Show Notes
Buried treasure from the On Being archive!
Krista writes of this conversation from the earliest pre-history of On Being:
In the years in which I was on a whole new spiritual and intellectual adventure that changed the direction of my life — years which led to the creation of this show — I befriended a delightful, brilliant, straight-talking theologian named Roberta Bondi. She’s now retired. At that point, she was on the faculty of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. We were placed together as roommates at a five-day consultation. We fell deep into conversation about all kinds of things — life and love and God, a subject that fascinated us both. She’d written a book called Memories of God, and she’d written a series of books about the eccentric, dazzling wisdom of spiritual rebels and innovators known as the desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd century. These were people who believed that the established church — at that time the Church of Rome — had grown cold and remote from very heart of the impulses that brought it into the world in the first place: the rootedness in wisdom and not mere knowledge, the humility over against power, the core moral and spiritual values.
Then, not that long ago in our world of institutions ceasing to make sense, someone I very much admire told me he was interested in picking up a practice of prayer. He had no idea how to begin or really even what this would be about – he just knew it was a longing he wanted to follow. The first thing that came to my mind to share with him is this somewhat eccentric, rich little half hour I had with Roberta in the earliest piloting of what eventually became On Being. Her wisdom about what it means to be a person who prays, in conversation and relationship with God, whoever God is and whatever God means, has formed me ever after. I am so delighted to share it now with you.
More from On Being with Krista Tippett
From Krista: I'm on record bemoaning across the years that “love” is the most watered-down word in the English language. I know that invoking love feels very soft for our hard realms of politics and war. Yet it is an enduring truth that love is the only force as powerful in a human body as fear. And we inhabit a world that calls us to grow up our capacity to love — and to redeem our relationships to neighbors, strangers, and enemies — as never before, both in the present and for the sake of the world beyond this age of violence we've come to inhabit. Rabbi Shai Held has written an epic theological work called Judaism is About Love. And, as he interrogates Judaism's complicated history with love, he makes an offering that is of relevance to us all.
From Krista: I was longing for a deep dive on the radiant and common-sense hope that Jason Reynolds embodies after I interviewed him at a Georgetown event last year. I got my chance at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. Jason’s perspective is so urgent for the world we've now walked into: on giving ourselves grace to be hopeless, the virtue of stamina, and the hope that stays strong in him from his life in relationship with the very young in our midst — "the arbiters and purveyors of the future" — as well as an occasional stranger in a bar. Jason himself is preternaturally wise as well as talented and kind and humble. He's become a friend across the years and is one of my favorite people in the world.