On Being with Krista Tippett

I love the new The Consolations book.

I love the Consolations book.

I'm still in the heart of it. I work with big companies and their leadership teams all around the world. But to begin with all I knew was my bitterly earned experience within non-profit organizations.

I went full time as a poet never imagining that I would work in the belly of the beast in the corporate world.

The language we have in that world is not large enough for the territory that we've already entered. The language we have in and in your work I've just heard the language that's large enough for us.

The hope is I can arrange to have the meeting with my spouse with my children with my life without being vulnerable. If I just arrange it all properly if I just say exactly that no I'm sorry.

I noticed that vulnerability is not a weakness a passing in disposition or something we can arrange to do without.

To lift the siege, we do our best for our children but then at the right time send them off with a blessing no matter their perilous direction.

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.

This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.

I'm also intrigued by you know aloneness, we talked about how alone is the first word in that book and there's a dance that you name and kind of tease out between aloneness and belonging.

This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life. There is no house like the house of belonging.

And the clearing of a space so that you can find your foundational mode by which you hold the world in your affections.

I have this poem actually which I wrote out of when I was in the very intense period out of which that poem The House of Belonging came, when I wrote the book called The House of Belonging.

Human genius lies in the geography of the body and its conversation with the world.

The face in the stone is a mirror looking into you.

You have never looked into the immovability of stone like this. The way it holds you gives you not a way forward but a doorway in.

Staunches your need to leave, becomes faithful by going nowhere. Something that wants you to stay here and look back.

The face in the stone is a mirror looking into you. You have gazed into the moving waters.

You have seen the slow light in the sky above Loch Aina. Beneath you streams have flowed and rivers of earth have moved beneath your feet.

But you have never looked into the immovability of stone like this. The way it holds you gives you not a way forward but a doorway in.

Staunches your need to leave, becomes faithful by going nowhere. Something that wants you to stay here and look back.

Be weathered by what comes to you. Like the way you too have travelled from so far away to be here.

Once reluctant and now as solid and as here and as willing to be touched as everything you have found.

We shape ourselves to fit this world working together. We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again.

The visible and the invisible. Working together in common cause to produce the miraculous.

I'm thinking of the way the invisible air traveled at speed around a shaped wing easily holds our weight. So may we in this life trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine and find the true shape of our own self by forming it well to the great intangibles about us.

I'm thinking of the way the invisible air traveled at speed around a shaped wing easily holds our weight.

And find the true shape, the true shape of our own self by forming it well to the great intangibles about us.

So if I don't have anything decent I won't be sending you anything.

We shape ourselves to fit this world working together.

We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again.

I have an essay in my latest book, Consolations, in which I look at the way human beings are constantly naming love too early, what kind of love they're in.

I have another essay on self-knowledge where I say self-knowledge is not fully possible for human beings.

I love the Consolations book.

I noticed that Vulnerability is not a weakness a passing in disposition or something we can arrange to do without.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability.

And you say this, and I'd also just like to understand this better. Human genius lies in the geography of the body and its conversation with the world.

And The Bell and The Blackbird is an old meme in the Irish tradition. It's the image of a monk standing on the edge of the monastic precinct in the old Celtic Christian days, and hearing the sound of a bell calling him to prayer.

And at the same time, he hears the blackbird calling from outside of the monastic precinct, and he says to himself, that's also the most beautiful sound in the world.

And the documentary is so compelling That it prompted me to go out And read his book The Seven Story Mountain And which, you know, to coin a phrase Change my life

Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain Isn't it? I mean you must have come across that Oh, dozens So many

He's a sort of a lost young man Who lives a fairly disillude life Born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University And Stumbles on the trapest monks And finds a location in the water A child is well and there he was

And you know over in the UK and then in the United States And he has a kind of aimless sad life Early on and he finds the monastery And he's happy

I mean isn't it true that later on he was kind of embarrassed by that book Because it is that it has that zeal of a convert He was he was he was He said I don't know the man that wrote that book

It's pretty amazing the number of really interesting monastics in particular who were led down that path by Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain.

So many. Yeah, here's a book written in the 40s that still speaks to people and I think you know, for those who don't know what it's about, you know, he's a sort of a lost young man who lives a fairly disillude life born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University and stumbles on the trappest monks and finds his vocation in enters.

