00:03:06.640So I want to put a few things you've said back in front of you and let you expand a little bit.
00:03:11.980The first is, we are among the first peoples in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given, a matter of kin and tribe, like hair color and hometown.0.77
00:03:25.120And I'm reading everywhere I look about religious nuns, N-O-N-E's, and I wondered if you are particularly worried about the secularization.0.94
00:03:40.200I mean, I'm not worried about secularization.
00:03:44.880I think that, you know, that what I described, the loosening of certain kinds of identities, that's really about how society functioned for such a long time.
00:03:54.440And we are in a new generation in every way.
00:03:57.940I mean, none of the institutions and none of the kind of given forms of belonging that were in that century, you know, in the world I was born into, that's all in flux.
00:04:08.560And that's, I think that's just change and evolution.
00:04:14.160What I, what I'm looking for is there are things that our religious traditions and religious communities have carried forward in time that I think we need.
00:04:29.800Like, and, you know, pieces of intelligence, like that we need ritual.
00:04:36.740the notion of the sacred, how to stand before that, how to honor it, kind of cultivating
00:04:42.460experiences of the sacred and of awe. And everything I just said, there's a lot of
00:04:49.52021st century science about how we need those things. You know, how music and poetry and the
00:04:56.120arts have just been organic, you know, and depending on your tradition, you know, calligraphy,
00:05:01.020architecture, right? So that was all integrated with the search for meaning. And all of those
00:05:08.960things still exist in places, but there was an integration of it. So what I see happening is that
00:05:16.400a lot of those things are getting rediscovered and picked up. And I think what's going away
00:05:23.060completely is the form, the container. Maybe not completely, but there's a loosening of these
00:05:32.860forms, these containers that we thought of what it means to be religious and have a religious
00:05:36.780identity. I would say if I'm worried about something, it's where does moral formation
00:05:43.760come from now? How do we cultivate moral imagination? And the truth is that in that
00:05:50.820world of the last, you know, I mean, there's been religious identity in every culture,
00:05:56.780but in, let's say in American culture of what, in European culture for the last few
00:06:01.460hundred years, those forms of religious identity, it's not that that moral formation was necessarily
00:06:06.160deep or great, or it wasn't always healthy and it was sometimes destructive, but people
00:06:11.340had an experience of moral formation, which also meant there were things you could reject.
00:06:14.980But you got taught, you know, certain kinds of questions and certain ways of questioning got lodged in your body.
00:06:23.740And I do think that in this century with our challenges, we have a need of robust moral imagination as, you know, as much as any generation.
00:07:17.240It's like, well, I love this influencer and I love this podcast.
00:07:21.140I love running and I love Taylor Swift.
00:07:26.020And somehow it has maybe some component pieces of calm, of reflection, of celebration, of joy, of using your body, being in nature, being in beautiful, inspiring places that might make you think a more elevated thought.
00:08:09.020And we really, we are truly in this moment where it's just broken open.
00:08:14.060I really believe that new forms, I mean, I see new forms rising up, but I think we're just at the beginning of what that will look like.
00:08:21.660You know, it's interesting in this series, we had Rainn Wilson, who in his new book has proposed like he went through the thought experiment of proposing a new religion that would have these 10 facets of all great religions as he defines them, and then 10 additional facets that he would add to them.
00:08:40.780Have you or your listeners or the folks that I'm being ever considered like a massive project where people go through the analysis and introspection to come to, to like backwards design a religion that would truly make sense to them?
00:09:00.020You know, I kind of come at this all from a different direction because I have a real reverence for the depths of the traditions.
00:09:09.260That's not necessarily what we know best.
00:11:27.520And he said, there's no evidence in this essay that you are aware that this conversation about this play has been going on before you approached it.
00:11:40.060You haven't done the work to understand what the full conversation that has played out before you discovered these words is.
00:11:52.660And part of the joy, I think, of reading deeply, of being like a professional reader, of being an analytical reader, a trained reader, is building this habit where you're like, God, I wonder what they said about this in Victorian.
00:12:07.140I wonder what they said about this in the South.
