Wisdom Retreats > Hope Is a Muscle, III
We walk alongside and practice with a circle of extraordinary, magnificent lives who embody hope: the late civil rights visionary Vincent Harding, the primatologist Jane Goodall, poet laureate Joy Harjo, Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy, spiritual teacher Br. David Steindl-Rast — all of them wise elders. And the exuberant distinctly not-elder poet Jericho Brown taking us out with a call to be social creatives, whoever we are, wherever we live.
“They said to me, ‘Uncle Vincent, why do you love us so?’ And what I saw was that they had this great capacity to know that they were being loved, to feel it in their being … They had power and responsibility to do something for their community that had not been done for them.”
| Question to LiveCan we build a beloved community? Why don’t we try? |
| Integration Step
Can we build a beloved community? Interrogate what stands in the way of throwing your life at a wholehearted yes. |
| Heart of the Matter
At the worst of times, Vincent Harding reminds us, there are these pockets of hope operating all over the place, but somewhat separately from each other. That is an important and instructive analysis of this generative narrative of our time, which is real but not connected up, and so doesn’t always experience itself and isn’t always visible from the outside as a coherent landscape. And there is Vincent’s insistence that the only question big enough to live into is, can we build a beloved community, a beloved nation? Why don’t we try, as he says? The invitation here is to say yes. If Vincent Harding says this America is possible, we must say yes and throw our lives behind that yes. It’s so critical, too, to take in this observation or this underlying assumption that runs through Vincent’s vision, that stitching the generative narrative together — making it cohere as a visible, viable reality — includes stitching the generations together. Because the work ahead must be generational in scope, we must accompany each other across the span of our life experiences, our wisdoms, and our energies. I’m so aware, listening to this now again, of how prescient Vincent was when he resists the question of whether we are seeing places of hope versus places of no hope. He says, no, we have places that are operating out of uncertainty. And uncertainty can steal the ground from hope. It can send people into their fearful impulses, the fear places in our brains and bodies. He was prescient when he talked about the crisis of whiteness, which is now so much more vividly upon us. |
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
< Back to Retreat
An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Vincent Harding and Krista.
Vincent Harding was chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He authored the magnificent book Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement, and the essay “Is America Possible?” He died in 2014.
Find the whole show — and learn more about his work and writing — here.
“My very favorite individual tree has to be Beech, in my garden. And When Beech began to grow — over 100 years ago, actually — it was from a pretty tiny seed. And if I had picked it up at that time, it would’ve seemed so small and weak, a little growing shoot and a few little roots. And yet, there is what I call magic.”
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Question to Live
Who am I, and why am I here? |
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Integration Step
Practice curiosity, starting with the simplest of things. Feel the expansion in your imagination and your body. |
| Heart of the Matter
From her earliest life, Jane Goodall likes to tell this story about how she was driven by curiosity. And in fact, one of her earliest memories, and one of the earliest memories of all the adults around her, is when she disappeared because she had hidden in the hen coop to understand how chickens lay eggs, because nobody had been able to explain it to her. It’s also interesting, in other parts of her story, how she retained her core value of curiosity even in the face of what she abhorred and felt she needed to fight, even in herself, as much as in others. Jane Goodall brings home so much that we’re actually learning — again, on our scientific frontiers — about the power of the muscle of curiosity. Where experiences and responses like fear and anxiety tighten us up and close us off and shut us down, curiosity literally expands us, physically and emotionally, and it expands what becomes possible. |
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.
An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Jane Goodall and Krista.
Jane Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and its youth program, Roots & Shoots. She has been the subject of many films and documentaries, including “Jane Goodall: The Hope.” Her books include In the Shadow of Man and Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.
Find the whole show — and learn more about her work and writing — here.
“Just like you wouldn’t use a certain kind of meter to measure electricity that doesn’t measure electricity, there’s another kind of perspective that you bring to understand or even move within” — the whole of time — “that would give you that perspective.”
