On Being Podcasts

"The big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be, and somewhere, to love reality and then discover that God is present."

Jean Vanier is a French Canadian philosopher and Roman Catholic social innovator who founded the L'Arche movement, a community centered around people with mental disabilities. He’s devoted his life to the practical application of Christianity’s most basic and paradoxical teachings — that there’s power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence:

    "It’s the realization of how to create a culture which is no longer a culture just of competition, but a culture of welcoming, where tenderness, where touch is important, and it's neither sexualized nor aggressive. It has become human. And I think that this is what people with disabilities are teaching us. It's something about what it means to be human and to relate and to celebrate life together."

A rare opportunity to sit down with a man who some consider to be a living saint.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/wisdom-tenderness/234


Jean Vanier — The Wisdom of Tenderness: Lived Compassion, L'Arche, and Becoming Human (Aug 22, 2013)

http://www.onbeing.org/program/on-exoplanets-and-love/5029

For Natalie Batalha of NASA's Kepler Mission, it's just a matter of time before we look at the sky and know of planets where life exists. And that, she says, will transform our sense of ourselves:

    "When you look up at the sky on a very dark night at those stars or that crescent moon or whatever it is, what do you feel? You feel wonder, of course. You feel humility. But I think you also feel lonely, small, insignificant. There's a profound sense of loneliness, or just the universe is so big and I'm so small. But imagine in the near-term future, your grandchild or your great-grandchild looks up in the sky and his mother can point to a star and say, that star right there? That star has a planet just like Earth, and it harbors life. That's a different perspective. That's completely different when we can look up in the sky and know that. It's a game-changer."

A luminous voice of how we explore the heavens now — bringing the exuberance of science closer to home to us all.

    "We are extending our senses out into the cosmos in a very real, tangible way, and that makes it so much easier to capture our imagination, to inspire us. Through the Curiosity Rover, we are standing there in our hiking boots on the surface of Mars. Man, I can practically hear the crunching of the dirt underneath my feet. It feels like I could bend down and pick up a rock and toss it over that hill over there, you know? So in a very real way, these experiments are extending our senses out into the cosmos."

Natalie Batalha — Exoplanets and Love: Science That Connects Us to One Another (Aug 29, 2013)

http://www.onbeing.org/program/indigo-girls-on-music-and-finding-god-in-church-and-smoky-bars/6008

Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — the Indigo Girls — on finding God in church and in smoky bars. And on music as a continuum of human existence.

Indigo Girls — Music and Finding God In Church and Smoky Bars

The people we later recognize as prophets, says Walter Brueggemann, are also poets who reframe what is at stake in chaotic times. A special voice addressing our changing lives and the deepest meaning of hope this season.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/prophetic-imagination-walter-brueggemann/475

Walter Brueggemann — The Prophetic Imagination (Dec 19, 2013)

New Testament writings about Jews may sound inflammatory in modern ears. A New Testament scholar with ties to both Judaism and Christianity helps us put these writings in context and look for meaning in the Passion that Hollywood and popular culture can't convey. 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/jewish-roots-christian-story/205

Joel Marcus — The Jewish Roots of the Christian Story

The idea of human cloning both fascinates and repulses many, and challenges us to ask difficult religious questions? 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/theological-perspective-cloning/59

Laurie Zoloth — A Theological Perspective on Cloning

During the past decade, there has been an explosion of films and television programs containing religious and spiritual themes. Mel Gibson's The "Passion of the Christ" was only the tip of the iceberg. As new generations of Americans work out their spiritual and religious questions, they are increasingly turning to fantasy. We'll explore the deeper appeal of films like "Harry Potter" and "The Matrix," and we'll ask how fantasy in media reflects a changing spiritual imagination, especially in younger Americans. 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/return-mystery-religion-fantasy-and-entertainment/57

Phyllis Tickle + Lynn Clark — A Return To Mystery: Religion, Fantasy + Entertainment (Feb 3, 2005)

In the coinciding seasons of Passover and Easter, two world religions celebrate their core stories in ritual and worship. Each of these sacred holidays is based on a key biblical story of suffering and deliverance.

The Christian Holy Week commemorates the death of Jesus leading to the Easter celebration of resurrection. In eight days of Passover, Jews remember and reenact the exodus story.

What can ancient narratives of violence and miracle have to say to contemporary audiences? Host Krista Tippett explores faithful ways of living with these stories and giving them modern sense with featured readings from the Bible, words of a 14th century mystic, and poetry from Wendell Berry.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/program-passover-and-easter/56

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Richard Hays, and Linda Loving — Passover and Easter (Apr 8, 2004)

Christian scripture and tradition have overwhelmingly shaped American attitudes toward sexuality. And in the past year, our national attention has been riveted on sexual scandal within the Catholic Church. In this program, we crack open the difficult subject of Christian tradition and healthy sexuality. What is the positive sexual ethic of the Bible, beyond the identification of sin? What does sexuality have to do with the human spirit and how might this change they way it is discussed in communities of faith?  

