On Being with Krista Tippett

The author of Housekeeping, Gilead, Home and Absence of Mind, which is the book that we're going to focus on especially tonight.

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted even from my youth many false opinions for true and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful. And from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted and of commencing a new the work of building from the foundation.

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted even from my youth many false opinions for true and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful.

I'd worked so hard to identify ill feelings stemming from my childhood and hushed them so they wouldn't be a distraction in my present day life. I thought I'd put those issues to rest. So to have them rush back into my memory and take over my entire day made me doubt everything I thought I knew about the work I was doing on myself, everything I thought I'd healed from.

Why can't there be a destination in this self-healing work? Why does it have to be an ongoing process?

I told her I was looking for an endpoint, trying to figure this stuff out over and over again made me feel like time was being wasted.

In my mind, I had arrived already. I'd done the work it took to address things that triggered me. And I was frustrated that I was second guessing what I knew to be true about myself.

So I talk about that a lot in After the Rain and in the first chapter called Change, which is everyone's favorite chapter where I talk about transitioning from working a nine to five almost nine years ago now to being in my career, to how much I was an awful employee at one point, to how I stepped into really being a great employee and then faced some really challenging issues with my then boss.

Suffering has been an extraordinary and underappreciated teacher in my life. She has taught me how to heal, give myself grace in intense moments of grief and recognize the importance of gently moving through experiences that cause tension, discomfort, and uncertainty.

I'd worked so hard to identify ill feelings stemming from my childhood and hush them so they wouldn't be a distraction in my present day life. I thought I'd put those issues to rest. So to have them rush back into my memory and take over my entire day made me doubt everything I thought I knew about the work I was doing on myself.

Why can't there be a destination in this self-healing work? Why does it have to be an ongoing process?

I am proud of you and your becoming. There's an air of self-awareness that you've grown to know deep in your bones, where you've been and what you've walked through has shaped each footstep that you have left behind.

self-forgiveness is an act of community service

When did this book come out? Braving the Wilderness?

September of this year.

In your more recent writing, in your new book, Braving the Wilderness, you talk about your childhood and the story you just told about religious belonging...

In 2010, he wrote his own very moving memoir, Tattoos on the Heart, and more recently penned a terrific follow up, Barking to the Choir.

I expected resistance. I think most people, many people in the United States had believed that the story was true.

The real opposition had been among historians who did not like the story because if you have a man and suddenly give him a person that he's lived with for 38 years and four kids, that changes the narrative of his life.

And that means you have to deal with it. They can't just be side characters. They have to be part of the story.

So Southerners knew this. Right, because as you say, this was an American life. This is an American life and that kind of thing happened in the South.

the reckoning was actually saying slavery was not just about making people work for no money. Slavery created a mingled bloodline between African-Americans and whites and acknowledged and unacknowledged.

You wrote, I can somehow remember all that I did not allow myself to feel walking away from that unemployment office and through the Harlem streets that day, just as I remember all that I did not let myself feel in those young years trapped between the schools and the street.

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body. It is heritage.

But I also had an urge to make something new of them. This book is made in this way because I enjoyed the challenge of doing so. If I can communicate half of that joy to you, then I will have done my job.

And in that same season that you were in that Harlem unemployment line, the campaign was starting for Barack Obama, who had become the first black president.

You wrote, I was from the kind of home that would have been labeled on paper pathological, six siblings born to four women, all of whom became college graduates except for you. Except me. Except for you.

You wrote, I can somehow remember you're talking about this day that you've been you're unemployed. I think you've lost three jobs in seven years.

I did. That's correct. You read three jobs and seven. You said, I can somehow remember all that I did not allow myself to feel walking away from that unemployment office and through the Harlem streets that day, just as I remember all that I did not let myself feel in those young years trapped between the schools and the street.

Looking back over my life, the Pan-Africanists and scholars see our James is key Walter Rodney who wrote, you know, how you're under the developer Africa.

Looking back over my life, the Pan-Africanists and scholars see our James is key Walter Rodney who wrote, you know, how you're under the developer Africa.

You know you write about the San Francisco earthquake of April 18th 1906 which killed 3,000 people and annihilated the center of the city as you say and shattered this 100 mile stretch. But Dorothy Day was in Oakland she's eight years old she watches this thing that in some place you describe as you know you say yes people fall apart but in disaster there's also this falling together that we don't chronicle.

And the question she asked was you know she saw to me this is me looking at this she saw that people were capable of this that all along they knew how to do this right to take care of each other and she said why can't we live this way all the time?

I wrote about in my book on disaster where suddenly people got thrown into this chaos but also into community and found often profound meaning and fulfillment in a very surprising way in the midst of death and horror and ruin.

You know you write about in your book A Paradise Built in Hell which I love so much.

And because she's somebody who had a partner and a child and you know she kept the child but she gave up family life for this larger sense of community.

Our ancestors acknowledged doubt while practicing faith. We moderns are drawn to faith while practicing doubt.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Adam Gopnik -- Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith."

When you were saying as a little girl, I knew very clearly what I was not: small, thin, pretty, girlish, normal, weightless, or a "one-of-a-kind writer."

For me as a kid who felt lonely, ugly, simultaneously visible and too visible, comedy felt like a friend. It's greatest magic, more than any other art form, it forces you to interact with it, forces you not to feel alone because you can't be alone when someone's making you laugh, physically reaching into your body and eliciting a response. Comedy is also smart. It speaks the truth. It was everything I wanted to be. Plus, if you're funny, it doesn't matter what you look like.

When you were saying as a little girl, I knew very clearly what I was not small thin, pretty girlish, normal, weightless, one on a writer.

for me as a kid who felt lonely, ugly, simultaneously visible and too visible comedy felt like a friend that it's greatest magic more than any other art form it forces you to interact with it forces you not to feel alone because you can't be alone when someone's making you laugh physically reaching into your body and eliciting a response comedy is also smart.

And it works and I think, you know, not everybody eating disorders is the same but for many it could be a powerful pathway.

And it's how to fix your brain by fixing your body.

And it works and I think, you know, not everybody eating disorders is the same but for many it could be a powerful pathway.

I wrote a book about this called the Ultra-Mind solution which is how to fix your brain by fixing your body.

I'm just taking back to the 60s for instance, you know, Michael Harrington writes a book called The other America.

I'm just taking back to the 60s for instance, you know, Michael Harrington writes a book called The other America.

to look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye there is a blind spot. What is missing?

This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

The author of Housekeeping, Gilead, Home and Absence of Mind, which is the book that we're going to focus on especially tonight.

Here's a line that you wrote, unless we accept our fragility and cosmic loneliness, we will never act to protect what we have. Exactly. That's my mantra. Well stated, huh? Yeah.

Here's a line of Reverend Ames in Gilead. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.