Public theology is about the virtues that accompany the work of theology, not just the ideas. It means connecting grand religious ideas with messy human reality. It means articulating religious and spiritual points of view to challenge and deepen thinking on every side of every important question.

This project is about exploring a new generation of public theology for this century. We inhabit a world in which spiritual life is a fluid and dispersed, multi-faceted, and multiply articulated thing. Seekers and thinkers outside the bounds of religious tradition — scientists and artists, social entrepreneurs and poets — are illuminating the ancient questions of what it means to be human and who we are to each other. And the non-religious among us are some of the most passionate voices calling tradition to its own service-oriented heart.

Public Theology Reimagined

All Wounds is the final lead track from Anne Garner's upcoming album Dear Unknown, It follows singles Alma and Dust Devil, both of which have already enjoyed BBC and worldwide radio airplay. All Wounds is an emotionally intense torch-song, a bitter-sweet love-letter to survival and healing, and a quintessential example of Anne's honest and inspirational vocal and lyrical stance.

https://slowcraft.bandcamp.com/album/dear-unknown
linktr.ee/slowcraft
annegarner.com
slowcraft.info

Dear Unknown

All Wounds

Here you can listen to Derek Walcott's poem recited by Kabat-Zinn, saying a prose statement was "bound to be inadequate" in communicating his point.

Read the full poem at http://www.onbeing.org/program/opening-our-lives/138

"Love After Love" by Derek Walcott (Read by Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Wendell Berry reads a collection of his poems, included in the show "The Poetry of Creatures." 

How we see the world is how we value it, says Ellen Davis. And poetry is a way to rediscover the lost art of being creatures. An hour of learning and slowing down, with the "Mad Farmer" poems of Wendell Berry and a new way to take in the "poetry" of Genesis.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/ellen-davis-and-wendell-berry-the-poetry-of-creatures/117

"How To Be A Poet" by Wendell Berry

Background, context, and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/28/keeping-quiet-sylvia-boorstein-reads-pablo-neruda

Excerpted from https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/what-we-nurture-with-sylvia

MORE / POEM TEXT

Sylvia Boorstein reads "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda

In this recorded retreat, Pema Chödrön shares teachings inspired by the book Smile at Fear, which was written by her teacher Chogyam Trungpa. We all have fears, but when we look closely at them, we discover that behind each fear resides a basic fear of ourselves. We're afraid to look at our habitual styles of thinking and behaving because we might not always like what we see. Ironically it is this fear of honest self-reflection that keeps us trapped in patterns of stress and discontentment. Here is a vision for moving beyond this most basic fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and joy that reside at the core of our being. The full program can be downloaded at BetterListen.com www.betterlisten.com/products/smile…h-pema-chodron

shambhalabuddhismcompassionmindfulnesskindnessPema ChodronChogyam Trungpa


Smile At Fear with Pema Chodron Part 3 (Preview)

A woman distraught that her identity has been stolen questions the thought ‘The thief is unkind to me.’ Byron Katie guides her through inquiry to see how this thought affects many aspects of her well-being. When considering a turnaround to her original thought, the woman notices how unraveled she becomes when there is any stress in her life. ‘No,’ she exclaims, ‘I was not panicked by the thief—I was panicked by my thinking.’ ’When we really contemplate the judgments we make, we can see how they cost us our wisdom and our peace.’ Excerpt from a benefit event at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. For more information, visit thework.com.

Identity Theft and Kindness—The Work of Byron Katie

The final moments of an hour-long piano improvisation in Port Meadow, Oxford. Released for #PianoDay 2016. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1CVLS0-ZYI&feature=youtu.be 

Duck

Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poem "Kindness" on the On Being episode "Naomi Shihab Nye — Your Life is a Poem.” Find more at www.onbeing.org/program/naomi-shihab-nye-your-life-is-a-poem/8720

On Being with Krista Tippett

"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

“In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” A mystic, a 20th-century religious intellectual, a social change agent, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., famously saying afterwards that he felt his legs were praying. Heschel’s poetic theological writings are still read and widely studied today. His faith was as much about “radical amazement” as it was about certainty. And he embodied the passionate social engagement of the prophets, drawing on wisdom at once provocative and nourishing.

Arnold Eisen — The Opposite of Good Is Indifference

It’s easy to despair at all the bad news and horrific pictures that come at us daily. But Roshi Joan Halifax says this is a form of empathy that works against us. There’s such a thing as pathological altruism. This zen abbot and medical anthropologist has nourishing wisdom as we face suffering in the world.

Joan Halifax — Buoyancy Rather Than Burnout in Our Lives

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.”

On Being with Krista Tippett 

Greg Boyle — The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship

The wise and lyrical writer Adam Gopnik muses on the ironies of spiritual life in a secular age through the lens of his many fascinations — from parenting, to the arts, to Darwin. He touches on all these things in a conversation inspired by his foreword to "The Good Book," in which novelists, essayists, and activists who are not known as religious thinkers write about their favorite biblical passages. Our ancestors acknowledged doubt while practicing faith, he says; we moderns are drawn to faith while practicing doubt.

Adam Gopnik — Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” Mary Karr has a captivating ability to give voice to what is funny in life’s most heartbreaking moments. She is beloved for her salty memoirs in which she traces her harrowing childhood in southeast Texas — with a mother who once tried to kill her with a butcher’s knife and her own adult struggles with alcoholism and breakdown. Mary Karr embodies this wryness and wildness in her lesser-known spiritual practice as a devout Catholic — an unexpected move she made in mid-life.

Mary Karr — Astonished by the Human Comedy

"Everlasting" - a poem by David Whyte, from his new book of poetry, "The Bell and The Blackbird."

The Bell and The Blackbird

Everlasting - DavidWhyte

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Ó Tuama and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. Over cups of tea and the experience of bringing people together, he says it becomes possible to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the community leader of Corrymeela, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. He finishes his five-year term in 2019. His books include a prayer book, “Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community,” a book of poetry, “Sorry for Your Troubles,” and a memoir, “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Pádraig Ó Tuama — Belonging Creates and Undoes Us

In this episode, questioners ask if expressing emotions is a good spiritual practice; if there are positive aspects of the separate self; who is the self that seeks happiness; and whether identification with the ‘I’ of experience is actually a subtle layer of the separate self. These dialogues are taken from Rupert Spira’s November 2019 weekend in Copenhagen, Sharing Our Being,and December 2019 retreat in Wales, Being Myself. For audio and video recordings of the full retreats and the entire library of Rupert Spira’s recordings and publications, as well as information about attending live and streamed events, please visit rupertspira.com. The perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions – Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Sufism, Taoism and Zen, among others – allows us to investigate the essential nature of our experience. In the simple knowing of our own being, we discover the source of the peace and happiness for which all people long above all else. &nbsp;

Episode 7: Conversations Exploring the Concept of the Separate Self

Groundbreaking Peabody Award-winning conversation about the big questions of meaning, hosted by Krista Tippett. Every Thursday a new discovery about the immensity of our lives — and frequent special features like poetry, music and Q + A with Krista.

Arnold Eisen — The Opposite of Good Is Indifference

On Being Studios

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