Krista Tippett - "Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living" (04/06/16)

Crysta so it's a pleasure to to have you here at Temple Jeremiah and thank you to fan and to Lonnie and to Mitch slotnick in the Winnetka Interfaith Council for co-sponsoring along with all the fan sponsors this this evening full disclosure I am NOT an interviewer this is just my third opportunity and you are the first person that I've interviewed who does this for a living yeah I'm giving comfort and pause by what you wrote about generous listening mm-hmm this is something that is a rabbi husband a father and a friend I try to practice in every moment of every day however you also lay down quite a challenge when you wrote I measure the strength of a question now in the honesty and eloquence it elicits so I'm gonna do my best so I want you I want to give you opportunity to tell us a little bit about the book why a book on becoming wise in inquiry into the mystery and art of living and really how does this reflect the learning that you have gained through your years of interviewing your years of conversation well first of all I want to say that I'm so happy to be in Chicago to begin my tour i'm so happy to be here and I do believe that rabbis have superpowers so I'm sure you'll be a great interviewer thank you um uh well it's interesting I didn't set out to write a book on becoming wise and I didn't actually name the book until almost till it was almost written I I was following this question that has been asked to me for since the beginning people want to know what are recurring qualities of wise lives like you've met all these wise people what do they have in common what what can you what can you teach us from that and so that's what I started tracing and actually when I sent in the near one of the near final drafts to my editor I called it no name manuscript but but then I mean I do think a book is kind of like a child and I think yes we can name our children in advance but sometimes you look at a baby and you it has another name and so I was like I mean I looked at this baby and and I realized that it was called becoming wise and then I went back and found that that was woven all I mean that very language was woven all through I will say that the word becoming is just as important as the word wise it's not a destination and and you know as I say it was almost done and then when I had named it and realized that that in fact was the connective tissue then it then it really came together and used the the subtitle mystery and hearts of the mystery and art of man yeah what he see is the relationship between mystery and arts oh well you know what I we did this show about Einstein years ago and and I did that book which started with my conversations about Einstein and so I suppose you know he put those two words together and he you know he said that a sense of wonder a reverence for mystery is at the heart of the both at the best of science and religion and the arts I also think of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who told young people to retreat your life as a work of art and I would say that although everybody doesn't use that language that is one of the messages that's come through loud and clear yeah right good thank you thank you and the structure of the book is also a great interest on you chose to write within a set of five areas although looking back at a previous interview is that also came a little bit later on as you were thinking about the structure of the book that many different chapters and different chapter headings and you chose to write within a set of these five areas that you describe really as the raw materials yes um and those five are words flesh love faith and hope tell me a little bit about how that came to be how that percolated to the surface you yeah so so in that beginning as the book was taking shape I imagined that there would be 10 or 11 chapters and some of them had very flowery poetic titles but as I really was able to write the book I think what's so important to me is that we not put wisdom up on a pedestal and you know Einstein again spoke of spiritual genius that there's there's such a thing in the world as spiritual genius and he was talking about Gandhi his contemporary and he said you know that this the dignity security and joy of humanity needs both kinds of intelligence but I talk about you know the way I've come to think about this is spiritual there are the spiritual geniuses of the ages the people we can all you know who come to mind the Gandhi the mother Teresa Martin Luther King jr. you know a Heschel but there are also the spiritual geniuses of the everyday and they are everywhere and as I as I as I continue to write the book it just became so pressing for me to illuminate wisdom as I've seen it as something that is accessible to all of us and that in fact emerges through the raw materials of our lives and the raw materials of the everyday of ordinary experience and so again as the book kind of came together it was clear to me that you know it had to be these these that the organization had to be very elemental and you know that words our bodies our physical the physicality of us and of the world around us love faith and hope I think are elements that we all inhabit and that we can inhabit more consciously and that you didn't list them hierarchically that it seemed to me that there was a great interplay yeah amongst all five throughout each of the five sections yes that's right that's right um well what she was the most surprising aspect of of this project that's a good question I should get ready to ignite the question oh it was very hard I should say before I keep going I actually