Dear Friends, “What we are all more or less lacking at this moment is a new definition of holiness.” This is a sentence of Teilhard de Chardin, who’s long been a beacon for me. Perhaps you remember the show we did on him several years ago. But I had never heard this before — it was a gift from the wise and lyrical preacher/teacher/public theologian Barbara Brown Taylor, our guest this week. The word “holiness,” and what it might mean anew in our time, became a kind of center ground for the spacious embrace of a conversation that unfolded. Yet I had the hardest time beginning to write this Pause letter. I think it’s because the trajectory of Barbara Brown Taylor’s life and theology and callings speak to the large trajectory I set out to pursue in the crucible of my life and in the origins of this show. She is also a wonderfully meandering conversation partner, who takes us to so many arresting, beautiful places — with words at once breathtaking and straightforward — that I have trouble knowing where to start. From the wide bounty of her presence, I'll just offer up a taste of what is in store. We have a lot of back and forth that I deeply enjoy about words and notions that our religious traditions carry forward for us, and that we have to keep relearning and filling with reality in order to live their depths. “Reverence” is a word that comes up in that way, and here’s how she meanders forth: These days when people tell me they don't believe in a higher power, it occurs to me that weather is a higher power. And that there are many things around us beyond our control that are greater than we are… And frankly, what we were talking about a moment ago — a hospital room — will bring you into the presence of something greater than you are. You may not feel reverence in that moment. But so many of the experiences that have increased my reverence have been ones that reminded me how small and temporary and woundable I and all my fellows are. There're also a great many experiences like wilderness, like lostness, like fear, that can also end in reverence. I don’t think I’ve ever said this in a script before — and I probably wouldn’t have felt that I could on public radio — but this conversation is a blessing. We send it out in a season of rare convergence between Easter, Passover, and Ramandan; and a rising hunger for meaning and depth which recalls us to the gifts of this part of the human enterprise, as well as the forms these traditions — and we ourselves — are called to reconfigure in this world emerging. Barbara Brown Taylor echoes this when she says, "I like [holiness] much better than ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ — to be a seeker after the sacred or the holy, which ends up for me being the really real.” Also, spoiler alert: Lady Gaga gets her first official On Being mention. Finally. It is hard for me to believe, but this is the penultimate episode of this season. And we are going to try an experiment we’ve thought about for a while, for our listeners who feel like community. We will open a Zoom room next Thursday, for whoever can join, to listen to that last episode together. It happens to be a healing conversation with the wonderful Dr. Vivek Murthy. I’ll say hello at the top of the hour, and then you can watch or close your eyes, take a walk or do errands or paint or however you normally listen — but alongside me and others. We’ll keep the chat open so we can interact as desired the whole time. And I’ll come back for a little while afterwards for some reaction and response. If you have questions or thoughts for us about the season, we’d love to receive them. You can offer them in advance directly through the listening party registration page. Find links to RSVP here, or below. |
