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Hey everyone, you already know how much I love deep conversations, especially deep conversations between smart, thoughtful women.
Well, I've got one of those for you, and I think you're gonna like it.
Today we're dropping in our feed this new episode of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders, in which Kelly sits down with Krista Tippett.
You may know Krista Tippett from her amazing show On Being, which began as a public radio program and is now a podcast.
In this episode, Kelly and Krista consider what's in flux, what needs will never abate and what we might rediscover in new forms.
At a moment when everything is broken open, when institutions are received with less reverence and more skepticism, where should we point our minds and hearts?
What practices serve us best?
This conversation between Kelly and Krista is one to share with every thinking friend in your life and perhaps use in your own search for a spiritual home.
I hope you like it.
Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
I'm Kelly Corrigan.
Today I'm thrilled to share a conversation I had with Krista Tippett while both of us were at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Krista is a journalist and an author.
She studied at the Yale Divinity School.
She's a Peabody award-winning broadcaster.
I have admired her for many years.
I often listen to On Being, particularly their series of poems which I feel you just can't get enough of.
On Being has been her life's work.
That has expanded into all kinds of really interesting side projects, which can be described as thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.
Or at least that's how President Obama put it in 2014 when he awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House.
Hi, Krista Tippett.
Hello.
So great to be with you.
Yeah.
So I want to put a few things you've said back in front of you and let you expand a little bit.
The first is we are among the first peoples in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given, a matter of kin and tribe like hair color and hometown.
And I'm reading everywhere I look about religious nuns, N-O-N-E's, and I wondered if you are particularly worried about the secularization No.
You're not?
No, I'm not worried.
I mean, I'm not worried about secularization.
I think that you know that what I described the loosening of certain kinds of identities that's really about how society functioned for such a long time.
And we are in a new generation in every way.
I mean none of the institutions and none of the kind of given forms of belonging in that century, you know, in the world I was born into.
That's all in flux.
And I think that's just change and evolution.
What I'm looking for is there are things that our religious traditions and religious communities have carried forward in time that I think we need.
Like, and you know, pieces of intelligence like that.
We need ritual ways of being in community, the notion of the sacred, how to stand before that, how to honor it, kind of cultivating experiences of the sacred and of awe.
And everything I just said, there's a lot of 21st century science about how we need those things.
You know how music and poetry and the arts have just been organic.
You know, and depending on your tradition calligraphy architecture, right.
So that was all integrated with the search for meaning.
And all of those things still exist in places, but there was an integration of it.
So what I see happening is that a lot of those things are getting rediscovered and picked up.
And I think what's going away completely is the form, the container.
Maybe not completely, but there's a loosening of these forms, these containers that we thought of what it means to be religious and have a religious identity.
I would say if I'm worried about something, it's where does moral formation come from now?
How do we cultivate moral imagination?
And the truth is that in that world of the last you know, I mean, there's been religious identity in every culture, but let's say in American culture of in European culture for the last few hundred years, those forms of religious identity.
It's not that that moral formation was necessarily deep or great, or it wasn't always healthy and it was sometimes destructive.
But people had an experience of moral formation, which also meant there were things you could reject.
But you got taught you know certain kinds of questions and certain ways of questioning got lodged in your body.
And I do think that In this century, with our challenges, we have a need of robust moral imagination as much as any generation.
Yeah.
And so where's that going to come from?
And how's that going to be coherent?
Right.
The coherence is what I think about because to me, I was raised a Catholic.
That's what I inherited.
My parents are both super Catholic.
My dad went to church every day of his life.
My mom still goes to church every single day.
And it is this sort of central force of her life.
And that was what we were handed.
And that is a body of knowledge and philosophy and perspective that you can passively try on as a kid.
Whereas if we gave our kids nothing, which indeed we did. then it's more atomized.
Then it's more a la carte.
It's like well, I love this influencer and I love this podcast and I love running and I love Taylor Swift.
And somehow it has maybe some component pieces of calm, of reflection, of celebration, of joy, of using your body, being in nature or being in beautiful, inspiring places that might make you think a more elevated thought.
But it's not passive.
Like you have to glue it all together for yourself, which means you might not.
Yeah.
And it's not cohesive.
You think about how religious identity truly in every human culture I mean there's such a variety but that it was inherited.