got I actually kind of crossed the threshold where I could finish the book at ragdale right writers retreat I think there may be some people here from ragdale tonight there they are which is right up the road right and we're close uh it was very hard it was very painful and so I think what was hard just to speak on a personal level is um I when I am in conversation and you know my ideas these last 13 years have developed conversationally and I'm present but I'm also not at the center you know I get out of the way in a sense to the I mean I'm present and and to the extent that I'm sharing it's it's all it's all part of creating a hospitable space and drawing out what this other person has to say so I and it literally took years to fit to get the voice right and my inclination in the early years was to write about other people and that is precisely what I don't let my conversation partners don't let them talk about that or about them for you know for many reasons but partly because it's not listenable it's not interesting what's what's interesting is when people will speak at the intersection of what they know what they see and who they are yeah they're their ideas and their experience and the murder of those two things so I had to realize at some point that I had to do that too right and it didn't come naturally and so the book had kind of many messy chapters and then I guess one of the most interesting things that happened you know this this first question I about you know I talk about things I've learned and I realized although I'm drawing wisdom from other people and I am the connective tissue between because these conversations I have all come into conversation inside my head but but it's also that I I'm that I'm present so I had to take that seriously and write about that um you know I I i describe and anybody who listens to the show knows that I have this opening question which I find to be a magical question to ask anybody who ever they are religious or non-religious you know well tell me about the spiritual background of your childhood the longer I've done this I've had a much you know more and more expansive understanding of what the spiritual background of a childhood is it may be a religious upbringing and it's probably other things as well and I've always talked about my Southern Baptist preacher grandfather when I talk about the spiritual background of my childhood and that's absolutely part of the answer but I I also realized that you know what's moving for me is when people answer that question expansively and I think the spiritual our spiritual underpinnings are are also the questions we started to ask about life that that you know I think I find in the in childhood I think many people I've experienced start posing questions that they really end up following you know maybe a very nonlinear path I and and the spiritual background of our childhood has to do with what was missing where are where pain and confusion was where our joy was that's all about our spiritual life so I at some point realized that I hadn't been telling I hadn't I hadn't been giving a complete answer and that that there was also that in the family I grew up in there were questions that couldn't be asked there were questions my father had been adopted at a young age and I think had a very dark he was pretty damaged by that and so there were these absolutely fundamental questions of identity of who we are of what our family was of why there was this pain and loneliness in the midst of abundance and that you know had this revelation that that I have then spent my life trying to say yes we are going to name the UH Nazca poll questions and we're going to ask them in public and work on them together and so that was actually a great gift of the writing you know to me but it it took so long for me to figure that out right right in its process of discovery and I'm sure even now as you're kind of reflecting back on that experience it continues to unfold before you yes and so let me ask you to give you that opportunity ask answer more fully that question of the spiritual background what is the spiritual background beyond your grandfather being a Baptist preacher and the setting of this you talk about growing up in a place that people went to to run away from their past and from their ancestral demons yes that's right and and what does that how does that play out now for you mm-hmm well um yeah I mean Oklahoma as a place where people actually were fleeing and they were often breaking the law to get in and stealing territory from people who were living there when I moved to the west to the East Coast and I think it's true in Chicago as well you know you meet strangers and one of the first questions they ask you is where's your family from yeah and I never was asked that question growing up in Oklahoma and no one has an answer because it's it people are leaving history behind and then in my family because of my father's situation and he was very intentionally like putting a wall between him and us and history it's interesting and again this is like you know writing is kind of like a form of psychoanalysis self psychoanalysis you know I ended up in divided Berlin in babies most of my 20s in a place where history was ever-present in every room and the demons were named constantly and they were sitting on your shoulders and I think that was you know I think I was drawn to that I think I appreciated that you know in a funny way all that was you know it was very young not as a happy thing but it was heavy and it was real and it was it was letting in the complexity of humanity and of history thank you um the another statement that struck me as as we're talking about virtues