Becoming Wise

Krista Tippett is the host of the podcast On Being and as such has the chance to interview hundreds of physicists, spiritual leaders, thinkers, activists and more on how they grapple with meaning in the world.

In Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, she narrows her focus on words, flesh, love, faith and hope and dips in and out of a wellspring of past interviews. She's a practiced interviewer playing host to some incredibly smart folks.

The language is dense and prescriptive and is made for thoughtful contemplation not the aggressive consumption of my usual fare. You simply can't chug through Rilke like you're reading Rowling. I found myself tripping over the flowery optimism of the language. Still, I appreciate the exploration of ideas like how love demands effort and we should fight against its cheapening by appending it to Fridays, ice cream and “these shoes!” How faith is just as important to the atheist, and that science and religion need not be mutually exclusive. It's just that when epiphanies are had on every page they tend to overlap and congeal diminishing their impact for me.