It's actually not a natural move for us.
It's a new move to make this up yourself.
But I do see, yeah, I agree.
And we really, we are truly in this moment where it's just broken open.
I really believe that new forms I mean, I see new forms rising up, but I think we're just at the beginning of what that will look like.
You know, it's interesting.
In this series we had Rainn Wilson, who in his new book has proposed, like he went through the thought experiment of proposing a new religion that would have these 10 facets of all great religions, as he defines them, and then 10 additional facets that he would add to them.
Have you, or your listeners or the folks that I'm being, ever considered like a massive project where people go through the analysis and introspection to come to, to like backwards design, a religion that would truly make sense to them?
You know, I kind of come at this all from a different direction because I have a real reverence for the depths of the traditions.
That's not necessarily what we know best.
I love theology, right?
And... Can you say why?
Could you say why you love theology?
Oh, because it tells the truth about us.
And it's you know.
It is one of our most searching repositories of what it means to be human and how complicated we are and how beautiful we are and why we mess up.
And it proposes spiritual technologies everywhere and teachings in the context of a life becoming who we want to be.
And it has all these really practical tools, but it also has these anchors and community and conversation across time and generations.
I've never actually been very interested in the question of what we all have in common.
What I am interested in is how many different ways we have of saying you know, there are those things.
Obviously we have in common, but the distinctive vocabulary of Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or evangelical Christianity or Catholicism.
I think we're trying to point at something that is so That this tiny word God you know, it's just such a tiny word.
It's such an inadequate word.
But we're trying to point at something.
And physicists are pointing at it too.
I mean, you know the mysterious way that the laws of mathematics somehow flow through and explain everything that's happening right here in this room.
All of that, that's all vocabulary for whatever we're pointing at.
And my sense is not that we have to pull it all together or consolidate it, but that we need all of those different words and those different practices, all the different kinds of intelligence that they possess, to come closer to actually being fluent in what it is we're looking for and trying to explain.
I'm thinking about grad school.
So I have a master's in English literature and I wrote some essay about Romeo and Juliet.
And the professor Michael Krasny, who's a big radio guy a long time at KQED, was also my theory of literary criticism, professor.
I didn't know he was a professor.
Yeah, at San Francisco State.
It's amazing.
300 bucks to take his class, like best $300 I ever spent.
And he said there's no evidence in this essay that you are aware that this conversation about this play has been going on before you approached it.
You haven't done the work to understand what the full conversation that has played out before you discovered these words is.
And it's to your detriment.
And part of the joy, I think, of reading deeply, of being like a professional reader, of being an analytical reader, a trained reader, is building this habit where you're like God.
I wonder what they said about this in Victorian.
I wonder what they said about this in the South.
I wonder what a feminist would say about this.
I wonder what a Marxist would say.
And that there's a humility there.
And I think it sort of is matching what you're suggesting, which is that we shouldn't smooth out the edges and we shouldn't merge.
We should spend time with each and let the little lessons that are peculiar and idiosyncratic to each one help explain what is going on here and how we should participate in it.
Yeah.
And I also think it's an honorable path to just go very, very deeply into you know what is your spiritual homeland, your mother tongue, and to be so fluent and clear and searching and to bring you know, to be one of those people who offers up to the world.
Here's what this tradition in its depths is. says that is of use to us, that is about all of us.
I mean, I have felt in these recent years, like you know, very overtly theological language like confession and repentance and redemption and lamentation.
That language has never been more resonant for what it means to be a human standing in this world.
So when I say the forms are going to change, I don't think that means that the depths of these traditions go away, but I do think they're going to have to morph in terms of how they function and speak kind of in the middle of the world.
As you said at the top, about when you were wondering about where moral formation will happen, and I'm thinking about how passively we used to inherit a whole worldview and now, to the extent that religious nuns are having children and therefore not passing on this sort of ready-made education, something for you to respond to yeah, either join it or reject it, but like you've got something to wrestle with yeah yes, i mean, i think there could be real madness that spreads in the absence of some coherent worldview.
I just see people reaching out, especially when these children have children.
There's this impulse to then, you know, to actually ask this question of What moral formation am I giving my children?
And yeah, again, we live in the moment where it's all lying shattered on the floor.