and your statement that virtues are the tools for the art of living you say the virtues and indeed rituals are spiritual technologies and I love that phrase it's wonderful and this is and part of it is because it's very in line with with what I'm currently very involved with in in the Moose our tradition in Judaism and it talks about thought to be I just had a conversation with Tiffany Shlain about this night using what's our position on this work on character right right and so to think of this in and to how you talk about this building of spiritual muscle memory yeah I'm also something that resonated for me as they tried to take up the guitar very late in life and guitarists would tell me well it's all about the muscle memory and you're in your fingers you just have to continue to to work at it and work at it and and I find the the spiritual stuff much easier than the guitar playing I imagine it's you find you find developing character easier than learn to play the guitar yeah it in terms of the the spiritual muscle memory and and working on that and in understanding how it is that rituals and the performance of rituals and how important that is on a consistent basis and - - so that it becomes a part of your your memory it's something that happens and and this is where we're on is a fascinating frontier in a 21st century where science is taking the wisdom especially the ancient wisdom of our traditions into the laboratory and I remember actually being with so you know I think that one of the most wonderful discoveries of our time of my lifetime is is this notion of neuroplasticity that we learn that our brains do not stop forming at some point in adolescence or young adulthood that they can change across the lifetime that we can change our brains through our behavior um that we can we can influence our jit our genetics through our behavior missus this is amazing but it does it does take practice I remember being with the chief rabbi at the former chief rabbi of the UK Jonathan Sacks and he said neuroscience has now vindicated the ritual because that is exact impression of Clark Jonathan sex is easy pick very regal what that because that is exactly what our traditions understood and also what's so important about it is that physical postures are more than physical um that there is an intelligence in the body and I think on a Timmy it's very practical practically useful to say yeah I do think of virtues as spiritual technologies and to say because you know one of the people who contributed to the discovery of neuroplasticity was this neuroscientist Richie Davidson who here has been here and he studied the brains of so he got this fax from the Dalai Lama one day I'm in like 1994 I love that like that's from the devil like today what do you get a text you know an email and in the Dalai Lama who is a big believer in science said we in our in that tradition we monastics Tibetan monastics have these contemplative practices and he said I believe that these change us that they're not I don't think he said this but not merely spiritual that they change us and I would like to test that hypothesis so he richard davidson is at the brain imaging laboratory at madison and he brought these what they called olympic meditators and they they attach electrodes to their brains and they found that indeed yes their brains were different and this was one of the pieces of discovery that helped open up this this this revelation of neuroplasticity so one of the things richard davidson like he believes and I believe that compassion that we that we we are we have the capacity we are born with the capacity to be compassionate like we are born with the capacity for language but how do we learn language we learn it by have it not by people teaching us actually or telling us about it but by people doing it around us and by doing it ourselves and you know this idea that I think we think of virtues I think we you know we maybe think you know some people are more compassionate than others some people are more kind some of the more forgiving more patient or that's just not me I just don't have that and of course none of us has all of those four shoes but they are things and you know the New Year's resolution doesn't do it we all know that but they are things we actually don't have to feel or be gifted with but we can decide that we are going to develop that muscle memory it's as a habit and you know what ritual does is ritual also which is so important to it it it turns those how it honors those habits in communal space and time right and it also can create a container for us to be companions to each other as we strive to to be those things and so I think written you know rituals pin aspiration to action which is one way I say it yeah yeah it's so beautiful yeah aspirations to action yeah and I think actually in in the Moose our tradition they would argue that no we do all possess those virtues and that part of our spiritual curriculum is to identify where the work needs to be done right um and that we all have the capacity as you said for compassion some of us are able to tap into that and act on it more readily and we're easily and others for others it takes work and practice to be able to do that it was interesting what you had an interview with an anthropologist whose name escapes me at the moment who talked about how he was interned how things were identified by milestones versus conditions and that in looking at how Neanderthal communities circled around yeah young the the most vulnerable and yes that this was something that hadn't been looked at before yeah that we actually he was a geophysics geophysicist oh it's a VA lepresean and he in the 1960s was one of he's