And the documentary is so compelling That it prompted me to go out And read his book The Seven Story Mountain And which, you know, to coin a phrase Change my life

Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain Isn't it? I mean you must have come across that Oh, dozens So many

He's a sort of a lost young man Who lives a fairly disillude life Born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University And Stumbles on the trapest monks And finds a location in the water A child is well and there he was

And I think you know I've you know conducted Book clubs and retreats and given talks And stuff like that and I think one of the things That people like about Merton is his passion He's very black and white You know early on, you know, a world-bad Monastery did but they can write this out

He was he was he was He said I don't know the man that wrote that book

It's pretty amazing the number of really interesting monastics in particular who were led down that path by Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain.

So many. Yeah, here's a book written in the 40s that still speaks to people and I think you know, for those who don't know what it's about, you know, he's a sort of a lost young man who lives a fairly disillude life born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University and stumbles on the trappest monks and finds his vocation in enters.

Thomas Merton, seven story mountain, his autobiography was published when he was a young man in his middle 30s, 1948.

He began as a perfectionist and ended somewhere else much more understanding of his own frailty and just willing to even put it on the page knowing that we'd be sitting here talking about it years after his death but he didn't he didn't worry that too much.

I read the seventh story mountain after I had read some of his other work and I didn't really enjoy it. I mean if I'm that it's obviously there's a great deal in it but I the tone of it is somewhat self-righteous and you all you describe this later epiphany video that he had I think maybe a decade after he wrote the seventh story mountain where he sort of accepted himself as a full human being.

I bought *Seven Story Mountain*, one summer day, a couple of years later, in the middle of an internship.

What year are we talking here? This is the mid-80s, that was in 1985. It took the book home, which has knocked out by it.

As so many people have been the power of the narrative, the genuineness of his searching, but especially for the Catholic reader. This sense of strangeness and recognition.

Here's this guy who comes from no belief at all, who becomes a Catholic, and then the next thing you know he's becoming a trapeze monk. And reading the book as a Catholic you think, is this really my religion? It sounds just so wonderfully strange and powerful.

I was just knocked out by it, and I tried to follow his path really for a year, so I made a little space in the library that was a kind of monastic meditation space with books all around.

I was hooked by the first line of Beyond Revenge, a book by the research psychologist Michael McCullough.

One of the things that got me writing Beyond Revenge actually was a dissatisfaction with the kind of boxes that we all tend to put revenge and forgiveness in as human dispositions.

I interviewed Michael McCullough in 2008 just after he published Beyond Revenge.

His book is Beyond Revenge, the Evolution of the forgiveness instinct.

I really like in your book the mix of science and social science and stories, real world stories.

One of the things that got me writing Beyond Revenge actually was was a dissatisfaction with the kind of boxes that we all tend to put.And that's a revenge and forgiveness in as as human dispositions.

You know you said that every day acts of forgiveness are incredibly common among people between people who know each other. Right you know we think of forgiveness as these heroic acts and there are always these heroic examples of forgiveness but you said.You know it's you think we think of it as this bomb for great wounds, but you said yet in daily life forgiveness is more often like a band date on a scrape.

I really like in your book the mix of science and social science and stories, real world stories.

One of the things that got me writing Beyond Revenge actually was was a dissatisfaction with the kind of boxes that we all tend to put. And that's a revenge and forgiveness in as as human dispositions.

You know you said that every day acts of forgiveness are incredibly common among people between people who know each other. Right you know we think of forgiveness as these heroic acts and there are always these heroic examples of forgiveness but you said. You know it's you think we think of it as this bomb for great wounds, but you said yet in daily life forgiveness is more often like a band date on a scrape.

And for me, the most compelling part of that book in addition to personal stories is the overarching theme, which is the need for taking compassion to be central in human motivation.

