On Being with Krista Tippett

I was reached for other words to attach, like muscular. It has to be muscular. It has to be robust. This language we use in The Grounding Virtues, adventurous civility. It needs to be an adventure.

Your obligation is not discharged by any common right. Let others wear the sackcloth and ashes. Let go, let fly, forget. You've listened long enough. Now strike your note.

So I, as all bad stories begin, I went to a CrossFit box in 2015. Traveling the country and the debates needing to get back in shape was just out of breath all the time and it just got worse. And you know my dad told me everything went downhill at 40 and I had hit 40 and thought everything is falling apart. Couldn't do CrossFit, couldn't keep up. It got worse. Thought it was allergies. Next thing I know I am being rushed into an ICU after getting a CT. Literally, I got a CT scan and you know the techs aren't supposed to tell you anything and the guy comes in ghost white and says do I strap him down? And I just fell out laughing and started to sit up and he pushes his chest. No, you can't get up. You should be dead. I had 20 some odd blood clots in my lungs. They had been accumulating and literally my wife couldn't be there. She had to pick up the kids. We weren't expecting anything. It was allergies. And while I'm in the CT scan, of course, you can't get your cell phone working and I get out of range and my phone just lights up. It's my wife. The Mayo Clinic had called. She had these random spots in her lungs that had them for years and they called and said she needed to come in. They were starting to see people with her condition develop lung cancer. So all this happens. My wife has a very rare form of genetic lung cancer. There is no cure. We have all these things happen and I had written that I wouldn't support the president. We had to have armed guards at the house for three months. And you know, I couldn't support him because he didn't reflect my values and I didn't think he reflected the values of the people I saw who were aggressively supporting him. And I just felt like somebody needed to say this is madness.

But you also then set out to write this book, which it came out at the end of last year, at Lytton of 2017, When I Wake. It's my closet cookbook. There are lots of recipes. There is a cookbook. Yes, there are recipes. It's fascinating. But you have to read a little while to get to the cookbook. But it's life lessons from a father to his children because what you also do in that book, and I do want to say that you also have on record saying that if somebody pointed a bullet at your head and said you have to either vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, you would have to choose the bullet.

And I wanted to make sure my kids understood that. The other thing, and I think this is the most deeply disturbing thing about the internet no one talks about and should, is it has allowed every single person in this room and all of us up here to ignore our physical actual next door neighbor and become friends with the next door neighbor on Facebook. I tell my kids all the time, and I mentioned this in the book, that Jeremiah 29 7 says, Seek the welfare of the city in which you're an exile for there you will find your salvation. And I really do believe that means your local community.

Life Lessons from a Father to His Children

if somebody pointed a bullet at your head and said you have to either vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, you would have to choose the bullet

I wanted to make sure my kids understood that

the other thing, and I think this is the most deeply disturbing thing about the internet no one talks about and should, is it has allowed every single person in this room and all of us up here to ignore our physical actual next-door neighbor and become friends with the next-door neighbor on Facebook

I've had to talk to my 12 year old about this

I wrote about this in one of my books called Beyond the Last Village.

He actually published some books which I was able to get a hold from rare bookstores where he did some very primitive maps of how he hiked up into this area.

Typical as a botanist, he never talked about wildlife. There was no mention of any of the wildlife up there or of the animals. He only had eyes for flora and-

If you read his great book, Fist Stick Knife Gun, which talks a lot about fear and what that does, the corrupting force that it is, but how he chose the toughest, a tough neighborhood in Harlem to begin just being of service of a community.

And I loved a book I read called In Search of My Mother's Garden by Alice Walker, where she says, talks about, it's a chapter where she's giving advice to revolutionaries, in this case, black revolutionaries. And she says, the real revolutionary is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. The raising a child's reading level from third grade to fourth, the filling out food stamp forms for folks because they have to eat revolution or not. The real revolutionary is always close enough to the people to be there for them when they're needed.

I mean, in your, your book United, which actually is a wonderful book, I guess it was published in 2013. It's really fantastic. It deserves to be read, um, still write it books, books don't die. There it is. It's in the live in the world.