like the father of plate tectonics and he um he is also a person with a deep Catholic faith who has spent who raised his family in part and communities of care communities where people with mental illness or disabilities lived in community with others so he has practiced compassion in an intense way but he stood lurch yea large he's connected to large he one of the things that plate tectonics revealed is that growth and change that is sent more or less peaceful fertility generativity actually comes through weaknesses gracefully expressed and honoring weakness and where there is rigidity that's where you need a you know kind of violent where it takes violence for there to be change and he sees the same thing in human communities and he says you know we often tell the story like how humanity developed what how we became human what distinguishes us from other creatures and he looks at something like you know that this evidence at the Neanderthals that there were skeletons found that completely flies in the face of the kind of survival of the fittest idea of who we are who humans are that very disfigured disabled people lived long lives which means that they would have needed an extraordinary amount of care in communities that were struggling just to survive he talks about how we we tell the story of how how we became human through how when we developed tools - - when we developed yeah that's it milestones or when did we build fire and why did we make tools and of course that's important but he said you know a hallmark of humanity is this extraordinary care that is given to the young and to the weak and to the vulnerable I mean that's that's what other creatures don't do and that that in fact is what makes us human humane and the he's French and he said those two words are the same in French yeah and then it connects very nicely to something that you identified in speaking with um a professor of bible about the word for compassion in Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible yeah of being the the it's rhyming and being also the word for the womb yes and in Arabic also the same the root of compassion in the word in the word of the word really womb and there was a connection another part that of the of the writing that the the longer the period of helplessness of the children the greater the capacity for compassion becomes yes yes so it was a new development in our species and then Apes but then much more in heat Neanderthals and humans that there's this long period of gestation and that the young are born utterly helpless that we are dependent on care and connection to live from the beginning of our lives and that this long period that is required to raise our young actually awakens these these capacities in us to be caring to be creative to create community to find that life becomes meaningful and becomes a joyful and purposeful when we understand our well being to be linked to that of others and that's where that that connection of the womb and now that is the ultimate connection but I remember what I was sitting with a Walter Brueggemann who's a who's a scholar of the of the prophets the biblical prophets and I said I said oh that's such a beautiful metaphor right woman and he said he says it something like well actually if you think about childbirth it's a little more complicated than that and I know that better than you do right right and actually I love that yeah that's so important that that metaphor tells the whole messy beautiful story right and then I think the story of compassion writ large and the real challenge of our center of this century where we are actually connected where our well-being is in fact our survival and our flourishing in fact are linked to the well-being of strangers around the world so you know to expand what we know in our circles of care or circles of family and tribe to wider and wider circles of strangers I think that is the measure of how we continue to grow into our humanity in this next chapter of our species which is a huge challenge if we lose time and and I'm wondering how how that connects with connects with the idea that you present or that is and at that others that you've spoken with present that change occurs on the margins and not in the chaotic Center and that there were several places in the book and where this theme came back again there were digital tribes that were spoken about by Popova maria maria Popova brain picking yeah yeah yeah um and and certainly Jean Vanier yeah of the large communities yeah um and I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more about that and how how these change agents see things happening and are a part of this this change that that does have a global consequence but it's not happening in ways that we would expect it and somebody else used a phrase that it's a critical yeast night event man yes yes there's a lot of that question yeah so you should take us till about ten o'clock sir well well one place I would start is uh so years ago I interviewed a Joan Chidester who's a Benedictine nun and she's just a great you know people is that if there were female bishops in the Roman Catholic Church in our lifetime which there will not be she would be one um she's a really powerful woman and so she says you know in this sixth century Rome the New York Times of of ancient Rome did not carry a headline that said Benedict writes rule right there was this little thing happening where this this this person who we now know as Saint Benedict I wanted to create community in a new way religious community in contemplative community I think he created like 12 communities of 12 men or ten communities of ten men in his lifetime that one of the early