But I don't think that this impulse to and you know, I don't think that this impulse to be, to have an inner life, to desire to be doing that in community as well, and to reach for things like ritual and teaching is and sacred texts,
I don't think that dies even in the absence of religion.
And I do, you're right.
It's a chaotic picture right now.
But I do see people, you know, rediscovering these things at some point in life.
And I'm just, I'm really curious about how it's going to unfold.
It's none of this quite, it doesn't disappear.
It shapeshifts.
And that's the phase we're in is the shapeshifting.
Is there any new ritual that you've seen pop up for the younger generations that you think oh, now that's something?
I can see how that would emerge in the absence of inherited.
Well see, I think it's more that they find their way back to Shabbat, right.
Or they go on spiritual retreats.
I mean, do you know what a big business it is now to have a spiritual retreat center?
And this is not something that most of these people grew up having looking for, thinking they would desire.
There are late-night Compline services at cathedrals and cities that are attended by— It's like the midnight basketball of religion.
It is.
Right?
So it's not necessarily that something has to be made up, but I think this gets at how do these institutions have to evolve, right?
And offering a late-night Compline service for people who probably aren't members of the church, but just being attentive to the fact that there's this desire and this need for people to get quiet—.
And that you have this ritual and this ancient tradition of gathering in this way and singing in this way and inviting people into a space in this way.
It is exactly what people need.
Yeah, I always think about learning about the vagus nerve.
Yeah, my favorite nerve.
It's my favorite nerve too.
So one of the things that, like a traditional religious space, has all these things that trigger the vagus nerve singing in unison lower light candles, certain smells a vaulted ceiling.
What's the other one?
Stained glass windows.
Yeah.
And I don't think that stuff goes away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So here's another one I want to put past you.
We are fabulous and contradictory through and through living, breathing both ands.
Yeah, that's us.
Is there any way in which you are not spiritual?
Like, are you Spiritual and not spiritual?
Are you... Absolutely.
Really?
Absolutely, yeah.
What is the least spiritual thing about you, Krista Tippett?
Oh my gosh.
You know, one thing that happened to me as I kind of got into midlife is I realized at some point that I was completely disinterested in spirituality.
That's not embodied.
And a lot of American religiosity...
And even a lot of meditation apps are very chin-up experiences.
I'm not interested in abstractions.
I'm interested in spirituality as it is lived.
And I actually think that, you know, as I've gotten older, I've gotten so much more into my body.
Just, I mean, through literal, you know, through yoga and meditation.
And physicality also.
I just you know, I've become more.
Touch has become more important to me, with children, you know, with my friends.
I mean, just you asked me what I like about theology.
So you know, I don't think there's a more brilliant line in English than Reinhold Niebuhr saying man is his own most vexing problem.
Right.
I mean, it's true of each and every one of us.
I am my own most vexing problem.
We always thought we'd have a t-shirt at some point that would say that.
It has not come true.
Let's get some merch going, people.
Yeah, but it's also the same.
Again, I'm so fascinated by how the intelligence of our religious traditions is now in the laboratory being studied.
It turns out it was smarter than anybody knew.
Like you say, we're working with the vagus nerve with great sophistication.
Yeah.
You know, Daniel Kahneman's science, we contradict each other all the time.
And actually, if that would be something we could take in about our political and social adversaries, that they're just as full of contradiction and complication as I am.
And in that reality.
I'd flip it and say I am just as contradictory and hypocritical and idiosyncratic as I am pointing the finger, saying they are.
Yeah.
I did a post on Facebook.
It was the most responded to post I think I've ever put up.
This was years ago.
And I had written something about and not or.
Meaning you are either pro-choice or you're pro-life.
But some people are pro-choice and pro-life.
And I asked them, what are your ands, not ors?
And I mean, they were so rich and deep.
Like moms whose kids were in the military who said I'm a proud military mom and a total pacifist.
And people who said, I am pro-choice and pro-life.
And they felt both sides of them were so true.
And we did this cool series at the beginning of this year on intellectual humility.
And the thing about that that has really stuck with me is that it's a very It's aided by thinking of, and not ors in your own life.
Because you can't be nearly as flippant and judgmental when you are aware that you too have hypocrisies.
So give me some of your hypocrisies.
