To be alive spiritually is to feel the ultimate anxiety of existence within the trivial anxieties of everyday life.
Selected Readings
Selected Readings
In this moving personal essay, Mr. Wiman traces three events in his life — "each shattering in his own way" — how his Christian faith and existential anxiety have shaped his imagination.
An essay to wake you up. Wiman tells the tense story of growing up in West Texas and his friend's hunting accident, which might've been his own. He writes about about faith with an intellectual edge and dry tone that is anything but dull.
Read The New Yorker article on brainstorming that Rex Jung and Krista discussed in the show, which includes discussion of MIT's Building 20.
In this speech, given as part of a workshop for Stuttering Foundation, Rabinowitz talks about his life with a stutter and the unexpected gift it became in his life.
"That's a tough spirituality. That's not any kind of sweet-by-and-by spirituality. That's a spirituality that takes on the world as it is and says, "I'm gonna figure this out one way or another." The mystic and the Moses."
Harding suggests in this essay that the dream is never finished but endlessly unfolding. He suggests that America's most important possibility for the world is not to dominate, threaten, or compete with, but to help each other in a search for common ground. He suggests that when we simply attempt to replicate our free-market materialism, we miss our most vital connections. From this, he opens the possibility that a new conversation may begin — one that might initiate a deeper journey concerning the possibilities of human community across all geographical lines.
Ms. Alexander cites this classic essay that says that poetry "forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action."
Joan Halifax speaks about the challenge of caregivers who care for those who are seriously ill. Learn about basic research in neuroscience and psychology on mindfulness, compassion, and the effects of stress on the body.
Kate Braestrup's chaplaincy includes both service to the game wardens of Maine's parks and forests and to the victims and families of search-and-rescue missions. In this excerpt from her memoir, Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup reflects on her relationship to the game wardens she works closely with, and how ministry with them ranges from responding to their emotional needs following critical incidents to simply being a companion in their daily work.