communities he created they tried to poison him right he was not popular he was not a success and yet this was the thing that thousand years later literally keeps Western civilization alive this monastic tradition that literally preserved learning and knowledge the whole whole genre of learning and knowledge um and I take great comfort and hope in that story I believe that you know everybody in this room is privileged in some way we're privileged to be able to you know be in this beautiful space you know to have this conversation on a Wednesday night and so many people here are doing amazing things and you know I'm interviewing some of the wisest people in the world but I don't think we probably do not know what is happening today somewhere quietly that is going to keep civilization alive a hundred years from now a thousand years now and that's great right so yeah so so I mean that's the basic idea I think a lot about how uh I will say I read the New York Times Sunday newspaper I actually don't read the paper every day anymore but I read the Sunday paper religiously but it's only been in just the last two or three years or five years that I looked at that slogan all the news that's fit to print and thought how ridiculous hey why have we not been laughing right and it is it's it's the best of its kind but the truth is as we are kind of waking up to the news journalism as we've known it the ways we have to tell the story of our time they're so incomplete and um also what I've heard from so many wise people with a long view of time is that change in this idea of the margins that change always starts in the margins like st. Benedict people who are doing something truly new that nobody has quite thought of that way before or done that way before are not going to be welcomed with open arms precisely because it's new and strange it will seem strange but they get on with it and actually I think one of the miraculous and Boulding things about this age and our technology you know we we do a lot of hand wringing about the dangers of our technology and that's real too but the power our technology has to allow us to to to work on the part of the world that we can see in touch to be in our very particular local space you know to heal though to repair the world the world we can see in touch whatever that means however small that seems but then this fascinating thing is happening where technology then has an has a capacity to amplify what is local in particular so we learn things in our neighborhoods and we can send that out so that's fascinating the the critical yeast idea which is connected to that one of my favorite thinkers who's in the book is a peacemaker a conflict resolution expert John Paul Lederach and he says we have in our heads so I think this the question that really fascinates me is how does social change happen and how does social change happen in the 21st century it's not the same as the 20th century and we're supersuit we're just we're just actually we're in the dark with that question where you think about black lives matter yes very much it's beginning with a hashtag yeah right a movement that begins with a hashtag but black lives matter is also trying to figure out you know how does that evolve as a movement and it's not going to be the march on Washington yeah right but but but that most of us are still operating with a sense of a social movement social change happens with large numbers of people on the streets an identifiable charismatic leader that's an interesting thing about black lives matter too because there are leaders but it's not you know they're not out front and so John Paul Lederach says well that is critical mass and that is and he says you know when there is why you know a large scale change there are moments when when when when what happens are large numbers of bodies on the streets the charismatic leader and that you need that often to to uproot structures that need uprooting but but for long term transformation the creation of new realities preceding those bodies on the street and after those bodies on the street he says what is actually important is critical yeast and that happens over a long periods of time and it has at its core an equality of relationship in unlikely combinations of people and like a John Chetta stirrers analogy of not seeing Benedict I love that metaphor of critical yeast because we can all become critical yeast right now right right right that it's very much a part of the capacity that we have in you share an interview with Frances Kissling uh who says that the hallmark of civil debates which is something that we are so desperately in need of today in particular yeah that it's it's when you can acknowledge that which is good in the position of the person you disagree with and that you need courage to be vulnerable in front of those we passionately disagree with yeah this resonates very strongly again from Jewish tradition to first century teachers Hillel and Shammai who were known for engaging these intense debates with one another but what is said about those debates is that they were done for the sake of heaven that is that they understood and each other and they saw the good that they were arguing with the same end goal in mind and that the reason why we follow the teachings of Hillel is because he would always place the argument of Shammai first when presenting a position that according that kind of respect and that love of this person with whom he disagreed and showing even a little bit of vulnerability of saying I'm going to teach this position and that you had mentioned that in the book that you wanted to live in that crack that place right all right and make that place why but Francis