Oh, some of my hypocrisies.
I don't know.
I don't know if what I say I'm religious anymore.
Maybe.
I don't even use the word spiritual very comfortably.
But let's say, let's say I'm Yeah, I wouldn't say spiritual.
I would say I'm religious and I'm, you know, I'm a skeptic.
I mean, I'm that.
I'm soft and I'm guarded.
I mean, look, none of us is an equation that computes and that is actually such a relief.
And I think one thing I love about getting older is just finding that to be a liberation rather than a problem.
Coming up next, Krista talks about why it's reasonable to feel despair these days and what we can do to counter it.
We'll be right back with Kelly Corrigan Wonders and Krista Tippett.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of the Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
I'm Kelly Corrigan and today I'm talking with Krista Tippett, the great host and journalist and author.
Here's another one that you said.
Hope takes goodness seriously.
It treats it as a data point.
What are data points that give you hope?
Well, one of them is that I think it's very hard to be hopeful in this world with the way information comes at us, unless you very intentionally orient to be seeing and hearing other things that make up the fuller picture.
And so, you know, I look for goodness.
And that doesn't mean that I'm looking for saints, you know.
And I also really...
I kind of hate the word hero, because when we hold somebody up or shine a light on somebody who's good, then we put them up on this pedestal that they're a hero.
The message is not that we all have this capacity in us.
So I look for kind of everyday, ordinary goodness people, and also beautiful social creativity that's happening, that is good, that is life-giving.
And if you look for that, if that's how you train your eyes—
It's everywhere.
It's all around us.
It's in all kinds of lives.
It's in all kinds of places.
My teachers are on hope.
Brian Stevenson says hope is our superpower, or somebody like John Lewis.
And that does come back a little bit to this.
Well, it's like living as if.
I mean, hope is a both-and approach to life.
Because for me, hope is not about Actually, I don't like the word optimism.
It's not about wishful thinking.
It's not about having any kind of squishy certainty that things will turn out to be all right.
It is about seeing what is dysfunctional, what is death-dealing, and insisting that the world doesn't have to be that way.
And those things do come to us as data points, right?
The headlines every day give us 10 data points that, from which the only logical conclusion would be that It's over.
As my grandfather would say, we're going to hell in a handbasket.
Yeah.
And like, this is the bottom line.
This is who we are as humanity.
This is the bottom line.
This is the truth about us.
It's all been revealed.
Yeah, it's all been revealed.
And so, to me, hope is kind of opening your eyes to what else is true and also just saying I won't live in a world in which those are the only data points.
It's like a leap of the imagination that then has real world consequences.
And...
John Lewis, you know, said you live as if, right?
And so it's a muscular thing.
There might be people listening who feel like hope is a cheery attitude that denies the harder parts of life.
But I think what you're saying is that it's just a more complete vision.
It's a vision that goes beyond what's being pushed at us, which are, you know, headlines, right?
And it fills in what's not being pushed at us, which are these smaller, also true stories about what is happening today in the world as well.
Yeah, it says this too is true.
This is as serious as true.
It's not a denial of those things that are going wrong.
And it is very reasonable to be despairing about a lot of things right now.
And I have my despairing days.
But this is an orientation that says I am going to keep looking for and taking seriously and seeing the truth and doing what I can, to you know, to nurture that truth, robustness in the world.
And let it activate you.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to let those extra truths that you are seeking out activate you.
Yeah.
This one was really interesting to me.
Tolerance is not really a lived value.
It's more a cerebral ascent.
Right.
I mean, that is some heady stuff, Katie.
Give it to me.
Break it down.
Well, the context in which I think about tolerance is growing up in the 1960s, and how tolerance was the first, was you know?
Here we were in this country, which had been diverse, but suddenly diversity was being recognized.
Right.
And all kinds of diversity.
And I think that the virtue we chose to kind of enshrine so that now we're living in a diverse world, and it was tolerance right.
And the definition of tolerance in a medical environment is the ability to thrive in unfavorable conditions.
Like how far can you push it in unfavorable conditions that you can still thrive?
And Tolerance was also about kind of saying you know you be you, I'll be me, and we will get along, we will coexist.
And it didn't ask, it didn't invite curiosity about those others.
It didn't invite, you know, anything like compassion or relationship.