00:12:09.780I wonder what a feminist would say about this.
00:12:11.740I wonder what a Marxist would say.0.65
00:12:16.780And I think it sort of is matching what you're suggesting, which is that we shouldn't smooth out the edges and we shouldn't merge.
00:12:26.640We should spend time with each and let the little lessons that are peculiar and idiosyncratic to each one help explain what is going on here and how we should participate in it.
00:12:40.140Yeah, and I also think it's an honorable path to just go very, very deeply into, you know, what is your spiritual homeland, your mother tongue, and to be so fluent and clear and searching and to bring, you know, to be one of those people who offers up to the world.
00:12:57.820Here's what this tradition in its depths says that is of use to us, that is about all of us.
00:13:02.860I mean, I have felt in these recent years, like, you know, very overtly theological language, like confession and repentance and redemption and lamentation.
00:13:14.100That language has never been more resonant for what it means to be a human standing in this world.
00:13:19.840So when I say the forms are going to change, like, I don't think that means that the depths of these traditions go away.
00:13:25.520But I do think they're going to have to morph in terms of how they function and speak kind of in the middle of the world.
00:13:31.420As you said at the top about when you were wondering about where moral formation will happen, and I'm thinking about how passively we used to inherit a whole worldview, and now to the extent that religious nuns are having children and therefore not passing on this sort of ready-made, something for you to respond to.0.82
00:13:59.640I mean, I think there could be real madness that spreads in the absence of some coherent worldview.
00:14:08.580I just see people reaching out, especially when these children have children.
00:14:16.700There's this impulse to then, you know, to actually ask this question of what moral formation am I giving my children?
00:14:23.740And, yeah, again, we live in the moment where it's all lying shattered on the floor.
00:14:32.380But I don't think that this impulse to—and, you know, I don't think that this impulse to be—to have an inner life, to desire to be doing that in community as well, and to reach for things like ritual and teaching and sacred text.
00:14:51.160I don't think that dies even in the absence of religion.
00:14:55.080And I do, you're right, it's a chaotic picture right now.
00:14:58.660But I do see people, you know, rediscovering these things at some point in life.
00:15:05.660And I'm just, I'm really curious about how it's going to unfold.
00:15:09.740Because none of this quite, it doesn't disappear.
00:15:13.120And that's the phase we're in, is the shapeshifting.
00:15:15.400Is there any new ritual that you've seen pop up for the younger generations that you think, oh, now that's something I can see how that would emerge in the absence of inherited?0.88
00:15:27.800I think it's more that they find their way back to Shabbat, right? Or they go on spiritual retreats. I mean, do you know what a big business it is now to have a spiritual retreat center? And this is not something that most of these people grew up.
00:15:45.400having, you know, looking for, thinking they would desire. There are late night
00:15:51.800compliment services at cathedrals and cities that are attended by...
00:15:57.440It's like the midnight basketball of religion.
00:15:59.660It is. So, right. So it's not necessarily that something has to be made up, but I think this,
00:16:04.640this gets at how do these institutions have to evolve, right? And, you know, offering a
00:16:09.820late night compliment service for people who probably aren't members of the church,
00:16:13.900But just being attentive to the fact that there's this desire and this need for people to get quiet and that you have this ritual and this, you know, this ancient tradition of gathering in this way and singing in this way and inviting people into a space in this way.
00:16:37.180So one of the things that like a traditional religious space has all these things that trigger the vagus nerve, singing in unison, lower light, candles, certain smells, a vaulted ceiling.
00:17:24.760You know, one thing that happened to me as I kind of got into midlife is I realized at some point that I was completely disinterested in spirituality that's not embodied.
00:17:40.000And a lot of American religiosity is—and even, you know, even a lot of meditation apps are very chin-up experiences.
00:18:42.240Yeah, but it's also the same, you know, it's, it's, again, I'm so fascinated by how the intelligence of, of our religious traditions is now in the laboratory being studied.
00:18:52.960You know, it turns out it was smarter than anybody knew.
00:18:55.620Like you say, we're working with the vagus nerve, you know, with great sophistication.
