In 1838, when he was thirty-five years old, Ralph Waldo Emerson was invited to give a lecture to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College. He began his lecture by telling his audience what a thrill it was to be there. “I have reached the middle age of man; yet I believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of scholars, than when a boy, I first saw the graduates of my own college assembled at their anniversary.” I know the emotion of which Emerson speaks. Recently I had a wonderful opportunity to meet and share time with a person who has become well-known in the area of thought, meaning, ideas, religion. Krista Tippett hosts the National Public Radio program, Speaking of Faith (and has recently published a book by the same title). She gave a speech at the College of St. Scholastica on Sunday May 20, reading from her book and reflecting on it. The next morning I had the unique privilege of being in a small group of about fifteen people who met with Ms. Tippett at Temple Israel here in Duluth. We had conversation together for two hours! What a delight to be able to share such time with someone who has interviewed Martin Marty, Miroslav Volf, Reinhold Niebuhr’s daughter Elizabeth Sifton, Joan Chittister, Karen Armstrong, Elie Wiesel, and many others.

I picked up a copy of Ms. Tippett’s book, and even got her to sign it. I look forward to reading it sometime soon. However, in her lecture and our conversation, I was drawn to a few wonderful passages that are worth sharing. In one section of her book she contrasts “thin religion” and “thick religion.” “Thin religion lends itself to crisis and violence that make the news…. The complexity, paradox, and gentleness of thick, lived religion can elude the calculus of politics and journalism. But I’m out to investigate thick religion. I’m out to expose virtue.”

In “exposing virtue,” she confronts the problem of language. “Words that connote religious virtue and morality in our culture are freighted by partisan overuse and popular cliché. Love is so watered down as to be practically unusable. Peace smacks of unreality and justice of vengeance and humility of ineffectuality. Compassion sounds noble but obscure and possibly naïve…. Virtue and morality are intriguing and thrilling when seen at work in all their complexity. Kindness – an everyday by-product of all great virtues – is at once the simplest and most weighty discipline human beings can practice. But it is the stuff of moments. It cannot be captured in declarative sentences or conveyed by factual account. It can only be found by looking attentively at ordinary, unsung, endlessly redemptive experience.” It seems to me that living out the rich complexity inadequately connoted by such words as compassion, love, justice, humility and kindness, and also paying attention to ordinary, “endlessly redemptive” experiences is what spiritual disciplines in religious traditions are all about at their best. I think it is what is at the heart of living the Christian faith.

Humility is a word that we struggle with in our culture, and Krista Tippett does an exceptional job of helping to redeem the concept. “From the beginning of my life of listening, I have observed fierce humility as a quality in the lives of people I admire. But deep spiritual humility defies the connotations of self-debasement, of ineffective meekness, that our culture assigns to the word humility and that I too imagined until I dug into the sacred text, lived with my children, and embarked on this odyssey of conversation…. The humility of a child, moving through the world discovering everything new, is closely linked with delight. This original spiritual humility is not about debasing oneself; it is about approaching everything new and other with a sense of curiosity and wonder.” That reminds me of words I read a few years ago in Patrick Henry’s The Ironic Christian’s Companion. “Once upon a time the term Christian meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around.” As I look in the “thank you section of Henry’s book, I find he thanks one “Krista Weedman Tippett”!

What has happened to Krista Tippett since she began engaging in these lively conversations with others? Here are the final words of her book. “Now my head is full of many voices, elegant, wise, strange, full of dignity and grief and hope and grace. Together we find illuminating and edifying words and send them out to embolden work of clarifying, of healing. We speak because we have questions, not just answers, and our questions cleanse our answers and enliven our world.”

Hearing these words, and reading them again made me appreciate the time I had to listen, with others, to Krista Tippett. These encounters taught me again the inestimable value of intelligent, humane conversation about deep matters of human existence – faith, love, suffering, kindness, hope, thick religion; thoughtful conversation deeply felt. How tragic that in our day of multitudes of media, of words flying through the air in every direction to be picked up by ear, eye, i pod, computer, satellite, television, radio, such conversation is all too rare. What a joy and privilege to be present with one of its skillful practitioners.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David