And there was I think there was somehow this idea that we all just kind of be what and who we are side by side.
That that's a desirable society.
And that was also a time when people started checking whatever their opinions or their moral certainties were at the door of workplaces right.
This is a morally neutral place.
And that was in the name of tolerance.
And it's a form of respect, but it actually kept us in our little boxes.
We stopped talking about all kinds of things in school.
And that's really coming back to bite us.
I know.
Yeah.
That's a worry.
Okay.
So you are part of a series and it's called After Much Study Conversations with People Who Spend Most of Their Lives Learning
And your partners in this are Dan Harris and Rainn Wilson.
So here's a set of questions that I'm going to ask each of you.
What's a situation that you've been in recently where you felt totally attuned with your very best self.
When you felt morally beautiful?
This is a hard question.
You didn't think I was going to bring you nothing, did you?
I mean, I'm coming to the master here.
I am somebody who I do badly when I have to think of one thing.
So anyway, let me think.
So read it to me again.
What's a situation you've been in recently where you felt totally attuned with your best self, when you felt morally beautiful.
Or what are you doing generally when you feel morally beautiful?
I think when I feel morally beautiful... right now I'm letting myself be.
So yeah, here's one of my contradictions, right?
I am an empathic person and I've kind of moved into this, lived into this profession where that's kind of you know what I do for a living.
But then I also have learned to kind of shield myself from when things are just too painful and just too hard.
And I think I'm, I think it is morally beautiful, and it's not easy for me, and maybe for a lot of us, to do what I've directly or indirectly counseled people to do on my show, which is to be open and raw and soft in the face of what is, of the pain of this world, but to let myself be receptive to it, to know it.
Yeah, a thing about that for me is that When I'm doing it right, I am not coming up with beautiful poetic strings of advice.
No.
My instinct is to say, oh, you know, it's interesting.
I was talking to Krista Tippett on my podcast, or we were talking to Dan Harris, and then I want to give them something palliative.
And that doesn't actually make me feel beautiful.
And it's probably tinged with like a little ego.
Like it's probably like, oh, I'm just so full of information right now.
I can just give you something.
And what's actually beautiful is to wait long enough, and to elicit is to tell me more, tell me more, tell me more of them, such that they tell you the thing behind the thing behind the thing, which is probably even worse than the headline.
It's probably even harder to just absorb and sit with.
Yeah, yeah.
And somehow I think it is a virtue to just stand before what is.
It's not easy to go there.
This is embarrassing.
Every year I do this thing called Mom's Christmas, where I control my family for three hours and we do all this introspective stuff and we write thank you letters and we make donations and whatever.
And it sounds great and they hate it and it's probably counterproductive and it's probably going to.
Make them less likely to do things like that on their own.
It's very eye-rolly.
But this year I introduced this theme of what is as is, which is to say, to just be with what is as it is and stop trying to change everyone and everything.
Like the food in front of you, like as it is, and the person in front of you as they are, and the trip you're on.
As it is.
And there's so many ways.
That's all spiritual practice and discipline.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, my working definition of spiritual life at its best is befriending reality.
Oh, that's nice.
That's what all of those rituals, that's what the chaplain at the bedside in the hospital, it's what all that intelligence about the human condition is doing.
And our culture doesn't, it does not ask us to befriend reality.
It tells us we need something else.
Totally.
It tells us there's something else we could buy.
I'm screeching to a halt if everyone was like, I love myself as I am.
Yeah.
What's a piece of feedback that you've received that really stung?
Well, I know you're going to have Dan Harris answer this and he's going to tell you his story about his 360 experience.
Which is where I just came out of.
I mean, I've gotten all kinds of feedback.
There is sometimes feedback from the show that I talk too much.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
And I think it's the public radio listener, especially, which is a little bit different.
I don't know that that kind of feedback would come in podcasting.
Yeah.
I'll give you one of mine and maybe it'll... Yeah, give me one of yours.
So I was puzzling the other night.
And my daughter, Georgia, was sitting at the table, which is rare.
She wouldn't hang around like that.
How old is she?
21.
And I was trying to control myself from blowing the moment by asking too many questions.
Because I could interview my kids once a day.
There's so much I don't know about them that I want to know that I don't think I'm going to get to know.