00:19:01.560You know, Daniel Kahneman's science, we contradict each other all the time.
00:19:06.140And actually, if that could if that would be something we could take in about our political and social adversaries, that they're just as full of contradiction and complication as I am.
00:19:19.580And in that reality, I'd flip it and say, I am just as contradictory and hypocritical and idiosyncratic as I am pointing the finger saying they are.
00:23:33.280It's not about having any kind of squishy certainty that things will turn out to be all right.
00:23:41.520It is about seeing what is dysfunctional, what is death dealing, and insisting that the world doesn't have to be that way.
00:23:52.300And, you know, those things do come to us as data points, right?
00:23:54.920the headlines every day, give us 10 data points from which the only logical conclusion would be
00:24:00.320that, you know, as my grandfather would say, we're going to hell in a handbasket. And like,
00:24:05.840this is the bottom line. This is who we are as humanity. This is the bottom line. This is the
00:24:09.620truth about us. It's all been revealed. Yeah, it's all been revealed. And so to me, hope is
00:24:13.920kind of opening your eyes to what else is true. And also just saying, I won't live in a world in
00:24:19.180which those are the only data points. It's like a leap of the imagination that then has real world
00:24:23.460consequences. And, um, John Lewis, you know, said you live as if, right. And so it's a muscular
00:24:31.000thing. There might be people listening who feel like hope is a cheery attitude that denies the
00:24:40.840harder parts of life. But I think what you're saying is that it's just a more complete vision.
00:24:46.200It's a vision that goes beyond what's being pushed at us, which are, you know, headlines.
00:24:53.540And it fills in what's not being pushed at us, which are these smaller, also true stories about what is happening today in the world as well.
00:26:03.020Well, the context in which I think about tolerance is growing up in the 1960s and how tolerance was the first, was, you know, here we were in this country which had been diverse, but suddenly diversity was being recognized and all kinds of diversity.
00:26:24.800And I think that the virtue we chose to kind of enshrine so that now we're living in a diverse world, and it was tolerance, right?
00:26:34.180And the definition of tolerance in a medical environment is the ability to thrive in unfavorable conditions.
00:26:43.580Like how far can you push it in unfavorable conditions that you can still thrive?
00:26:49.240and tolerance was also about kind of saying you know you be you I'll be me and we will get along
00:26:56.760we will coexist and it didn't ask it didn't invite curiosity about those others it didn't invite
00:27:06.040you know anything like compassion or relationship and there was I think there was somehow this idea
00:27:11.260That we all just kind of be what and who we are side by side, that that's a desirable society.
00:27:20.280And that was also a time when people started checking whatever their opinions or their moral certainties were at the door of workplaces, right?
00:27:54.000Okay, so you are part of a series, and it's called After Much Study, Conversations with
00:28:00.480People Who Spend Most of Their Lives Learning.
00:28:02.140and your partners in this are dan harris and rain wilson so here's a set of questions that
00:28:10.720i'm going to ask each of you what's a situation that you've been in recently where you felt
00:28:15.800totally attuned with your very best self when you felt morally beautiful these are this is a hard
00:28:22.020question um you didn't think i was going to bring you nothing did you i mean i'm coming to the master
00:28:27.200here. Um, I have somebody who I do badly when I have to think of one thing. So anyway, let me
00:28:34.080think. So read it to me again. What's a situation you've been in recently where you felt totally
00:28:38.600attuned with your best self when you felt morally beautiful or what are you doing generally when
00:28:43.440you feel morally beautiful? I think when I feel morally beautiful, uh, right now I'm
00:28:50.380letting myself be, I think so. Yeah. Here's one of my contradictions, right? Okay. I am an
00:28:56.840empathic person and I and I've kind of moved into this lived into this profession where that's kind
00:29:02.580of you know what I do for a living but then I also have learned to kind of shield myself from
00:29:10.560when things are just too painful and just too hard and um I think I'm I think it is morally
00:29:18.400beautiful and it's not easy for me and maybe for a lot of us to to do what I've you know directly
00:29:27.600or indirectly counseled people to do on my show which is to be open and raw and soft in the face
00:29:35.260of what is of the pain of this world but to let myself be receptive to it to know it yeah a thing
