Genesis, a vivaiseurneberg summoned some lines of the poet Wallace Stevens from his notes toward a supreme fiction.

The priest desires. The philosopher desires. And not to have is The Beginning of Desire. To have what is not is its ancient cycle.

I had to read Souls of Black Folk at a very, very young age. I mean, I probably was like nine or 10.

And I read it. And at the same time, I got to say, I didn't get it.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not across the color line. I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas. I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So wed with truth, I dwell above the veil.

Is this the life you grudges, oh nightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah between Philistine and Malachite, we cite the promised land?

Between me and the other world there is an ever unasked question, unasked by some through feelings of delicacy, by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All nevertheless fled around it. They approach me in a half hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately. And then instead of saying directly, how does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town, or I fought at Mechanicsville or do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil at these.

A perfect life was his son's, all joy and love with tears to make it brighter. Sweet as a summer's day beside the Housatonic. The world loved him, the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes and the children hovered and fluttered about him. I can see him now changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns and then to wandering thoughtfulness as he watched the world. He knew no color line, poor dear, and the veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his son. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse, and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I, yeah, all men are larger and purer by the infinite breath of that one little life.

If still he be, and he be there, and there be there, let him be happy, oh fate.

I read The Souls of Black Fog a long time ago, but I've just really been blown away getting back into this again this week.

He's... Rob Cox, who we just talked to in Special Collections, described it as he writes as if it's music and prose, even if it's not technically poetry.

in the very first essay, in The Souls of Black Folk, and he talks about the real question that is there between me and the other world, this ever unasked question, you know, unasked by some through feelings of delicacy, by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. And the question is, how does it feel to be a problem?

His words speak to me directly.

And the problem with the 20th century is the color line.

So I read my way through his nonfiction and then went to the movie goer which I tried reading once before. This time it just made sense. The portrait of a man on the cusp of 30 trying to figure out what significance his life has and what he's supposed to do about it.

So I read my way through his nonfiction and then went to the movie goer which I tried reading once before. This time it just made sense.

The portrait of a man on the cusp of 30 trying to figure out what significance his life has and what he's supposed to do about it.

And then went to the movie Goer, which I tried reading once before. This time it just made sense as the portrait of a man on the cusp of 30 trying to figure out what significance his life has and what he's supposed to do about it.

When I was younger I was more entranced with books like Alice in Wonderland than the scientific books I came across.

When I enter last week's interview with Arnold Eisen, some of the threads the engine suggests include Amikai La Levy and David Brooks and E.J. Dion.

I'm not going to start there, but we will spend a lot of time on that and we'll give a lot of. Can I just ask that? When you introduce me, you introduce me as the author of Dark Matter and the dinosaurs.

I actually don't think I came across that many scientific books as a kid. Yeah. You know, basically I went to a library and read what I could. Yeah. I love the Betsy books. I just enjoyed reading. I liked the sense of adventure and play.

I'm awestruck and enchanted not not only by our current knowledge of our environment local solar galactic and universal but also by how much we ultimately hope to understand from our random tiny perch here on earth.

He's written two books about his own journey and much of that writing is about his inner struggle, his perceptions, his framing and reframing of the world around him.

He's written two books about his own journey and much of that writing is about his inner struggle, his perceptions, his framing and reframing of the world around him.

And then he started talking about the awesome guy that we serve in the blue states.

Jane Goodall's new book is The Book of Hope, a survival guide for trying times.

This hour, in honor of the publication of her 32nd book, we revisit the beautiful conversation I had with her in 2020.