says uh the crack in the middle where people on both sides absolutely refused to see the other as evil right right and you say that's that's the place where you want to live yeah yeah and so she was the head of Catholics for choice she was called the abortion queen she is a passionate pro-choice activist but when she retired from Catholics for choice she decided that the adventure she wanted to embark on was to find out what it would mean to be in real relationship with her political opposites wasn't about finding common ground or changing their minds or having her mind changed she knew where her passion lay but she wanted to know how relationship would change the dialogue and perhaps the trajectories you know so one of the things she learned is that you that it actually forces you to get vulnerable one reason that that's you know unimaginable in our political or our public life right now certainly our political life yet you know we have to we would have to or we we can we can but we would have to create spaces where where that kind of vulnerability is a reasonable right and um it's see see yeah yeah yeah where it where it would I mean because it actually would be stupid to be vulnerable and a lot of our public and political but that's not that's not I don't think we're called to be stupid right um but I think we have to understand that if we want a different kind of dialogue we really have to diverge we have to create some new realities some new places which which do have some trustworthiness I think Parker Palmer is a big mentor to me he's a Quaker author and educator and he says this interesting thing that we're very comfortable and and skilled in this culture at bringing our intellect into our public spaces we know how to wield our opinions now we've also gotten pretty good at bringing our emotions and articulating our emotions in public spaces but he says and the soul the soul is it different it's another place in us and that for the insights of the soul to speak its truth it needs quiet inviting and trustworthy spaces and I read that or maybe I I mean I sat with Parker early on in my adventure and every time I start a conversation you know happens before words are exchanged this is this again is in the then creation of space I try to create a quiet inviting and trustworthy conversational space media space and the end that needs some effort so yeah so we we and and I do love I think those two questions if francis names i found them to be very useful for people and they're wonderful so wonder if these are wonderful like practical tools if you can create that space where vulnerability is reasonable can you get to the point where you can articulate what it is that you can find to admire in the other position and what in your own position gives you pause it's unimaginable that our presidential candidates would feel safe right to articulate either of those things it we would not and we would not reward them for i know they become so so and i think you know we have we we cannot um we cannot limit our imaginations about what's possible but based on what's possible in our political spaces and certainly the presidential election right we have to get on with this all right we have to start having the conversations we want to be hearing and we have to let that play itself out however it will yeah and this is something that we we know very very deeply and you talk about you know vulnerability and the pressure for perfection are at odds in our in our world and i you do bring forward and oh my goodness um how are we doing okay so um you bring forward a poem i and i just i want to get this right which is why I put these their father Killians poem you beautiful yes it is I love that so much you can't read it yes I just want to say who so father Killian McDonald actually uh so he was the he's a Benedictine monk and he was the founder of this ecumenical Institute that really first got me going on this I've considered a seed bed for my project and he was he grew up in South Dakota he says it was not the end of the world but you could see it from there small town in South Dakota and he became this kind of he became this ecumenical leader kind of accidentally back when and this is back when of humanism back when let's say in the night early 60s when it's absolutely radical for Catholics and Protestants to be talking to each other much less two add Jews to the equation and actually that kind of thing is really important for us to take in that that there there is so much change happening at any given moment and we can't we know we don't remember that right the change happened slow and it also happens fast it's happening at these different paces anyway father Killian in his 70s then became a poet and he has become quite an accomplished published poet and this is this is my favorite of his bones perfection perfection I have had it with perfection I have packed my bags I am out of here gone as certain as rain will make you wet perfection will do you in it droppeth not as do upon the summer grass to give liberty and green joy perfection strain without the quality of Mercy withers rapture at its birth before the battle is half the con begun cold probity thinks it can't be won concedes the war I've handed in my notice given back my keys signed my severance check I quit hence I could have taken even the perfect chiseled form of makeup Michelangelo's radiant David squints the Venus de Milo has no arms the Liberty Bell is cracked sorry I sent him the book yeah last week yeah and I know that he's having some health problems he's 92 and I sent him an email and I know is he still on email I said father Kelly and I just want you to know I put one of your poems in the