00:29:43.560about that for me is that when I'm doing it right, I am not coming up with beautiful poetic
00:29:51.540strings of advice. No. My instinct is to say, oh, you know, it's interesting. I was talking
00:29:57.680to Krista Tippett on my podcast or we were talking to Dan Harris and, and then I want to give them
00:30:02.840something palliative. And that doesn't actually make me feel beautiful. And it's probably tinged
00:30:11.260with like a little ego like it's probably like oh i'm just so full of information right now i can
00:30:16.360just give you something and what's actually beautiful is to wait long enough and to elicit
00:30:25.240is to tell me more tell me more tell me more of them such that they tell you the thing behind the
00:30:32.680thing behind the thing which is probably even worse than the headline it's probably even harder
00:30:38.380to just absorb and sit with yeah yeah and somehow i think it is a virtue to just stand before what is
00:30:48.880it's not easy to go there my um this is embarrassing uh every year i do this thing
00:30:59.400called mom's christmas where i control my family for three hours and we do all this introspective
00:31:03.960stuff and we write thank you letters and we make donations and whatever and it sounds great and
00:31:07.740they hate it and it's probably counterproductive and it's probably gonna make them less likely to
00:31:14.780do things like that on their own it's very eye-rolly but this year i introduced this theme
00:31:20.880of what is as is which is to say to just be with what is as it is and stop trying to change everyone
00:31:32.480and everything like the food in front of you, like as it is, and the person in front of you
00:31:39.160as they are and the trip you're on as it is. And, and there's so many ways.
00:31:46.300That's all spiritual practice and discipline. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my working definition
00:31:51.560of spiritual life at its best is befriending reality. Oh, that's nice. That's what all of
00:31:57.600those rituals. That's what the chaplain at the bedside in the hospital, it's what all that
00:32:03.640intelligence about the human condition is doing. And our culture doesn't, it does not ask us to
00:32:10.820befriend reality. It tells us we need something else. Totally. It tells us there's something else
00:32:15.840we could buy. The economy would come screeching to a halt if everyone was like, I love myself as I am.
00:32:20.240Yeah. What's a piece of feedback that you've received that really stung?
00:32:25.840Well, I know you're going to have Dan Harris answer this, and he's going to tell you his story about his 360, which is what I'm where I've kind of just came out of.
00:32:36.380I mean, I've gotten all kinds of feedback.
00:32:40.280There is sometimes feedback from the show that I talk too much.
00:34:41.840Like, for all they knew, like, that's really all that matters in life.
00:34:44.260Like people talked more about me losing weight than they did about a book I had written or a TV show I started.
00:34:50.580And so anyway, it stung because I'm sure she's right.
00:34:54.880I'm sure that, you know, under any knowing eye, they would have said you are making the same mistake over and over again, 120 different ways for years.
00:35:04.920Yes. Well, I think, yeah, I think my kids, you know, I'm thinking about, um, we're, we're, we're a divorced family, but we've managed to kind of, you know, I think function ultimately as a family that lives in different houses.
00:35:19.940And my daughter and I went to stay with my son for Thanksgiving. Not going to say that it was a stress free situation, but we did it.
00:35:31.500And there was a point at which, you know, my son, I find my kids have just been, like, they're just, they can absolutely nail, you know, me.
00:35:40.740And they can be just so clear about what I'm doing wrong, right?
00:35:43.900And there was a point at which my son was, you know, I just said he wanted me to, he wanted me to be fully present to him giving me his tour of Austin.
00:39:51.580I just can't take in, I can't take, like, it's hard for me to take in the lovely words
00:40:00.780people speak to me about what I do because your dad because your dad you think I think I think
00:40:06.960it's because I yeah I mean I think it's because I think if I if I psychoanalyze myself I think
00:40:12.480it's because I grew up in this environment where I was always I was always having to do something
00:40:18.140to prove myself and also I was like a lot of my skill was about deflecting or strategizing around
00:40:25.660negative input coming and I'm good at that. And then I think that at this, you know, in these
00:40:33.960chapters of my life where I don't have to prove, justify my existence. Um, and it's so common that
00:40:44.120people are coming at me just with, you know, with pure compliment and, and, um, appreciation.
