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Hope Is a Muscle, II

Wisdom Retreats > Hope Is a Muscle, II

Insights from science and social creativity — cosmic imagination and moral imagination and mystical imagination — frame this further exploration of the muscle of hope.

Session 1: On Accompaniment

episode

June 21, 2023

Moral Imagination

With Jacqueline Novogratz
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“Beneath the hard skills and firm strategic priorities needed to resolve our greatest challenges lies the soft, fertile ground of our shared humanity. In that place of hard and soft is sustenance enough to nourish the entire human family.”

Question to Live

Who has accompanied me in rising to my best self?

 

Integration Step

“Like flowers breaking through granite, I’m going to choose hope every time.”

 

Heart of the Matter

The invitation here is two-fold. First, to flex the moral imagination of your hope muscle. The questions we instinctively ask of “what to do?” in western culture are questions of what and when and how much. Those are the serious hard questions we value and act on. Moral imagination calls us to ask why, and to what human purpose? And also, how much is enough?

And the other calling here, the other invitation, is to get accompanied. Find others to walk alongside. Find others to walk alongside you. You don’t have to ask those questions alone or answer them alone or live them alone. In fact, if we try to do this transformation alone, it simply will not work. As Jacqueline says, these new ways of being, this new sensibility, has to be embedded within the structures themselves. This is a real shift, but taking it in really, truly, is a relief.

Something can be created where people can remain whole and can grow and face what goes wrong, as well as what goes right, but not be alone and not be depleted. Or, certainly, be depleted at times, but have that well of friendship and support and being surrounded that means that there will be replenishment all along the way.

 

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episode

June 20, 2023

Think Accompaniment

Guided by Krista
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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.
 
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episode

June 19, 2023

Towards a Moral Revolution

Jacqueline Novogratz with Krista Tippett
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An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Jacqueline and Krista.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a venture capital fund that serves some of the poorest people in the world. She’s also the author of the memoir The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World.

Find the whole produced show — and learn more about Jacqueline’s work and writing — here.

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Session 2: Power and Care

episode

June 21, 2023

“Yes, and ...” Thinking

With Ai-jen Poo
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“We are dealing with so much bad news, horrible news. And there is also so much beauty happening in the world right now and so many people who have shown up. … We have been living in a time of such scarcity and austerity and zero-sum. This is not what we were meant for as human beings.”

 

Question to LiveWhat is causing me to despair right now, and where am I finding hope?

 

Integration Step

What would you have to give up or soften in what feels habitual right now, to cultivate a “yes, and …” orientation? Ponder that. Practice what you discern.

 

Heart of the Matter

“We are dealing with so much bad news, horrible news. And there is also so much beauty happening in the world right now and so many people who have shown up. … We have been living in a time of such scarcity and austerity and zero-sum. This is not what we were meant for as human beings.”

 

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episode

June 20, 2023

Practice “yes, and…” Living

Guided by Krista
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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.

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episode

June 19, 2023

This Is Our (Caring) Revolution

Ai-jen Poo with Krista Tippett
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An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Ai-jen and Krista.

Ai-jen Poo is executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the co-director of Caring Across Generations. Her book is The Age of Dignity. Her podcast, co-hosted with Alicia Garza, is Sunstorm.

Find the whole produced show — and learn more about Ai-jen’s work and writing — here.

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Session 3: Cosmic Imagination

episode

June 21, 2023

An Astrophysicist on Now

With Mario Livio

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“We somehow always find new mysteries.”

Question to Live

Does Mario Livio’s wonder create spaciousness in my sense of the possible?

 

Integration Step

Take in the mystery and majesty of being alive now — cosmically speaking, scientifically seen — and feel how this can power a reality-based, worldly hope.

 

Heart of the Matter

It is so fascinating to think about what Mario Livio points out — that even as everything we’re discovering puts us into perspective, makes us smaller and smaller in the grand scheme of things, we are central to it all. Our minds become more important, because our minds expand even as science expands, whether we know it or not.

The invitation here is to let in a sense of the cosmic mystery and wonder of being alive right now and see how that transforms our sense of our very ordinary selves, how much space this realization opens up for imagination and possibility, and again, real transformation, not mere change.

 

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episode

June 20, 2023

Practice Radical Amazement

Guided by Krista, inspired by Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.

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episode

June 19, 2023

Mysteries of an Expanding Universe

Mario Livio with Krista Tippett
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An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Mario Livio and Krista.

Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. His books include Is God a Mathematician? and Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein — Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe.

Find the whole show — and learn more about his work and writing — here.

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Session 4: Cultural Evolution

episode

June 21, 2023

Our Species Moment

With Agustín Fuentes
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“The way in which people live their lives and commit themselves — how they believe, what they engage in — those things are critical in shaping the human niche. … Those are evolutionarily relevant processes.”

Question to LiveWhat assumptions about evolution and essential human nature am I walking around with?

 

Integration Step

Become a little less riveted by “critical mass.” Look for “critical yeast” — small groups of unlikely combinations of people in a new quality of relationship.

 

Heart of the Matter

This is such a wonderful and freeing thing to be able to take in every once in a while, as Rebecca Solnit paraphrases Foucault: “We know what we do. We know why we do it. But we don’t know what [what] we do does.” We control our intentions, to some extent. We control our behavior. But we don’t control what that sets off in the world.