book and he wrote me back he sent me an email back he said something like how sweet of you to to send this to an old man who wobbles as he walks I'm just so sorry because the themes of vulnerability run throughout the book and are such an important and powerful piece and that the the sense of how we get to wholeness or wholeheartedness yeah is actually through brokenness and broken heartedness and and there's actually in our tradition the the cutscore Evie who is a Hasidic a 19th century Hasidic teacher said that there is nothing so whole as a broken heart yeah and and I just think it's such a powerful piece for us in thinking about how it is that we admit vulnerability recognizing that in each other in ourselves first and then in each other you wrote I there's so many oh my goodness there's so many things that the book really is marvelous really should really it is it is just filled with with so much and I wanted to just I I didn't want to stop without talking about love hmm and a few things that that you have learned I in in this okay that the title of that chapter is love a few things I've learned yes exact because I I knew I had to write about love and I having real trouble getting going and I and then it was only when I like renamed the chapter it was let and not like love this is chapter about love but love a few things I've learned and then I could start writing right so what are a few things that that you have that you have learned um uh well love is you know love is the pinnacle it's a great great the virtue of all virtues and love crosses the chasms between us and it brings them into relief it is the hardest work it is the most essential work one thing I've learned as much in my personal life as as in my conversations I've learned to honor the many kinds of love and I've realized how we kind of work with an impoverished imagination about love we we tend to talk about in love right and erotic love and chemistry and that is certainly an animating feature of human life but there are so many forms of love and I after my divorce I talk about a you know building a very rich life for myself with my children and my friends and yet walking around thinking and saying to people you know I yes wondering what my life is good but I don't have love in my life and then one day realizing I was using this absolutely pivotal word in a careless way and in in the way I was using that word and imagining it I was creating a sense of scarcity in the midst of abundance right and I guess the other important thing and I'm glad you want to talk about this because it's a really important part of the book to me is my desire that we I think love is the only thing big enough for the challenges we have before us but we have to figure out what that can mean as something robust and muscular and reality based and practical in public life and it sounds like crazy language I think it sounds wishy-washy maybe but you know what we have we have introduced the question of hate into legal code right we have created a legal category where we have acknowledged that the virtue of talent tolerance wears out and the worst of the human condition rushes in people who have shifted the world on its axis Martin Luther King jr. is one of them have called us to love that's the part of his message that is unfinished right that's the business we have to do now and yeah so I that's on my mind that how do we how do we you know figure out what it means you know can we hold if we can hold the question of hate if we can acknowledge the reality of hate can we hold the question of love can we acknowledge the reality of love and fill it with practicality right and the rabbi's love to play the game what's the the greatest command in all of the Torah out of the 613 commandments that are in the five books of Moses what's the greatest one and one one teacher says it is from Leviticus chapter 19 love your neighbor as yourself and and then there's a whole discussion of what it's what does that possibly mean first of all how can you command love yeah and the other is love your neighbor as yourself how is that even possible and yet it's that's exactly what it says and to find those ways to be able to express that kind what is that love that's being expressed clearly not romantic love yeah and but there's something else that's that's there that's necessary and and that part of it too is that we live in a culture where people don't love themselves yeah and that that's that's a beginning point there's so many is that they can't treat another as a partner in love because they don't feel that for themselves yeah and that's another real gift that we have to work with in this century is we have so much sophistication now about self-knowledge about health about wellness about grounding ourselves in our bodies you know there's this Buddhist term what to call mental hygiene right and I think we are we are we are we have science and we have habits to get mental hygiene right and in fact you know to this point mental hygiene kind of basic sanity basic clarity of mind wellness we we probably have always needed to plumb the deaths of our traditions and I think we have tools for that like we have never had before so we we really may have the capacity to live in to you know to live the midrash of what is love mean what is love your neighbors yourself mean that adventure and to make it real I know that we have questions also thank you allow me for being patient and you

Channel: Family Action Network

Views: 22,672

Rating: 4.7006803 out of 5

Keywords: Family Action Network, Krista Tippett, Wise, Inquiry, Mystery

Id: o5S7b4Y9Ugw

Length: 50min 28sec (3028 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2016