On Being with Krista Tippett

I actually wrote a book way before this last one called The Dancing Universe and From Creation Myths to the Big Bang.

Symmetry may have its appeal, but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation.

What is the name of your book? A Tear? A Tear at the Edge of Creation. A Tear at the Edge of Creation, a fabulous book.

In your novel, in your most recent novel, the translation of Dr. Appel, you say it that right? Do you say Appel? Appelis. You say Appelis?

David Treuer's book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, has been nominated for a National Book Award.

He's written a celebrated new book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, that has been nominated for a National Book Award.

In my dream, I was surrounded by African elephants on a flat piece of savannah. They were reaching out to me with their trunk, sniffing me the way elephants do. And then the matriarch of the group spoke. You know, I didn't hear her voice, but I heard the words and they were in English because that's what I understand. And she said, we did not reveal this to you so that you would tell other people.

You tell in your book, SILENT THUNDER, you tell a story about how when you were young, you read the Jungle Book and you were riveted by this password that Mowgli had that allowed him to communicate with the animals.

In her memoir, SILENT THUNDER, Katie Payne grieved over the selective extermination of several elephants she'd studied intimately in a policy called culling, systematically killing elephant groups in order to control overpopulation.

You know you write in your book, which is part memoir, SILENT THUNDER, about going home and the conflicting feelings you had.

You tell in your book, SILENT THUNDER, you tell a story about how when you were young, you read the Jungle Book and you were riveted by this password that Mowgli had that allowed him to communicate with the animals.

In your book, SILENT THUNDER, in the Presence of Elephants. The situation has only grown a great deal more extreme since that time because elephants have been confined in Southern African savanna areas to spaces not occupied by people and have multiplied their numbers in those areas.

You write in your book, which is part memoir, SILENT THUNDER, about going home and the conflicting feelings you had.

One of the things that I found when I looked at the park's records on these animals was that they were valued for the weight of their tusks. The animals who'd been called.

So I woke knowing that the elephants had revealed it to me, not that I had discovered something.

Life is diverse. Living is to live with difference. Anyone telling you that difference should be stamped out is stamping out life. Those people insisting that there are black and white answers to the difficult questions are stamping out the diversity that is inherent within us.

With every single terrorist incident, I think again and again about the issues that we talk about that we're going to probably talk about tonight.

In my book was to look at the values and the principles that could actually guide our lives so that we can independently of outside authority make our own decisions.

Life is diverse. Living is to live with difference. Anyone telling you that difference should be stamped out is stamping out life.

It's interesting about that fear of the body. Yeah. I mean, I think it just goes back to control, especially controlling women.

And the truth is that men have been controlling women for a long time, especially when they get organized.

I think about... It's like church. You know more than we do about it. I mean, I think it's an excellent, excellent thing to think about and talk about.

Religious music is an attempt to convey that which is within our reach, but beyond our grasp.

Music is physical. It's got, you know, your heartbeat. It's got rhythms. It's got space. It's it's a physiological reality along with a mystical reality. So it's metaphysical.

I remember reading the book that you wrote with your father.

In the book that I wrote with my dad, we talk a lot about that because like he cut his teeth on jazz, which is deemed secular, you know, but it really informed his musicality, which then he got the calling to faith and then he focused on, you know, church music and hymnals and things like that.

The book is wonderful.

I really felt like I was reading something for the first time.

You were incredibly helpful, encouraging, and even in some of the, as what is it Annie Lamott says, the shitty first draft. You were really helpful there.

And it starts with, you're talking about leadership. You're talking about the ways we make our living. Isn't that such an interesting phrase? And it begins with how did my relationship to money first get formed and how does it influence the way I work as an adult?

In this sort of self-inquiring process.

What if changing our perception of God has the potential to change everything?