when Stephen Colbert was doing the earlier show, and he had this one skit where he said, I love breathing, I could do it all day long., And I always think about that because of course, its so ironic that we have to think about our breath. Join our weekly ritual of a newsletter, The Pause, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. by being not a witness, This is a gift. And that reframing was really important to me. Deeper truths and larger stories of ourselves as societies, as a planet, as humans, that at once complicate and enliven our capacity to live with dignity and joy and wholeness. Limn: I remember having this experience I was sort of very deeply alone during the early days of the pandemic when my husbands work brought him to another state. And then you go, Oh no, no, thats just recycling. So thats in the poem. Look, we are not unspectacular things. Seems like a good place for a close-eyed And I think when were talking about this, were talking about who we are right now, because were all carrying this. And I was having this moment where I kept being like, Well, if I just deeply look at the world like I do, as poets do, I will feel a sense of belonging. It just offers more questions. Yeah, because its made with words, but its also sensory and its bodily. But the song didnt mean anything, just a call People will ask me a lot about my process and it is, like I said, silence. Dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. Nov 19, 2022, 8:00pm PST. I live in the low parts now, most And when so much of the natural world was burned, and I kept thinking about all the trees and the birds and the wildlife. Limn: And to feel that moment of everyone recognizing what it is to kind of look out for one another and have to do that in the antithesis of who we are, which was to separate. Yeah. Its wonderful. I remember having this experience I was sort of very deeply alone during the early days of the pandemic when my husbands work brought him to another state. This might be hard for some of you right here. body. It makes room for all of these things that can also be It holds all the truths at once too. Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower Two entirely different brains. When I lived in New York City, my two best friends, I would always try to get them to go to yoga with me. Poems all come to me differently. And then in this moment it was we cared for each other by being apart. But I think you are a prodigy for growing older and wiser. We want to do that where we live, and we want to do it walking alongside others.. And its continual and that it hits you sometimes. And whats good for my body and my mental health. All of those things. Tippett: Yeah. Shes written six books of poetry, most recently, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and her volume, . The conversation that resulted with the Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Sylvia Boorstein has been a companion to her and to many from that day forward. And its true. chaotic track. So we have to do this another time. And now Ill just say it again: they are the publisher of the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Science and the Human Spirit. We are in the final weeks as On Being evolves to its next chapter in a world that is evolving, each of us changed in myriad ways weve only begun to process and fathom. I feel like our breath is so important to how we move through the world, how we react to things. But let me say, I was taken Limn: Yeah, I was convinced. And so I have. Limn: I do think I enjoy it. Shes teaching me a lesson. With an unexpected and exuberant mix of gravity and laughter laughter of delight, and of blessed relief this conversation holds not only what we have traversed these last years, but how we live forward. She hosts the On Being podcast and leads The On Being Project, a non-profit media and public life initiative that pursues deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy, towards the renewal of inner life, outer life, and life together. Tippett: I do feel like you were one of the people who was really writing with care and precision and curiosity about what we were going through. (Always, always there is war and bombs.) And its page six of. But the song didnt mean anything, just a call, to the field, something to get through before, the pummeling of youth. The Adventure of Civility. And its always an interesting question because I feel like my process changes and I change. So it felt right to listen again to one of our most beloved shows of this post-2020 world. Yeah. Adventures into what can replenish and orient us in this wild ride of a time to be alive: biomimicry and the science of awe; spiritual contrarianism and social creativity; pause and poetry and more towards stretching into this world ahead with dignity . Krista Tippett founded and leads "The On Being Project," hosts the globally esteemed On Being public radio show and podcast, and curates the "Civil Conversat. Because how do we care for one another? I have decided that Im here in this world to be moved by love and [to] let myself be moved by beauty. Which is such a wonderful mission statement. And when people describe you as a poet, theyll talk about things about intimacy and emotional sincerity and your observations of the natural world. One of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue experiences weve called spiritual are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence as elements of human wholeness. And together you kind of have this relationship. Which I hadnt had before. Theres a lot of different People. Limn: Oh, definitely. Editor's note: This Q&A has been adapted from the podcast "Interfaith America with Eboo Patel.". This hour, Krista draws out her creative and pragmatic inquiry: Could we let ourselves be led by what we already know how to do, and by what we have it in us to save? and then, Tippett: So can we just engage in this intellectual exercise with you because its completely fascinating and Im not sure whats going on, and Id like you to tell me. Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction with The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste. Kind of true. I almost think that this poem could be used as a meditation. Tippett: I have your books, and theres some, too. During her 20-plus years as host of public radio's "On Being" show which aired on some 400 stations across the country Krista Tippett and her beautifully varied slate of guests . I really love . and what I do not say is: I trust the world to come back. But when we talk about the limitations of language in general, I find language is so strange. We want to rise to what is beautiful and life-giving. Tippett: I dont expect you to have the page number memorized. Tippett: So I feel like the last one Id like for you to read for us is A New National Anthem, which you read at your inauguration as Poet Laureate. The great eye. It is the world and the trees and the grasses and the birds looking back. Sometimes it sounds, sometimes its image, sometimes its a note from a friend with the word lover. Yeah. And I was feeling very isolated. It unfolded at the Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis, in collaboration with Northrop at the University of Minnesota and Ada Limns publisher, Milkweed Editions. And I love it, but I think that you go to it, as a poet, in an awareness of not only its limitations and its failures, but also very curious about where you can push it in order to make it into a new thing. Tippett: Yeah. We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out Yeah. Then in 2018, she published a brilliant essay called Complicating the Narratives, which she opened by confessing a professional existential crisis. Im so excited for your tenure representing poetry and representing all of us, and Im excited that you have so many more years of aging and writing and getting wiser ahead, and we got to be here at this early stage. , there are these two poems on facing pages, that both have fire in the title. for the safety of others, for earth, Shes written six books of poetry, most recently, The Hurting Kind. Limn: Yeah. Limn: and you forget how to breathe. Why dont you read The Quiet Machine? So I think thats where, for me, I found any sort of sense of spirituality or belonging. Right now we are in a fast river together every day there are changes that seemed unimaginable until they occurred. adrienne maree brown and others use many words and phrases to describe what she does, and who she is: A student of complexity. Its almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue. The wonder of biomimicry. And poetry doesnt really allow you to do that because its working in the smallest units of sound and syllable and clause and line break and then the sentence. Too high for most of us with the rockets. But something I started thinking, with this frame, really, this sense of homecoming and our belonging in the natural world runs all the way through every single one of your poems. [laughs] Oh my. Tippett: this is how vitality looks like. I mean, thats how we read. So my interest, when I get into conversation with a poet, is not to talk about poetry, but to delve into what this way with words and sound and silence teaches us about being fully human this adventure were all on that is by turns treacherous and heartbreaking and revelatory and wondrous. Theres this poem which Ive never heard anybody ask you to read called Where the Circles Overlap, . No, theres so much to enjoy. And now we have watched it in these 25 years go from strength, to strength, to strength. On Being Studios's tracks [Unedited] Ocean Vuong with Krista Tippett by On Being Studios Yeah. Yeah. edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrels. So I feel like the last one Id like for you to read for us is A New National Anthem, which you read at your inauguration as Poet Laureate. Suppose its easy to slip Limn: Yeah. Now, somethings, breaking always on the skyline, falling over. what you would miss. In the modern western world, vocation was equated with work. Woodworking and the meaning of life. Limn: I think its definitely a writing prompt too, right? and isnt that enough? Lean Spirituality. What were talking about and not when we talk about mental health. I have a lot of poems that basically are that. beneath us, and I was just And I knew immediately that it was a love poem and a loss poem. And I feel like theres a level of mystery thats allowed in the poem that feels like, Okay, I can maybe read this into it, I can put myself into it, and it becomes sort of its own thing. And I think Id just like to end with a few more poems. whats larger within us, toward how we were born. It feels important to me, right now, because I want to talk to you about this a little bit, what weve been through. Here it is again as an offering for Mothers Day in a world still and again in flux, and where the matter of raising new human beings feels as complicated as ever before. Her volume The Carrying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and her volume Bright Dead Things was a finalist for the National Book Award. I could be both an I the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business. Yeah. Before the ceramics in the garbage. But you said I dont know, I just happened to be I saw you again today. inward and the looking up, enough of the gun, And that was in shorter supply than one would think. Weve come this far, survived this much. Youre never like, Oh, Im just done grieving. I mean, you can pretend you are, right, but we arent. What happens after we die? And she says, Well, you die, and you get to be part of the Earth, and you get to be part of what happens next. And it was just a very sort of matter-of-fact way of looking at the world. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.". And then what we find in the second poem is a kind of evolution. And whats good for my body and my mental health. All of those things. I feel like the short poem, maybe read that one, the After the Fire poem is such a wonderful example of so much of what weve been talking about, how poetry can speak to something that is impossible to speak about. the truth is every song of this country Tippett: And you have said that you fell in love with poetry in high school. Yeah. of the kneeling and the rising and the looking But I want you to read it second, because what I found in Bright Dead Things, which was a couple of years before that, certainly pre-pandemic, in the before times, was the way you wrote, a way that you spoke of the same story of yourself. big enough not to let go: And I think there was this moment where I was like, Oh, Im just sort of living to see what happens next. And the grief is also giving me a reason to get up. In fact, my mother is and was an atheist. I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high. If youre having trouble writing or creating or whatever it is you make, when was the last time you just sat in silence with yourself and listened to what was happening? Limn: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Tippett: No, theres so much to enjoy. On Being is an independent nonprofit production of The On Being Project. Page 20. I remember writing this poem because I really love the word lover, and its a kind of polarizing word. of the world is both gaze The Pause is our Saturday morning ritual of a newsletter. Youre going to be like, huh. Or youll just be like, That makes total sense to me., The thesis. I almost think that this poem could be used as a meditation. So Sundays were a different kind of practice, if you will, a different kind of observation. And that feels like its an active thing as opposed to a finished thing, a closed thing. Now, somethings, breaking always on the skyline, falling over A season of big, new, beautiful On Being conversations is here. And theres sort of an invitation at the end. On Being with Krista Tippett December 6, 2016. Creativity. That just took me back to this moment in the pandemic where I took so many walks in my neighborhood that Ive lived in for so many years and saw things Id never seen before, including these massive Just suddenly looking down where the trees were and seeing and understanding, just really having this moment where I understood that its their neighborhood and Im living in it. But I think there was something deeper going on there, which was that idea of, Oh, this is when you pack up and you move. And I even had a pet mouse named Fred, which you would think I wouldve had a more creative name for the mouse, but his name was Fred. God, which I dont think were going to get to talk about today. Its the thing that keeps us alive. And it was just me, the dog, and the cat, and the trees. Jen Bailey, and so many of you. Henno Road, creek just below, Between the ground and the feast is where I live now. That really spoke to me, on my sofa. Youre going to be like, huh. Or youll just be like, That makes total sense to me., At the top of the mountain Where some of you were like, Eww, as soon as I said it. for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sunbeam, To be made whole But each of us has callings, not merely to be professionals, but to be friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, citizens, lovers of the world. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn. And I remember sitting on my sofa where I spent an inordinate amount of time, and reading it. No, question marks. no hot gates, no house decayed. We prioritize busyness. And even as it relieves us of the need to sum everything up. Limn: Yeah. A scholar of belonging. A scholar of magic. She grew up loving science fiction, and thought wed be driving flying cars by now; and yet, has found in speculative fiction the transformative force of vision and imagination that might in fact save us. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, The On Being Project It wasnt used as a tool. Discoveries about the gut microbiome, for example, and the gut-brain axis; the fascinating vagus nerve and the power of the neurotransmitters we hear about in piecemeal ways in discussions around mental health. I feel like theres so many elements to that discovery. We journalists, she wrote, "can summon outrage in five words or fact-like take the trowel, plant the limp body I will say this poem began I was telling you how poems begin and sometimes with sounds, sometimes with images This was a sound of, you know when everyone rolls out their recycling at the same time. Krista Tippett leaves public radio. Limn: Yeah. on the back of my dads On Being with Krista Tippett. I mean, isnt this therapeutic also for us all to laugh about this now, also to know that we can laugh about it now? Tippett: To be made whole/ by being not a witness,/ but witnessed. Can you say a little bit about that? [laughter] Where some of you were like, Eww, as soon as I said it. Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land? Its that Buddhist, the finger pointing at the moon, right? One of the most popular episodes in the history of "On Being," the 15-year-old public-radio program hosted by the honey-voiced Krista Tippett, is a conversation Tippett had more than ten years ago with the late Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue on the subject of the inner landscape of beauty. So I think there was a lot of, not only was it music, but then it was music in Spanish. And I feel like poetry makes the world for that experience, as opposed to: Im fine., Tippett: [laughs] Yeah. the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder. Ive been reading Ada Limn for years, and was so happy when she was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. July 4, 2022 9:00 am. The caesura and the line breaks, its breath. Tippett: Thats so wonderful. We can forget this. An electric conversation with Ada Limns wisdom and her poetry a refreshing, full-body experience of how this way with words and sound and silence teaches us about being human at all times, but especially now. So its actually about fostering yourself in the sun, in the right place, creating the right habitat. to pick with whoever is in charge. And there was an ease, I think, that living in the head-only world was kind of a poets dream on some level. After almost 20 years on public radio at the helm of her award-winning show On Being, Krista Tippett is transitioning the weekly program to a seasonal podcast.. Tippett said that the On Being Project, her nonprofit organization that produces the show, began seeing itself a few years ago "as a media and public life organization and to figure out what it means to be that. And we think, Well, what are we supposed to do with that silence? And we read naturally for meaning. And I was in the backyard by myself, as many of us were by ourselves. And it felt like this is the language of reciprocity. Yeah. Once it has been witnessed, and buried, I go about my day, which isnt, ordinary, exactly, because nothing is ordinary, now even when it is ordinary. Page 40. Tippett: And also, I read somewhere that Sundays were a day that you were moving back and forth between your two homes, your parents divorced and everybody remarried. Ada Limn reads her poem, "Dead Stars.". I wonder if Im here again today or in a new place. And that was really essential to my practice of who I was as a creative person in the middle of such an enormous tragedy. Before the koi were all eaten And yet at the same time, I do feel like theres this Its so much power in it. I never go there very much anymore. This definitely speaks to that. no one has been writing the year lately. Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned. Renamed On Being with Krista Tippett, the show was broadcast on more than 400 stations nationwide and, as a podcast, was regularly downloaded millions of times a month. "On Being," a weekly interview show about the mysteries of human existence, hosted by Krista Tippett, airs on nearly 400 public radio stations, with more than half a million weekly listeners . [Laughter] I feel like I could hear that response, right? Amanda Ripley began her life as a journalist covering crime, disaster, and terrorism. Ada Limn is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. into anothers, that sounds like a match being lit squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover, But its also a land that is really incredibly beautiful and special and sacred in a lot of different ways. I have, before, been, tricked into believing strong and between sleep, She is a former host of the poetry podcast, The Slowdown, and she teaches in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. And also that notion and these are other things you said that poetry recognizes our wholeness. And both parents all four of my parents, I should say would point those things out, that special quality of connectedness that the natural world offers us. At a special TEDPrize@UN, journalist Krista Tippett deconstructs the meaning of compassion through several moving stories, and proposes a new, more attainable definition for the word. Also: Kristin Brogdon, Lindsey Siders, Brad Kern, John Marks, Emery Snow and the entire staff at both Northrop and the Ted Mann Concert Hall of the University of Minnesota. Starting Thursday, February 2: three months of soaring new On Being conversations, with an eye towards emergence. So would you read, its called Before, page 46. Tippett: I think grief is something that is very We have so much to grieve even as we have so much to walk towards. So my interest, when I get into conversation with a poet, is not to talk, poetry, but to delve into what this way with words and sound and silence teaches us. Amanda Ripley began her life as a journalist covering crime, disaster, and terrorism. Just the title of this, I feel is such an invitation and not the kind of invitation that was being made. So that even when youre talking about the natural world: we are of it not in it. My familys all in California. 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