The other piece of what she’s saying that feels so resonant to me for us now is this notion that the earthquake shakes you awake, and then the question to live — how do you stay awake? Here we are, in a pandemic generation. Everything that we thought we knew for sure, so much of that was upended. We were called to so many questions and to learn edifying and deepening things about ourselves and others and the world. How do we stay faithful to those questions and to that learning?

 

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episode

June 21, 2023

Be Critical Yeast

Guided by Krista and inspired by John Paul Lederach
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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.

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episode

June 20, 2023

The Ingredients of Social Courage

America Ferrera and John Paul Lederach with Krista Tippett
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An excerpt of Krista’s in-depth conversation with America and John Paul.

Earlier in this session, you heard from Agustín Fuentes. Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He’s authored or edited more than 20 books, most recently Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being.

Learn more about Agustín and find the whole produced show of Krista’s conversation here.

America Ferrera is an Emmy Award-winning actor and producer. She’s known for the movies Real Women Have Curves and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and for the TV series Ugly Betty. She also stars in and co-produces the current NBC series Superstore. She’s the co-founder of Harness, a grassroots organization for social healing.

John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In 2019 he won the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize.

Learn more about America, John Paul, and their work, and find the whole produced show here.

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Session 5: Hope In the Dark

episode

June 21, 2023

History Is Like the Weather

With Rebecca Solnit
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“Whenever I look around me, I wonder what old things are about to bear fruit, what seemingly solid institutions might soon rupture, and what seeds we might now be planting whose harvest will come at some unpredictable moment in the future.”

Question to Live

The earthquake has shaken me awake. How to stay awake?

 

Integration Step

Start to articulate the hopeful story of our time that you can see and tell from where you sit — that the world doesn’t yet know how to see and to tell.

 

Heart of the Matter

In another place in the conversation I had with Rebecca, she made that same case pointedly, in terms of how we don’t know what will happen or what the results will be of our own action. And this is such a wonderful and freeing thing to be able to take in every once in a while. You know, she said — she was quoting from Foucault, and she said this is not an exact quote. But here’s the thought: “We know what we do. We know why we do it. But we don’t know what [what] we do does.” We control our intentions, to some extent. We control our behavior. But we don’t control what that sets off in the world.

The other piece of what she’s saying that feels so resonant to me for us now is this notion that the earthquake shakes you awake, and then the question to live — how do you stay awake? Here we are, this now post-pandemic generation. Everything that we thought we knew for sure, so much of that was upended. We were called to so many questions and to learn edifying and deepening things about ourselves and others and the world. How do we stay faithful to those questions and to that learning?

I spent my 20s in divided Berlin, and the fall of Berlin’s wall in 1989 was utterly unimaginable, not just to me, not just to everyone I knew, but to everyone in that part of the world. The chancellor of West Germany was out of the country the day the Berlin Wall fell. And that experience that I had so directly, that there is always more to reality than we can see and more change possible than we can begin to imagine, this has formed me. I never expected in my lifetime to experience another turning like the one we’re in now, where the remaking of the world is truly upon us.

 

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episode

June 20, 2023

Stay Awake

Guided by Krista
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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.

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episode

June 19, 2023

Falling Together

Rebecca Solnit with Krista Tippett
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An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Rebecca and Krista.

Rebecca Solnit is a columnist at The Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub. Her many books include Hope in the Dark, A Paradise Built in Hell, and her most recent, Recollections of My Nonexistence.

Find the whole show — and learn more about her work and writing — here.

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Session 6: Bearing Witness

episode

June 21, 2023

Hope Is a Moral Choice

With Ariel Burger
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“‘Never let anyone be humiliated in your presence’ is a very powerful starting point because it means that you can’t be indifferent. You can’t be a bystander. You are implicated in what happens. And that’s really fundamentally the shift, I think, between being a spectator and being a witness.”

Question to LiveHow does the notion of hope as a moral choice settle in me?

 

Integration Step

“Never let anyone be humiliated in your presence.” Take that in. Carry it around. As you move through your day, notice when you default to being a spectator or a bystander. Commit to shift in some situation ahead to bearing witness instead.

 

Heart of the Matter

It is intriguing, this conjunction of hope and responsibility, and hope and moral choice, and hope as fuel for the long-term work of social repair. But also by this granular practice that Elie Wiesel taught and that was named here: “Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.” That is an instruction that you can mull over and carry around and practice. And it would shift something.

And the context of that invitation is the larger invitation to bear witness — to move from being a spectator or a bystander to being a witness. And of course, that would have external implications, but it is, again, also initially an internal reorientation.

There is a narrative of our time, a trajectory of our time, of goodness, of generativity. And this language of “witness,” of this kind of visible, courageous orientation, is a wonderful image and practice to think about how to mobilize that.

 

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episode

June 20, 2023

Move from Spectator to Witness

Guided by Krista
Download Transcript

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Listen daily until you move on to the next Wisdom Practice.

Journal with the ideas, the questions, and invitations raised. Pay attention to how these things surface in your thoughts, in your body, and in interactions and experiences as you move through your days.

Use the Question to Live and Integration Step as further prompts for practicing, and for journaling.

You’re building spiritual and moral muscle memory.

< Back to Retreat

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