So anyway, I was just floating these questions and seeing if, because we weren't making eye contact, because I was distracted with this puzzle, maybe I could get away with it.
And so I said, what's like the worst, the biggest fuck up that I have on my record as a mother?
And she said, you don't want to know.
And I said, I don't.
Like I do.
Just tell me.
And she's like, I don't think you can handle it.
I'm like, really?
Just say it.
And she said, you were really weird about food.
You and dad did the Atkins diet or the keto diet and we lost a lot of weight and we were kind of obsessed and we would say all these stupid things like you know, don't eat an orange, they're full of sugar.
And you know we have girls and they live in a certain kind of community that's kind of conducive to eating disorders.
And thankfully neither of them have had one.
But she said you were just, it was just too big a deal.
It was too much of a topic of conversation.
And then once you lose weight, everywhere you go, people are like, you look amazing.
Oh my God, your mother looks amazing.
And then all that kind of attention is not to anybody's benefit frankly, because it just puts such a huge emphasis on your container.
For all they knew, that's really all that matters in life.
People talked more about me losing weight than they did about a book I had written or a TV show I started.
And-
So anyway, it stung because I'm sure she's right.
I'm sure that you know.
Under any knowing eye they would have said you are making the same mistake over and over again, 120 different ways for years.
Well, I think yeah, I think, my kids you know I'm thinking about we're a divorced family, but we've managed to kind of, you know, I think function ultimately as a family that lives in different houses, and My daughter and I went to stay with my son for Thanksgiving.
Not going to say that it was a stress-free situation, but we did it.
And there was a point at which you know my son.
I find my kids have just been, they're just, they can absolutely nail.
You know me and they can be just so clear about what I'm doing wrong, right.
And there was a point at which my son was.
You know, I just said he wanted me to, He wanted me to be fully present to him giving me his tour of Austin.
And I wasn't being present.
And I thought I was being fun.
And I mean, that really stung, as you're saying.
Because he was right.
Right.
He was right.
Right.
It can only sting if they're right.
Yeah.
If you had to... This is a very personal question.
If you had to perfectly align your spending with your values, what would go?
Uh...
All the flying I do.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
All the saying, yes, I do, to experiences which are going to be pleasurable or profitable for me.
This is something that I'm really, you know, I like openly know that I should do less of this.
And yet the invitations that come my way kind of get better and better.
And...
And I'm saying yes a lot, absolutely, in defiance of what I think is the right thing to do.
Because of the environment or because it's too much of an ego booster?
Well, yes, because of the environment.
I think the ecological thing is primary.
I mean, I just think we—I think in the abstract that we all, including me, have to start—
You know, just having a different mentality.
I mean, kind of counting the cost of things.
Because if we all did that, it would add up to something.
Right.
But also, I think that your question is good because I really believe that the most important and deeply nourishing, you know, and the most important presence I have and any of us have is, you know, is placed.
I know I'm healthier when I stay put more and when I get grounded.
And I know it's like I accept the cost of exhaustion to do more things that are seductive, for whatever reason.
And I really actually know how high that cost is of exhaustion.
And yet I do it anyway.
So that makes me want to ask about Fame and privilege and influence and money which you know wise people will tell you is just like big batch of rotten eggs.
But I mean the work that you do.
Even the work that I do like puts a lot of nice things in your path.
Yeah.
How do you manage all that?
Like, how do you not turn into an egomaniac?
How do you not set up your life so that you're just constantly being flattered by people and invitations and opportunities and audiences and applause?
And, you know, like it can get really counterproductive sometimes. to the project, the big project?
I am almost pathologically unable to see myself.
I think the way some other people see me, I was talking to my colleagues about this.
I never assume that anyone has heard of the show.
So I never make any assumption that when I'm meeting somebody new that they will know my work.
And my work is successful, but it's not the biggest thing out there.
And I really haven't been motivated by that.
But that almost becomes problematic at this point because I cause I'm like walking around with a certain privilege and a certain power that I'm refusing to take as seriously as I need to.
This is something I'm really.
I actually think it's better for me, but I don't.
You know that I just don't.
I don't.
I don't take myself seriously.
In a way, other people take me seriously.
I think that And you know it is humility, but I think it's also probably something that I should take to therapy.