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/spirituality-and-sexuality/177

Thomas Moore, Debra Haffner, and Anthony Ugolnik — Spirituality and Sexuality (Jun 27, 2003)

In this program, we delve into uncomfortable religious and moral questions that the September 2001 terrorist attacks raised—questions of meaning that Americans have only begun to ponder one year later.

This hour also features the riveting first-person account of veteran public radio producer Marge Ostroushko, who captures elements of the religious life that grew up at and around Ground Zero and was largely hidden from news reporting. Her coverage, which you won't hear anywhere else, includes the ash-swirled final service, and an interview with the priest who coordinated the 24-hour team of clergy who blessed every human remain found there since 9/11.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/spiritual-fallout-911/228

Parker Palmer, Phyllis Tickle, Ingrid Mattson + others — The Spiritual Fallout of 9/11 (Sep 5 2002)

On Being has worked with Cambridge University Library to present a narrated tour of Darwin's private notebooks and hand sketches with one of the few scholars who knows it best, David Kohn. You can zoom in tight on high-resolution images, listen to a scholar tell you more about why Darwin was writing the selected passages, and read the transcript of Darwin's cryptic handwriting!

David Kohn — Darwin's 1835 Essay on Births and Deaths of Species

The discoveries which the physicist Brian Greene spends his life pondering lead to a thrilling, mind-bending view of the cosmos, and of the human adventure of modern science. Think of the certainties many of us grew up learning in school - now overtaken by the constant reimagining of the cosmos that is modern physics. The word “space” to describe what we now understand as a sphere teeming with mysterious energy and matter. In our lifetime the science fiction scenario of parallel universes has become a compelling mathematical possibility. Brian Greene works on this frontier, and he increasingly believes that the deepest realities are hidden from human senses and defy our best intuition.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/brian-greene-on-reimagining-the-cosmos/6118

Brian Greene — Reimagining the Cosmos

The philosopher Simone Weil defined prayer as “absolutely unmixed attention.” The artist and self-described maker Ann Hamilton embodies this notion in her sweeping works of art that bring all the senses together. She uses her hands to create installations that are both visually astounding and surprisingly intimate, and meet a longing many of us share, as she puts it, to be alone together. 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/ann-hamilton-making-and-the-spaces-we-share/6147

Ann Hamilton — Making, and the Spaces we Share (Feb 13, 2014)

Sister Simone Campbell Workshop at the Bonhoeffer House

Art, life, and religious faith converge in Paul Elie's unusual biography of the intersecting stories of four literary Americans of the 20th century: Trappist monk Thomas Merton, social activist Dorothy Day, and fiction writers Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. "Certain books, certain writers," Elie says, "reach us at the center of ourselves." 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/faith-fired-literature/99

Paul Elie — Faith Fired by Literature (Feb 20, 2014)

Dr. Sherwin Nuland died this week at the age of 83. He became well-known for his first book, How We Die, which won the National Book Award. For him, pondering death was a way of wondering at life — and the infinite variety of processes that maintain human life moment to moment. He reflects on the meaning of life by way of scrupulous and elegant detail about human physiology.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/biology-spirit/184

About the image: Zoe Middleton poses behind an artwork entitled 'My Soul' by Katharine Dawson, which consists of a laser etched lead chrystal glass formation in the shape of a brain, and was created using the artists own MRI Scan, from an exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in London. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

Sherwin Nuland — The Biology of the Spirit (Mar 6, 2014)

Brian McLaren is an influential voice in the worlds of progressive Evangelicalism and what has been called “emerging” Christianity. In a provocative conversation on the meaning and future of Church, he envisions a community where diversity no longer means division.

See more at http://www.onbeing.org/program/brian-mclaren-the-equation-of-change/6175

Brian McLaren — The Equation of Change (Mar 13, 2014)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose life spanned the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany, offers us a model of personal morality and conscience in the most troubled and immoral of times. His resistance of Nazi ideology, while much of the German church succumbed, is a testament to his moral vision and faith. Krista speaks with producer Martin Doblmeier, whose 2003 documentary chronicled Bonhoeffer's life and thought, about the legacy of this unusual theologian. 

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/ethics-and-will-god-legacy-dietrich-bonhoeffer/91#sthash.hBqiHiAB.dpuf

Martin Doblmeier — Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb 2, 2006)

We make a radio pilgrimage into the world of L'Arche, communities formed around people with mental disabilities and others who share life with them. At the heart of the L'Arche movement is a religious idea of difference as normal and imperfection as a source of strength.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/larche-community-brokenness-and-beauty/116

Jo Anne Horstmann — L'Arche: A Community of Brokenness and Beauty (Aug 2, 2007)

A Jesuit priest famous for his gang intervention programs in Los Angeles, Fr. Greg Boyle makes winsome connections between service and delight, and compassion and awe. He heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship. The point of Christian service, as he lives it, is about “our common calling to delight in one another.”  Go to our show page here: http://www.onbeing.org/program/father-greg-boyle-on-the-calling-of-delight/5053

On Being Podcasts

Justin Winzenburg