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Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett

Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett

by Parker · 97 things on Twos

The discourse of our common life inclines towards despair
Listening is about being present, not just about being quiet
Our capacity to reach beyond ourselves is dependent on how fully we are planted in our bodies in all their flaws and their grace
Love is the only aspiration big enough for the immensity of human community and challenge in the twenty-first century
We are all healers of the world. It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It’s about healing the world that touched you, that’s around you
What if we were exactly what’s needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what’s needed to heal the world?
Listening is more than being quiet while the other person speaks until you can say what you have to say
Vulnerability is a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity
The need to approach others positively and with enthusiasm for difference is absolutely critical to any change
Anything in our world now that slows us down is to be valued and maybe as a gift and even a calling from God
The moral life is lived out in what we say more often than what we do
Hearing is how we touch at a distance
There is something deeply built into us that needs story itself. Story is such a source of nurture that we cannot become really try human beings for ourselves and for each other without story—and finding ways in which to tell it, to share it, to create it, to encourage younger people to create their own story
Our lives are arenas for all kinds of disruptions, because it doesn’t work out the way we planned
The task is reframing so that we can reexperience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle
Medicine became an art of treating our parts, not our whole. Religion divided us inside with high mystical notions that we are souls trapped in bodies, and theologies that made flesh and sin i distinguishable
We try to control this messy reality we are tugged and torn by desires and needs and holes we fill with excess
The practice of mindfulness is living your life as if it really mattered from moment to moment. The real practice is life itself. It is coming to all of those senses in hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and also, we could say, minding
Any moment in which we’re not aware, any moment in which we’re not attentive, is lost
“Only that day daws to where we are awake.”
We are Homo sapiens sapiens. The species that knows and knows that it knows
We need to live ourselves into owning that name by cultivating awareness and awareness of awareness itself and let that be in some sense the guide as to what we’re going to invest in, how we’re going to make decisions about where we live, where we’re going to send our kids to school, how we’re going to be at the dinner table. Whether we’re going to take our bodies and our children and our parents for granted, or whether we’re going to live life as if it really mattered moment by moment
The more we can sort of learn these lessons, the more we will not be in some sense running towards our death, but opening to our lives. And all the scientific evidence is suggesting that when you choose life in the way I’m talking about, your brain changes in both form and function, your immune system changes, your body changes. We start to really take care of what’s most important
We can trust the wisdom our bodies offer, again and again, and in the most ordinary circumstances
Convenience is an illusion, merely shifting the burden of process and consequences
Labor is real. But so is pleasure real and enduring. We can factor in pleasure with a heightened awareness. We can insist on delight as a virtue
As the era of careless food comes to a reckoning, we’re relearning the astonishingly elemental delight in growing what we eat and preparing it as though it matters
We are in any moment as much about softness as fortitude. Always in need of care and tenderness. Life is fluid, evanescent, evolving in every cell, in every breathe. Never perfect. To be alive is by definition messy, always leaning towards disorder and surprise. How we open or close to the reality that we never arrive at safe enduring stasis is the matter, the raw material, of wisdom
The deepest desire for us all is to be appreciated, to help loved, to be seen as somebody of value
We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others, we do t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the week was of another, if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?
We will continue to despise people until we have recognized, loved, and accepted what is despicable in ourselves. There are some elements despicable in ourselves, which we don’t want to look at, but which are part of our natures. We are mortal
The incredible thing about children is they’re unified in their body, whereas we can be very disunified. We can say one thing and feel another
Our world is not just a world of competition, the weakest and the strongest. Everybody can have their place
An embodied capacity to hold power and tenderness in a surprising, creative interplay
What makes you resilient to trauma is to own yourself fully. So if somebody says hurtful or insulting things, you can say, “interesting, that person is saying hurtful and insulting things.” But you can separate your sense of yourself from them. We are really beginning to seriously understand how human beings can learn how to do that, to observe and not react
Simple things like eating and peeing and pooping are the foundational things, all of which go wrong when you get traumatized. The most elementary body functions go awry when you are terrified. So trauma treatment starts at the foundation of a body that can sleep, a body that can rest, a body that feels safe, a body that can move
If it’s your truth, you can’t not do it, and that knowledge carries you through. But there’s another kind of suffering that is simply snd purely death. It’s death in life, and that is a darkness to be worked through to find the life on the other side
How in our daily lives are we connecting in every single respect with ourselves and everything around us?
Everything in nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it. It is also good to love—love being difficult. Love is perhaps the most difficult task given us, the most extreme, the final proof and text, for which all other work is only preparation
Love is the superstar virtue of virtues, and the most watered down word in the English language. We’ve made it private, contained it in family, when it’s audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We’ve fetishized it as romance, when it’s true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care We’ve lived it as a feeling? When it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive
Good questions, generously posed, seriously held, are powerful things
You have to have a sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done
If you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. Years ago that person was an innocent child, an innocent little baby. What happened? Did something go wrong? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? You try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone
You’re on a path and you have to be consistent and you have to be persistent
“At times life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. In spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not lose faith in our white brothers.” - Martin Luther King
To insist on faith in the common humanity even of our enemies and live accordingly; to begin with the assumption that love is there and it is up to us to make it real.
The conundrum of the twenty-first is that with the best intentions of color blindness, and laws passed in this spirit, we still carry instincts and reactions inherited from our environments and embedded in our being below the level of conscious decision