another book that I assisted him was the book that told his story of many years of engagement with science scientists universe in the single atom where you know for me the most compelling part of that book in addition to personal stories is overarching kind of theme which is the need for taking compassion to be central in human motivation and not forgetting that science is one among many human activities that are ultimately aimed at better mental humanity somehow that ethical consideration that underlight you know the whole scientific revolution in the early days must not be forgotten and how the scientist particularly as you know in the field of biogenetics they are now creating new realities which human beings never confronted in the past which has huge implications for the survival of the species in the world like and of you know as a whole he's appealed to the scientist to not to take these lightly that take the ethical responsibility of what they are doing seriously

another book that I assisted him was the book that told his story of many years of engagement with science scientists universe in the single atom where you know for me the most compelling part of that book in addition to personal stories is overarching kind of theme which is the need for taking compassion to be central in human motivation and not forgetting that science is one among many human activities that are ultimately aimed at better mental humanity somehow that ethical consideration that underlight you know the whole scientific revolution in the early days must not be forgotten and how the scientist particularly as you know in the field of biogenetics they are now creating new realities which human beings never confronted in the past which has huge implications for the survival of the species in the world like and of you know as a whole he's appealed to the scientist to not to take these lightly that take the ethical responsibility of what they are doing seriously

if there's any tenant of Buddhism which is directly contradicted by scientific fact, that he's prepared to give that up.

if there's any tenant of Buddhism which is directly contradicted by scientific fact that he's prepared to give that up.

In the beginning of his book on science and spirituality, the book entitled The Universe in a Single Atom says that if there's any tenant of Buddhism which is directly contradicted by scientific fact that he's prepared to give that up.

So The Hidden Reality is your latest book, right? Is your newest book? Yes, that's right. And that takes on this very kind of fiction science subject of parallel universe, a multiple, universe, a multiple realities.

And you go through several different iterations of that, different possibilities. I think as a fellow Star Trek fan long time.

Is it one of the implications of this is there is no such thing as a road untraveled? Right. And that comes from one particular flavor of multiverse that comes from quantum mechanics.

And again one of the things I emphasized in the book and it's worth restating now, these ideas are brought to us by the mathematics. We don't dream up these ideas and try to shoehorn them into equations. That's not how we work.

We sit there, the math jumps out of the page kind of grabs us by the pels, slaps us in the face and says, look at me what this is telling you is there might be parallel universes.

So The Hidden Reality is your latest book, right? Is your newest book? Yes, that's right. And that takes on this very kind of fiction science subject of parallel universe, a multiple, universe, a multiple realities.

And the final step I guess in my journey was the brothers Karamontsoff.

It's about the reality of commitment. It's about knowing that you're living an honest life and knowing when you're not basically and it's about family. It's done within family and community.

It's not something that you can easily shake. It's not a work that you can put down and pick up something else and not reflect. You'll find yourself going back to it again and again and again.

It was a Dorothy Day's favorite book as well.

And that did it, you know, it got me in ways that I could not have imagined. I stayed up nights I took me a week to read it.

it's a great novel and I would recommend it unless you want your life changed

it's about the reality of commitment it's about knowing that you're living an honest life and knowing when you're not basically and it's about family it's done within family and community and it's not something that you can easily shake it's not a work that you can put down and pick up something else and not reflect you find yourself going back to it again and again and again

it was a Dorothy Day's favorite book as well I have read it she would reread it and talk about it and write about it

Dr. Shafty had a grip on the reality of life as it is and you know he was a habitual gambler he was not a celebrated man in many respects but he long to live an honest and free life because that's really where we find the presence of God or the one the other whatever we express as a higher power that we are part of a community and that work does Shafty's work specifically in that book is about being a part of a community and not being able to let it go without a severe penalty

And the final step I guess in my journey was the brothers Karamontsoff.

It's about the reality of commitment. It's about knowing that you're living an honest life and knowing when you're not basically and it's about family. It's done within family and community.

It's not something that you can easily shake. It's not a work that you can put down and pick up something else and not reflect. You'll find yourself going back to it again and again and again.

And that did it, you know, it got me in ways that I could not have imagined. I stayed up nights I took me a week to read it.

it's a great novel and I would recommend it unless you want your life changed

it's about the reality of commitment it's about knowing that you're living an honest life and knowing when you're not basically and it's about family it's done within family and community and it's not something that you can easily shake it's not a work that you can put down and pick up something else and not reflect you find yourself going back to it again and again and again

it was over a thousand pages

it got me in ways that I could not have imagined I stayed up nights I took me a week read it

he said a lot of my boy so I want to live and go on living even if it's contrary to the rules of logic even if I do not believe in the divine order of things the sticky young leaves are merging from their buds in this spring are dear to my heart so is the blue sky and so are some human beings even though I often don't know why I like them I'll get drunk on my own emotion I love these sticky little leaves and the blue sky that's what you don't love those things with reason with logic you love them with your innerts with your belly yes

he said a lot of my boy so I want to live and go on living even if it's contrary to the rules of logic even if I do not believe in the divine order of things the sticky young leaves are merging from their buds in this spring are dear to my heart so is the blue sky and so are some human beings even though I often don't know why I like them I'll get drunk on my own emotion I love these sticky little leaves and the blue sky that's what you don't love those things with reason with logic you love them with your innerts with your belly

It's a carrier of histories, stories, truths that help make sense of human and social challenges newly visible at the heart of our life together.

