On Being Blog

This is a evolving conversation thread in which we're weaving the thoughts and ideas of people who are engaging with us about the "Nones" who are the subject of so much discussion and media coverage nowadays. Add your two bits and help us flesh out this story.

What better way to follow up our show with President Barack Obama's first inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander, than to listen to the redemptive words of his second inaugural poet, Richard Blanco:

"One Today"
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn't give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

For a bit more about Mr. Blanco — the first Latino (Cuban-American) and openly gay man (and youngest poet) to read at an inauguration — I recommend watching his interview with Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour:

I do believe that this was Krista's (@kristatippett) most popular and most retweeted thought of the week:

How a person thinks is more interesting than what they know — and how they live the intersection between what they know and who they are.

And, I can think of no better follow-up to this sentiment than sharing this lovely message from Paul F. Tanghe, a 30-year-old officer in the Army who hails from the Minneapolis suburb of Edina:

"I have multiple overseas tours, and have lived all over the U.S. since graduating from West Point. I discovered your show last fall while returning home from Afghanistan and transitioning from the Army lifestyle to grad school, and it has been a profound source of challenge, growth, and hope for me. Thank you for what you do!"

Like most people, we — as producers and as a media project — are on a trajectory that is continually striving to live at this intersection. Whether it's good words like Mr. Tanghe's or critical feedback correcting us on our mistakes, we want you to know that we draw nourishment and sustenance from your ideas as we proceed forward and live as honestly as we can at this crossroads.

Hands down, our most reblogged photo-poem of the week was inspired by "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi." We paired this lyrical passage from "A Great Wagon" with our Instagrammed version of Leonardo Ferraguzzi's photo of a village in Emilia Romagna, Italy. There are few things more romantic, more perfect.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday was this week:

Is your heart right? Moving audio of MLK as a man at his most vulnerable + his most poignant as a preacher.

I'm 43 now, and the older I get the more I fully and deeply appreciate the the man and the legend. This sermon shortly before his death in 1968 gets me every time. You should listen.

Last week's conversation with Joan Halifax in Compassion's Edge States" generated some wonderful responses. We heard from Sean, a fireman and medic from DC, Stacey, an oncology nurse, Patricia, a woman grieving the loss of her husband of 40 years, and this response from Ed Brenegar:

"I agree the issue isn't compassion fatigue. Instead it is the disconnection that we have from the contexts of pain, suffering, grief, and death that others experience.

When we see images on television that move us to either compassion or sorrow, we are not doing so in the context where we are wholly given to a process where our feelings can have an outlet that brings some kind of resolution.

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, at the beginning of No Man Is An Island wrote, 'The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.'"

We shared a longer version of Merton's quotation on Tumblr. And Mr. Brenegar finishes with this thought:

"When we emotionally connect with global situations like Darfur or Newtown, there is a disconnection that can add to our own sense of sorrow.

It is important to remember that we are whole beings who need whole relationships, and the possibilities of mutuality to be present to be fully able to care. This is one of our great human challenges that I see."

With all the attention this week devoted to Lance Armstrong's confession and Manti Te'o's girlfriend hoax, these two young boys remind us of the goodness in sport and the power of family.

"If people could race with people that can't walk or talk or can have any kind of autism, it might open eyes of people that don't really care about it. And, maybe, the people that don't care in the past will care in the future and actually do it with somebody."

So good in so many ways.

This week we're producing next week's interview with Seth Godin, which spurred Krista to share this nugget:

In a post-industrial, post-geography world, "we are all artists now." Fun fun fun producing my Seth Godin interview for next week.

Kara Holden (@joydelightsnjoy), a screenwriter replied:

Sister Corita Kent said the same in the 60's, "Not all of us are painters but we are all artists...To create means to relate."

Of course, these interviews call us to profound places, but there is space for a silent chuckle and a tweet (@TrentGilliss) here and there:

Something I never thought I'd hear @KristaTippett say during an interview: "Let's talk about marketing."

How about this wonderful line from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables paired with Andreas Schreyer's photo:

"'The beautiful is as useful as the useful.' He added, after a moment's silence, 'perhaps more so.'"

Solomon Missouri (@solomonmissouri), an A.M.E. minister, made a recommendation that has been gnawing at us this past year:

On Being needs an app, @kristatippett. Love the show.

Wouldn't you know it, we've got something in the works as Krista intimates:

Don't we know it. Long story but the good news is it's coming soon. Stay tuned.

Two parting thoughts to send you into this glorious weekend. The first one by way of Krista:

All this journalistic analysis around the "Nones" as the demise of religion. But so many of them are ethically and spiritually passionate.

The new non-religious represent the evolution of faith, not its demise. They will restore the great traditions to their own deepest truths.

What's your take on this? Drop us a line on our website, via Facebook or Twitter (@beingtweets, @KristaTippett, @TrentGilliss).

And, finally, on a somewhat elegiac and hopeful note, these words from author and poet Mary Karr:

"Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others."

Have a great weekend and hope you enjoy the show!

There must be something in the Spanish water. Queuing up in any office can be a dreary experience, much less waiting in the unemployment line in Madrid. A small group of musicians and singers inject a bit of sunshine into the cold fluorescence with an organized flash mob performing The Beatles classic "Here Comes the Sun."

The soloist is marvelous, and this just may be the best way to kick off this hump day.