The human condition is one of belonging. We simply cannot thrive unless we are in relationship. If you’re isolated, the negative health consequence is worse than smoking, obesity, high blood pressure—just being isolated. We need to be in relationship with each other
The notion of sovereignty is very problematic. Whether it’s a community or a nation, there no such thing as sovereignty. We are in a relationship with each other. It can be a bad relationship or a good relationship, but we are in a relationship with each other
The question is not “how do we get there?” Its “how do we live?” In a healthy family or society, we do not just have the words that were related, we actually learn to care for each other, and we celebrate that
This journey is about continuing to walk willing towards the hope, the vision, the perspective, the opportunities that are given. It’s all about keeping your heart open to what’s around, and not closing up
We’re one body. All of creation is one body. We’re only a little piece of it. But the freedom of knowing that means I just have to do my part. I don’t know how to communicate how freeing that is
If were openhanded, there are no guarantees. All is fragile. It’s all gift. And being willing to share what I have or what I have been given then becomes the way that we can really engage each other. One piece that gets lost is that it’s as much about our stories as it is monetary. How could I leave you out if I’ve heard your story? I can’t
Whatever our part is. Just do one thing. That’s all we have to do. We think we have to do it all. And then we get overwhelmed. Community is about just doing your part
As I responding in generosity? Am I responding in selfishness? Am I responding in a way that builds up people around me, that builds me up, that is respectful of who I am?
Earthquakes happen when weaknesses cannot be expressed. And communities which are rigid, which do not take into account the weak points of the community —people who are in difficulty—tend to be communities that do not evolve. When they do evolve, it’s generally by a very strong commotion, a revolution
It is a biological truth that safety is almost always a prerequisite for the best in us to emerge
Wisdom, of the everyday sort, is about how we recon with the surprises and mysteries that make life life as opposed to stasis
So many of the elements that give voice to the soul—silence and song, community and ritual, listening and compassionate presence. But there is that window of choice, moment by moment, to go for distraction instead, to settle into numb
We all have a lot of contradictions and we don’t need to feel like we have it all figured out
The notion of objectivity is an illusion. The human participant of always a participant, never nearly an observer. Somehow our subjectivity, our presence, our wills matter cosmically, whether we want them to or not
“He understands now that we become closed-minded when we could be investigating.”
“I will be who or how or where I will be.”
By being what only I can be, I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind
To be true to your faith is a blessing to others regardless of their faith
I don’t know why it is, how it is, but it’s the authentic, the unique, the different that makes us feel enriched when we encounter it. And a bland, plastic, synthetic, universal can’t tell one brand of coffee from another brand of coffee by contrast makes life flat, uninteresting, and essentially uncreative
Doing good to others, having a network of strong supportive relationships, and having a sense that ones life is worthwhile are the three greatest determinants of happiness
“He who binds to himself to joy doth a winged life destroy / he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise”
The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or the mountaintop, but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion, of the world
Kindness is the most important thing
What you do, what you experience is reality
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know
The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty
“I’m wiser than everyone else because I know that I don’t know.” - Socrates
We all make mistakes. Every single one of us. And collectively, we’re making massive mistakes. And the question is, how can we redeem ourselves, in the sense of making amends?
Religion is not faith, it is the story of faith
Focus on the progress, not the reaction
Where is it written that you’re supposed to be happy all the time?
Life is inevitably challenging and how are you going to do it in a way that’s wise and doesn’t complicate it more than it is just by itself?
We all have to stop. We have to share. We have to make sure there is enough to eat all over the world. We can teach each other our ways and tell each other our hopes and dreams, but we can’t kill each other. That doesn’t work. And we can’t despoil the earth as we are doing
When we are really paying attention we really connect with other people. Lots of times, for reasons of rush or whatever, even with our own children, we’re not completely there. There is something about really paying attention
Children pick up what their parents live
The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go
We wait and wait and wait for the right thing to do in our lives, but no. You’ve got to obey, follow that impulse, as hazy as it is, and then your faith will come. You don’t get it first
Knowosphere: finding places where you can get people who have maybe fundamentally different views of a certain energy choice, but might have the same view on energy efficiency. Then you say, oh, there’s the place we can work together
None of the issues that we face on the internet are unique to the internet. They’re all part of who we are. In a crowded room, the loudest, angriest people, whatever their ideology, tend to get the most airtime. Try to build tools to foster some input from the quieter people
Acknowledge that damage has been done and dwell with it, let it be in the room, accompanied, grieved
We know in life that taking in our losses and grieving them is a step that is not in itself productive or effective—all those ways we measure what matters. But it’s an opening without which only limited growth, movement out and forward, is possible
Failure and vulnerability are the very elements of spiritual growth and personal wisdom
Hope is not an emotion. Hope is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam
The most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming from underneath things I didn’t know I could get out from underneath. The moments of struggle
Resilience honors the unromanitic reality of who we are, and so becomes a refreshingly practical compass for the systems and societies we can craft. It’s a shift from wish-based optimism to reality-based hope. It is akin to meaningful, sustained happiness—not dependent on a state of perfection or permanent satisfaction, not an emotional response to circumstances of the moment, but a way of being that can meet the range of emotions and experiences, light and dark, that add up to a life. Resilience is at once proactive, pragmatic, and humble. It knows it needs others, it doesn’t overcome failure so much as transmute it, integrating it into the reality that evolves
All things fail and failure is intrinsic, healthy, normal, and necessary to most complex systems
Courtney Martin for Müse and reflection
The internet is a self-perfecting organism. But as long as it’s an ad-supported medium, the motive will be to perfect commercial interest, to perfect the art of the listicle, the endless slideshow, the infinitely paginated oracle, and not to perfect the human spirit of the reader or the writer
Taking in the good, whenever and wherever we find it, gives us new eyes for seeing and living
Spiritual humility is not about getting small, not about debasing oneself, but about approaching everything and everyone else with a readiness to see goodness and to be surprised