I was hoping I would be able to live as a man and express myself in a manly way...without the fear of getting lynched at night.

I had no idea. I hear it over and over again from people who actually were alive at the time that some of these things were going on.

From the open door in the vestibule, I see her. She is sitting in a cotton house dress on a baby blue plastic covered easy chair by the window.

They did not ask to be accepted, but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps few others recognized, but that they had always been deep within their hearts.

By their actions, they did not dream the American dream. They willed it into being by a definition of their own choosing.

Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or ill to the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place.

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown. I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to The Warmth of Other Suns, and perhaps, just perhaps, to bloom.

This is an epic act of reporting and writing...over 15 years, yielding a majestic work of narrative nonfiction. It's the story of the migration of nearly 6 million people from the south of the United States to the north, one of the biggest under-reported stories of the 20th century, told through the lens of three lives.

If you don't finish this book soon, I'm going to be proofreading from heaven.

It was just speaking with Isabel Wilkerson, who wrote The Warmth of Other Suns.

It's a carrier of histories, stories, truths that help make sense of human and social challenges newly visible at the heart of our life together.

I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown. I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to The Warmth of Other Suns, and perhaps, just perhaps, to bloom.

I was hoping I would be able to live as a man and express myself in a manly way...without the fear of getting lynched at night.

From the open door in the vestibule, I see her. She is sitting in a cotton house dress on a baby blue plastic covered easy chair by the window. She is looking through a parting of the curtains at the street circus below.

Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or will...But a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long.

it's a poor memory that only works backwards

it's a poor memory that only works backwards

It's a poor memory that only works backward.

it's a poor memory that only works backward

it's a poor memory that only works backward.

it's a poor memory that only works backward.

The Counterclockwise study and that was the men to do HPH.

And in the Counterclockwise book I talk about what I call Langer's reverse Zeno's paradox

I think that my last book, the Counterclockwise book, the subtitle, the psychology or the power of possibility is still a little different and something that may hopefully shape some part of the future where instead of describing what is, even if we're describing it in a more positive way, that we create what we wanted to be.

And then you know so that in the Counterclockwise book I talk about what I call Langer's reverse Zeno's paradox Zeno is a philosopher who had this paradox with respect to distance that if you always go half the distance from where you are to where you want to be you're never going to get there.

And her book, Counter Clockwise, tells the story of her experiment to demonstrably turn the clock back on age with a group of men in their 70s and 80s.

Yeah, this was a long time ago but so what drove that study was the same thing that drove the Chambermaid study and I can talk more about either one but it's this call at the Mindbody Unity Theory.

I think that my last book the Counterclockwise book that subtitle the psychology or the power of possibility is still a little different.

And so in the Counterclockwise book I talk about what I call Langer's reverse Zeno's paradox

I think that my last book the Counterclockwise book the subtitle, the psychology or the power of possibility is still a little different

And I think that my last book, the Counterclockwise book, the subtitle, the psychology or the power of possibility is still a little different and something that may hopefully shape some part of the future where instead of describing what is, even if we're describing it in a more positive way, that we create what we wanted to be.

And her book, Counter Clockwise, tells the story of her experiment to demonstrably turn the clock back on age with a group of men in their 70s and 80s.

Yeah, this was a long time ago but so what drove that study was the same thing that drove the Chambermaid study and I can talk more about either one but it's this call at the Mindbody Unity Theory.

I think that my last book the Counterclockwise book that subtitle the psychology or the power of possibility is still a little different.

He's written a book called Happiness.

He's written a book called Happiness

He's written a book called Happiness.

He's written a book called Happiness.

I'm a random effect of something very bad and I hope that for me I'm glad I'm here but I'm only here because Hitler, Nanatis killed my father's previous family and that led to my being here.

the baker acted like God and somewhat arbitrarily took him under his wing and gave him a job as his assistant in the bakery.

the outline of our lives like the candles flame is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that along with our responses to them determine our fate.