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Question to Live
How do I experience, even personify, time in my body and in my imagination? |
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Integration Step
A thought (and spirit) experiment: receive and settle in Joy Harjo’s trust that time and space are on the side of deep justice and human flourishing. |
| Heart of the Matter
Consider, as Joy does, our children as the “rudder of hope” — and that insistence that all children are our children. There are many invitations here. One of them is to get less literal, less Newtonian; which is to say, to more completely enter the reality of time and space, to claim a hope muscular enough to meet them as they are and to, as Joy said, fly a little in our perspective — to believe and to insist and to live as if time and space are on the side of deep justice and human flourishing, in which we all become more whole. |
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
An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Joy Harjo and Krista.
Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including An American Sunrise and She Had Some Horses, and a memoir, Crazy Brave. She has also produced several award-winning music albums, including her most recent, I Pray for My Enemies. Her new memoir, coming out in September 2021, is called Poet Warrior.
Find the whole show — and learn more about Joy’s work — here.
“You’re always asked to stretch a little bit more. And actually, we’re made for that. In any case, there’s absolutely no excuse for making our passionate love for the world dependent on what we think of its degree of health … This moment, you’re alive.”
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Question to Live
Can I stretch towards the love for the world on the other side of my grief? |
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Integration Step
Carry Rilke’s words with you like a friend: “Move back and forth into the change.” |
| Heart of the Matter
That dance with despair, as Joanna describes. The way pain turns if we actually look at it, take it in our hands, be with it, and keep breathing. This analysis of grief is reminiscent of an idea in Christian theology that is about the move from grieving to mourning to lamenting. The invitation here is to cultivate that move inside ourselves and, for the sake of the world, to stand reverently with our grief, to let it turn to mourning and lament and something that brings us more deeply into our love. A muscular hope may not be possible without the capacity to make that move. And it is something we can and must practice. |
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
An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Joanna Macy and Krista.
Joanna Macy is an activist, an author, and a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Her 13 books include translations of Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, A Year with Rilke, and In Praise of Mortality. She is the root teacher of Work That Reconnects, a framework and workshop for personal and social change. Her new translation, together with Anita Barrows, of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet came out in 2020.
Find the whole show — and learn more about Joanna’s work and writing — here.
“We have this experience of belonging, once in a while, out of the blue … Every human being has this. But what we call the great mystics, they let this experience determine and shape every moment of their lives.”
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Question to Live
What am I grateful for in this moment? |
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Integration Step
Stop. Behold. Go. |
| Heart of the Matter
The invitation here is to be grateful — not for everything, but in every moment. What does that take, and what does it change? Brother David also has such interesting ways to talk about what “spirituality” really means. He points out that spirituality comes from “spiritus,” and that means “life, breath, aliveness.” Spirituality is aliveness on all levels. It starts with our bodily aliveness; also means aliveness to interrelationships, aliveness to mystery. Science, Brother David says, has discovered that when people are grateful, they come alive, and you can actually talk about that in terms of measurable outcomes of well-being. What a time to be alive. |
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
An excerpt from Br. David’s in-depth On Being conversation with Krista.
David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk and a beloved teacher and author on the subject of gratitude. He’s the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. His books include Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness, A Listening Heart, and an autobiography, i am through you so i.
Find the full show — and learn more about his life, work and books — here.
“Hope is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it.”
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Question to Live
In what granular way could I more vividly live as I would like to see a life? |
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Integration Step
As you move through your days, try on calling yourself a social creative, a social artist, even if only to yourself. |
| Heart of the Matter
Few others teach about hope — and radiate it — like Jericho Brown, our final voice in this course. And there are so many invitations here. One of them is to deploy your imagination — to live as one would want to see a life. Walk around with that. That is a thrilling idea, challenging in practice — like hope, worth throwing one’s life at. And try on that language of being a culture worker — that we are each of us culture workers; that we are steeped in culture, touching it, and it is touching us at all times. Take in the language that flows from that and from Jericho Brown — of thinking of yourself as a social creative, a social artist — even if only to yourself, quietly. See what that shifts as you walk through the world. These are such wonderful charges. They are a sending forth from Jericho, as we also step out of this course. |
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
An excerpt from the in-depth On Being conversation between Jericho Brown and Krista.
Jericho Brown is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry are The New Testament, Please, and The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.
Find the whole show — and learn more about Jericho’s work and writing — here.
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