It's probably about my early life and my relationship with my father and all of that.
Yeah.
I just can't take in.
I can't take Like it's hard for me to take in the lovely words people speak to me about what I do.
Because of your dad?
Hmm?
Because of your dad, you think?
I think it's because I...
Yeah, I mean, I think if I psychoanalyze myself, I think it's because I grew up in this environment where I was always having to do something to prove myself.
And also, a lot of my skill was about deflecting or strategizing around negative input coming.
And I'm good at that.
And then I think that in these chapters of my life where...
I don't have to prove, justify my existence.
And it's so common that people are coming at me just with pure compliment and appreciation.
It's almost like I don't have a place to put that.
It's like I had folders.
I had filing cabinets that were very well ordered, to put you know the snide remark, or the challenge to prove my, to justify my existence.
And it's like, I just, I know.
So I need, I need to create those compartments and I even need to do it to honor what other people are bringing to me.
Right.
Yeah.
Is your father still alive?
He is, but I'm estranged from him.
I haven't been for a long time.
That's hard.
Yeah.
This is interesting.
This is not a world where people get what they deserve.
What helps you make sense of deep unfairness?
Hmm.
And I would say it's not that fair to have a parent who doesn't light up when you come in the room.
Yeah, I don't think anything helps.
It doesn't make sense to me.
There were times in my life where, you know, I remember I got very enraptured with this British physicist who'd also become a theologian, and he had all these really intriguing, beautiful ways to talk about chaos theory and what happens in prayer and how there are these gaps in which god has agency.
I don't know.
And there are religious systems right, there's the whole karma idea, so there are all kinds of ways to explain it and and they have some attraction, but i don't don't buy it.
I don't.
It's just a, it's a puzzle and it hurts, and i think part of what hurts is that, you know, i go to One of my favorite stores.
One of my favorite places in Minneapolis, where I live, is this co-op.
It's just a great place.
And it took on this new preciousness for me during the pandemic because it would be this one place where, you know, once a week I would put my mask on and you'd have to wait in line because there could only be so many people in the store.
And it's just good food and it's real food and it has a nice community feeling.
And I'd always come out of there happy.
And there's always somebody there. standing on that kind of close where you drive in with a sign.
And I started going up to them and just asking if I can buy, you know, what I could get them to eat.
You know, and so, you know, people will sometimes be really precise, like an egg salad sandwich.
No onions.
And so I'm happy that I figured out that that's something I can do.
And I always buy them, you know, what they want.
And I try, you know, try to take care of it.
It's so, so inadequate, right?
You know, it's so pathetic really, and i don't, you know, for me it's not historically.
There's the theodicy question right, like how could, how could there be any meaning, but not just a god, but like any meaning behind this universe, when there's such suffering and there's so much suffering in our world right now i mean the refugee crisis i just like i can't, i can't hear the reports and i also hate how we've turned them into migrants, which is this dehumanizing word, you know, migrant children.
Boat full of migrants sank.
Yeah, just people.
It's people.
But I think we do that because it's just too hard to take in.
And I guess part of me hopes that there will be some place beyond time and space where it will make sense.
But it doesn't make sense now.
So some people say, I want my kids to be happy now.
Some people say, I want my kids to be good people.
Yeah.
How do you finish the sentence?
Above all, I want my kids to be... I want them to have light hearts.
And I think that light hearts are gained over a stretch of time.
You know, that's not to say I want them to be superficial.
And they're not.
But I think the light heart that comes with treating your life as an adventure and Loving enough and wrestling with the hard things that have to be wrestled with and kind of making a home inside yourself
Being at peace in the world, even when there's a lot that will never be peaceful.
So it's that light heart that I want for them.
Making a home inside yourself is such a powerful, I mean, it's such a deep requirement.
And it takes, it's the work of a lifetime.
It is.
It is.
And every now and then I can touch it.
Every now and then I'll be reading.
It somehow brings it on like well, it's just me and me and I'm alone with this thing and I'm kind of getting smaller and smaller by the page.
And it's like, this is me.
This part is me.
This is the most me I am.
Right.
And I think the light heart has stopped walking through the world.
You know, putting up any kind of facade like just understanding, this is what I have.
This is who I am.
This is what I have to offer.
It's me walking into the room.
It's me sitting across from you.
