On Being with Krista Tippett

Glennon Doyle has written several bestselling books before Untamed, including Love Warrior.

Her books include Untamed and Love Warrior.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. And they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen. Room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

The journey goes down, not up. It's as if the mountain pointed downward, pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it at our own pace, without speed or aggression. We move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions, an awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.

If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.

Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide.

Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak, we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind. Our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape. In the process of discovering bodhicitta, the journey goes down, not up.

Embarking on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands. With wholehearted practice comes inspiration, but sooner or later we will also encounter fear. For all we know when we get to the horizon, we are going to drop off the edge of the world.

Turning your mind towards the Dharma does not bring security or confirmation. Turning your mind toward the Dharma does not bring any ground to stand on. In fact when your mind turns toward the Dharma you fearlessly turn away from the path of the Dharma.

What may appear to be an arrow or a sword, we can actually experience as a flower.

In difficult times it is only bodhicitta that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.

I've Been Thinking, Reflections, Prayers and Meditations for a Meaningful Life.

In this book, I didn't talk about my own situation. But since my situation is public, people feel like they know a lot of it.

I always thought people whose marriages didn't work out were quitters. I was wrong.

I've Been Thinking

I just want to talk to you about like the fullness of what you care about in the life you've lived and the perspective and wisdom you bring to this moment we inhabit.

I really want to talk to you, but as I say, the book is going to be all the way through this. So a takeaway from this for people will be the book.

In this book I didn't talk about my own situation but since my situation is public people feel like they know a lot of it

And I think that, you know, I think it just is such a, you know, disservice to other women when other women say like, I got it all together. I don't know what's wrong with you.

The New Testament is about a lot of things, which is why it's called the New Testament. It's about God.

Robert Millett is...the author of several books including A Different Jesus

I'd like to start by talking about faith, which is a bedrock of your life. It's one of the bedrocks that you name prominently in your most recent book.

angling is an art and an art worth your learning. The question is rather whether you be capable of learning it. For angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so. I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice, but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an enquiring, searching, observing, wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience and a love and propensity to the art itself. But having once got and practiced it, then doubt not, but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like virtue or reward to itself.

the third most frequently reprinted book in the English language after the Bible and the works of Shakespeare

Isaac Walton wrote this book called the complete angler in the 17th century

Walton's book the complete angler which is kind of a pastoral fantasy about a guy who goes out fishing from London and meets an utter hunter on the way to the stream and they start having a discourse about their respective passions the the the fisherman defense fishing in the hunter defense hunting and the fisherman ends up converting the hunter almost a religious conversion conversion to fishing and educating him about his passion which is fishing and the complete angler is in part code for the complete angler and it was it's almost like a civil war polemic he was he was trying to very gently express his views about what was going on in the country during his time and what he was advocating in my mind Isaac Walton was a return from a return to primitive Christianity because he talks about the apostles one of his first arguments in favor of fishing is that the apostles were fishermen and that Jesus chose fishermen to show his miracles too he doesn't say that but I I infer and I've had conversations about this with friends late at night fishing off the beach and Rhode Island or wherever about how you know why did Jesus go to a fisherman to perform his miracles because fishermen know they're in parliament really well they're not like city dwellers they're up in the morning with the sun or before the sun they go to bed with the sun they know their environment they know the storms they know the seas they know how their boat works they probably built their boats by hand from local materials they're totally in tune with nature so if he comes down to a lake and walks on the water they know something's going on or if he says cast your nuts on the other side of the boat and there's like a sand bar there or something and they know in a million years they never catch fish there but all of us on there's a net load of fish that they know this guy is something special but if Jesus went into the city and and did some miracles they might think he's a joker or something not take him seriously but so anyway that's that's not a nice tangential well I don't know but it's not it's interesting because even you there's like this parallel that you that you demonstrate in what you wrote after that that that a well-diners making is drawing this parallel between the qualities that make a good angler and that make a good Christian I mean not just that symbolism and that that that that fish and fishing run all the way through the new testament yeah and that they're gentle people who follow peace and and he was sort of advocating you know this like I said this return to primitive Christian in which in which he meant look guys we don't need we don't need these chapels and churches and buildings to worship and we can worship whatever we want to worship in a cave in a canyon and by a stream and he felt that that although he and his friends were being pushed out of um it's the phones ring where you are yeah although he and his friends were being pushed out of out of London in their places of work in worship like his good friend the poet and sermonizer John Dunn that they could still practice Christianity in the fields and in the woods and in the pastures and by this stream and that's I mean looking at it now I think that's the success of Christianity too is that it's very it's a very portable religion you can take Christianity really anywhere in a in a prison and in a in a in a in a in a in a in a church in in the city in the country because it rests on the sacrifice of a human being where as these the indigenous faiths around the world like in Polynesia they're completely connected to to creatures that live in the environment and if you if you fragment nature too much if you take the creatures away if the eel becomes extinct then you've erased the sense of awe and wonder that the foundation of the faith rests on and they're completely not portable you can't take the the Maori religion in New Zealand and superimposite on the innuits in Alaska it doesn't work you know it's not but yeah