That was in the drunkardswalk and book is about randomness in life.

To me, when I was thinking about writing that book, I was almost shaken by the realization that I'm a random effect of something very bad.

I'm, you know, a random effect of something very bad and I hope that for me I'm glad I'm here but I'm only here because Hitler, Nanatis killed my father's previous family and that led to my being here.

the outline of our lives like the candles flame is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that along with our responses to them determine our fate.

So the drug courts walk which is the title of that book it comes sometimes called the random walk and it comes from a jacket path that. Paracos in Brownie and motion seem to take for no apparent reason.

But the little thing that happens to you other than if it's something random like getting hit by a car but the, in other ways, the little things they really do is they raise opportunities for you or they raise challenges. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the random this presents to you.

that story he was in the book involved concentration camp and he had stole a stole a loaf of bread. From the bakery and the baker I guess there were certain number of people who had access they lined them all up and brought the guys with the guns and they said who stole the bread.

That was in the drunkardswalk and book is about randomness in life.

To me, when I was thinking about writing that book, I was almost shaken by the realization that I'm a random effect of something very bad.

And that story he was in the book involved concentration camp and he had stole a loaf of bread from the bakery.

And now is a physicist and the author of several books including the Drunker to Walk, how randomness rules our lives.

I feel my fate, my fate finds me, I feel my star, my star finds me, I feel my aims, my aims find me, my soul and the world are one. And then life will be clearer around me, life will be more burdensome for me, life will be richer for me.

I feel my fate, my fate finds me, I feel my star, my star finds me, I feel my aims, my aims find me, my soul and the world are one. And then life will be clearer around me, life will be more burdensome for me, life will be richer for me.

So you know, I could not say the first, the very first word of your book on public radio. I'm not going to say it here either.

The mystery of the universe, parentheses, the same universe that sometimes still makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing and that maybe this really is a fairy tale. Close was created by God.

So one thing I really like that you name and elaborate on in your book is a real reality check about churches, even your church, as a place that is going to disappoint people where people will get hurt because it's full of human beings.

And you said in the book that you got less funny as you got more healthy, but you're still pretty fun.

Nadia Boltzweber's path to being a Lutheran minister will through addiction and recovery and a few years as a stand-up comic. She's six feet tall, spiky, hered, and covered in tattoos. And her captivating spiritual memoir is called Pastrix, the cranky, beautiful faith of a sinner and saint.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is an important and completely original character in the emerging church universe.

She tweets as sarcastic Luther and she's just written a spiritual memoir which is outstanding called pastrics.

I'm not gonna say it here either. Here's a sentence I can just get away with. The mystery of the universe, parenthesis. The same universe that sometimes still makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing and that maybe this really is a fairy tale. Close was created by God.

So you know, I could not say the first the very first word of your book on public radio.

So, for example, we celebrate the Easter vigil where you start with a new fire and you light it and you have this Pasco candle and you parade in chanting and we have these baptisms and we have a eucristen. It's amazing!

And then we end it when it's done, we have a huge dance party. And we feel like nothing says he is risen, like a chocolate fountain in the baptismal font.

The mystery of the universe, parentheses, the same universe that sometimes still makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing and that maybe this really is a fairy tale. Close was created by God.

I actually have no idea how people manage to be preachers without being stand-up comics first.

Pastrix, the cranky, beautiful faith of a sinner and saint.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is founder and pastor of the downtown Denver house for all seniors in states. Is it house for all centers in states? House for all centers in states or the, you know, we call it half-ass.

She tweets as sarcastic Luther and she's just written a spiritual memoir which is outstanding called pastrics.

Here's a sentence I can just get away with. The mystery of the universe, parenthesis. The same universe that sometimes still makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing and that maybe this really is a fairy tale. Close was created by God.

So you know, when I was getting ready for paying to interview you, there are a lot of interviews out there where people ask you. I mean, I believe you have the entire liturgical year tattooed on one of your arms.

So you know, when I was getting ready for paying to interview you, there are a lot of interviews out there where people ask you. I mean, I believe you have the entire liturgical year tattooed on one of your arms. And there are a lot of interviews where people ask you about those tattoos. Yes. And that as a store, as a way into your theology. Yeah. I wonder if how the other tattoos tell the story.