Yeah.
So failure is inevitable, not just professional but more personal, and ethical and moral, small and large.
How good are you at apologizing?
And is there something that you're trying right now to sort of get better at or conquer?
That's really putting up a fight for you.
I think I'm pretty good at apologizing just because I'm not good at kind of staying mad long.
Is there a stone you keep tripping on?
Is there a thing that recurs?
I feel like if you're asking me, I'm 62.
I feel like if you're asking me these questions five years ago, it's not that I'm smoothed out or perfect now.
I just think it's like this thing.
I'm at home in myself and I don't take it for granted any day.
How old were you the first time you felt like you could say, I'm at home with myself?
Oh, probably in the last two years.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I think I'm good now at when I'm struggling with something which happens all the time, not letting it sit, not putting it to one side.
I think I'm good not at not failing, but at finding ways to speak truth and ask for truth from others.
What's a surprising source of contentment for you these days?
I'm surprised at how contented I can be with like, the things that are full of contentment are just the simplest things, right?
It's like making soup or watching a TV show with my daughter, who's living with me this year, or having a really good book to get back to at the end of the day.
I love, you know, I have a I have a big backyard.
I have a little house with a big backyard.
And I have this sofa where I have this window out, you know, looking at the oaks and pines in that backyard.
And that makes me really happy.
Yeah.
I can get really content cleaning like, especially if it's not required of me, like it's a chosen thing.
It's not like everybody left it all for me.
And I don't have shoes on, like I have bare feet.
Yeah.
And I don't, I hardly believe in shoes.
Yeah.
And I just sort of moving around, like making things right.
Yeah.
There's something really relaxing and soothing about that.
It's like, to me, it feels like self-care.
There's science about the change in the brain between you, you know, when you're younger and older, which I really love.
And I feel this, that when we're young, we're animated and energized by novelty.
And the, the, the older brain is animated by what is ordinary.
And it's such a gift, you know, and that excitement over novelty gets us so far, right?
You know, and I don't regret it, but I again, I find it just so relaxing to take such joy in what is Absolutely mundane and that I'm gonna do all over again the next day and I can't wait right.
My first cup of tea in the morning is almost my greatest pleasure in the world.
I know, I know, I know, I know.
I make a very specific cup of coffee with foamed half and half, which whatever, stop judging.
It just means so much to me.
Thanks a lot for your time.
It's such a joy to sit across from you.
You have like the sweetest face, like listener.
When she's thinking, she like looks up And the light shines on her from above.
I'm not even kidding.
And you have just such a sweet way about you.
So thanks a lot.
Thanks for your work.
You too.
You too.
Thank you so much.
If you have thoughts about this episode or would like to reach us with feedback or questions, we love hearing from you.
Our email address is hello at kellycorrigan.com.
Okay.
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Krista Tippett.
Number one.
We are among the first people in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given.
Number two, we are fabulous and contradictory through and through.
Number three somebody needs to make Krista Tippett a t-shirt that says man is his own most vexing problem.
Number four none of us is an equation that computes.
And that Number five hope takes goodness seriously.
It treats it as a data point.
Number six, tolerance is not really a lived value.
It's more a cerebral ascent.
Number seven, it is a virtue to just stand still before what is.
Number eight, maybe the work of a lifetime is making a home inside yourself.
Number nine, when we're young, we're animated and energized by novelty.
The older brain is animated by what is ordinary.
And number 10, Krista's working definition of a spiritual life at its best is befriending reality.
Thank you, Krista Tippett.
Thank you to the team at Aspen Ideas Festival who helped make this interview possible.
That's Tricia Johnson, Kara Stein, Eleanor Loden, and Gabe Chenoweth.
Thank you also to the team at Kelly Corrigan Wonders, technical producer Dean Kateri, executive producer Tammy Stedman, graphic artist Gagi, as well as Rachel Hicks and Charlie Upchurch, who help us stay connected.
Finally, thanks to you all for listening and sharing our show with your friends.
We'll be back on Friday with a new, For the Good of the Order, and on Sunday with a new.
Thanks for Being Here.
In the meantime, feel free to email us.
Our address is hello at kellycorrigan.com.
Or you can find me on Instagram anytime at Kelly Corrigan.
Thanks, everybody.
