• About Us
    • Mission & Vision
    • Impact
    • Eboo Patel
    • Team
    • Board of Directors
    • Careers
    • Reports & Financials
  • Sectors
    • Higher Education
    • Racial Equity
    • Emerging Leaders
    • Faith & Health
    • Religion in the Workplace
    • Religious Diversity & Bridgebuilding
    • Policy
    • Faith & Civic Life
    • Tech & Interfaith
  • What We Do
    • Courses, Curricula, and Tools
    • Events
    • Grants & Leadership Awards
    • Research
    • Consulting
    • Speaking
  • Magazine
    • Interfaith America Magazine
    • Interfaith America with Eboo Patel
  • Get Involved
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Us
    • Support Us
    • Our Supporters
Menu
  • About Us
    • Mission & Vision
    • Impact
    • Eboo Patel
    • Team
    • Board of Directors
    • Careers
    • Reports & Financials
  • Sectors
    • Higher Education
    • Racial Equity
    • Emerging Leaders
    • Faith & Health
    • Religion in the Workplace
    • Religious Diversity & Bridgebuilding
    • Policy
    • Faith & Civic Life
    • Tech & Interfaith
  • What We Do
    • Courses, Curricula, and Tools
    • Events
    • Grants & Leadership Awards
    • Research
    • Consulting
    • Speaking
  • Magazine
    • Interfaith America Magazine
    • Interfaith America with Eboo Patel
  • Get Involved
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Us
    • Support Us
    • Our Supporters
Subscribe
Support Us
Eboo Patel

Conversations with Eboo: Krista Tippett

By
Eboo Patel

May 20, 2020

After this crisis, what? What changes and what stays the same? What gets worse and what gets better?

Those were some of the themes touched on when I caught up with my friend Krista Tippett recently, right before she gently removed herself from the world for a two-week writing retreat. She can’t physically go away, of course, but she can continue the practice she has developed in writing her many other luminous books. But, this time not at a bucolic writer’s retreat but rather in her St. Paul, MN home.

She keeps away from email and social media for at least an hour after waking up. She writes until noon and at that time takes two hours completely away from work. She makes sure she gets at least an hour of exercise a day. And, she prioritizes sleep. “Taking care of your body is taking care of your spirit,” she told me.

Krista Tippett has been taking care of our spirits (individually, as a nation and a world) for a long time. She launched ‘Speaking of Faith’ on Minnesota Public Radio in 2001, changed the title to ‘On Being’ in 2010 and then created several related initiatives, including the podcast ‘Poetry Unbound’ and the ‘Civil Conversations Project.’ The thread that runs through everything Krista does is the insistence that the various parts of our being—the physical and the spiritual, the private and the public, the individual and the social, the joy and the suffering – are integrated into a kind of cosmic wholeness.

The spaces where we Americans are most integrated and the spaces where we are most fractured are crystal clear in this crisis. We have a visceral idea of who is essential, who really matters: caregivers, artists, delivery drivers, shelve stackers, food producers, people who serve and weave communities together. And, as Krista emphasized to me, “The work ahead is can we not just tell them how grateful we are for them, but can we build structures of support and thriving around their essentialness.”

The scenes of fracture, pain and loss –principally the deep racial inequities of Covid-19 deaths –are deeply saddening for Krista but not at all shocking. In fact, they are entirely predictable. They are a five-alarm moral fire. They long have been.

The most hopeful thing she is seeing is the remarkable, creative leadership on the local level, from mayors and governors to public health officials and hospital chaplains. So many of them are providing glimpses of what a better new normal might look like.

Here’s how we ended the conversation:

“There is an incredible opening to deep structural reformation, to how we live our lives and organize our societies.” However, Krista warns, “Nothing is inevitable. We have to make that happen, and it also go the other way. That question is the definition of the work ahead. The real hardship and the real work is in front of us. The work is going to be on imagination and courage and regeneration. We have the capacity in our local places to incubate new forms and new structures and sharing that learning.”

Share

Related Articles

  • Interfaith America Interview

    Why We Belong to Each Other: A Conversation with Krista Tippett and Eboo Patel

  • Interfaith America Interview

    ‘It’s a Hard Time in the Life of the World’ — a Conversation with Krista Tippett

  • Interfaith America Interview

    Why I’m Launching a Podcast: “Interfaith America with Eboo Patel”  

Latest Articles

Dr. Anu Gorukanti (Photo: Katharine Khamhaengwong)
  • Faith & Civic Life

Indian, Hindu and AAPI: Finding Common Threads in a Rich Tapestry

Feb 03, 2023
Screenshot of "Art, Religion, and Academic Freedom: Lessons From the Hamline/Prophet Muhammad Controversy" webinar hosted by IA on January 31, 2023.
  • Higher Education

Art, Religion and Academic Freedom: Baptist News Global Reports on the Hamline University Conversation

Feb 03, 2023
Ibrahim Abdul-Matin (center) with his children. Photo courtesy
  • Faith & Civic Life

How “Dad Time” With My Sons Taught Us All an Important Lesson

Feb 02, 2023
The Venerable Guo Yuan, in orange, speaks to attendees at a Buddhist prayer ceremony on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023, outside Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, California. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina
  • Faith & Civic Life

A Solemn Buddhist Ceremony Offers Comfort, Healing at Site of Monterey Park Shooting

Feb 01, 2023
End of content
No more articles to load
Interfaith America, 141 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 3200, Chicago, IL 60604, US

© 2022 Interfaith America

Instagram Youtube Facebook Twitter
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use