00:40:50.880it's almost like I don't have a place to put that it's like I had folders I had filing cabinets
00:40:59.760right they were very well ordered to put you know the snide remark or the challenge to prove my
00:41:07.960to justify my existence and it's like I just I know so I need I need to create those compartments
00:41:13.860and I even need to do it to honor what other people are bringing to me right yeah is your
00:41:19.360father still alive? He is, but I'm estranged from him. I have been for a long time. That's hard.
00:41:24.620Yeah. This is interesting. This is not a world where people get what they deserve.
00:41:30.200What helps you make sense of deep unfairness? And I would say it's not that fair to have
00:41:37.120a parent who doesn't light up when you come in the room.
00:41:41.220yeah I don't think anything helps I don't it doesn't make sense to me there were times in my
00:41:49.880life where you know I remember I got very enraptured with this British physicist who'd
00:41:57.200also become a theologian and he had all these really intriguing beautiful ways to talk about
00:42:02.500chaos theory and what happens in prayer and how there are these gaps in which God has agency I
00:42:10.400don't know and there are religious systems right there's the whole karma idea so there are all
00:42:14.940kinds of ways to explain it and and they have some attraction but I don't don't buy it I don't
00:42:22.960it's just a it's a puzzle and it hurts and I think part of what hurts is that you know I go to
00:42:31.200one of my favorite stores one of my favorite places in in Minneapolis where I live is this
00:42:38.660co-op. It's just a great place. And it took on this new preciousness for me during the pandemic
00:42:44.720because it would be this one place where, you know, once a week I would put my mask on and
00:42:49.380you'd have to wait in line because there could only be so many people in the store. And it's
00:42:53.840just good food and it's real food and it has a nice community feeling. And I'd always come out
00:42:59.640of there happy. And there's always somebody standing on that kind of close where you drive in
00:43:05.020uh with this sign and I started going up to them and just asking if I can buy you know what I could
00:43:12.760get them to eat um you know and so it's you know people will sometimes be really precise like an
00:43:18.420egg salad sandwich and no onions that's right and so I'm happy that I've figured out that that's
00:43:26.480something I can do and I always buy them you know what they want and I try you know try to take care0.91
00:43:31.100but it's so, so inadequate, you know, it's so pathetic really. And I don't, you know, for me,
00:43:39.780it's not, historically there's the theodicy question, right? Like how could, how could there
00:43:44.000be any meaning, not just a God, but like any meaning behind this universe when there's such
00:43:49.480suffering? And there's so much suffering in our world right now. I mean, the refugee crisis, I
00:43:54.720just like I can't I can't hear the reports and I also hate how we've turned them into migrants
00:44:01.880which is this dehumanizing word you know migrant children boat full of migrants
00:44:08.420sank yeah just people they're just people but I think we do that because it's just too hard to
00:44:17.380take in and I guess part of me hopes that there will be some place beyond time and space where
00:44:24.340will make sense but it doesn't make sense now so some people say I want my kids to be happy
00:44:30.760some people say I want my kids to be good people yeah how do you finish the sentence above all
00:44:35.620I want my kids to be I want them to have light hearts and I think that light hearts
00:44:44.500are gained over a stretch of time you know that's not to say I want them to be superficial
00:44:51.920And they're not. But like, I think the light heart that comes with treating your life as an adventure and loving enough and wrestling with the hard things that have to be wrestled with and kind of making a home inside yourself, being at peace in the world, even when there's a lot that will never be peaceful.
00:45:16.040So it's that light heart that I want for them.
00:45:18.140making a home inside yourself is such a powerful i mean it's such a deep requirement and it and
00:45:26.460it takes it's it's the work of a lifetime it is it is and every now and then i can touch it
00:45:31.560like every now and then i'll be reading it somehow brings it on like where it's just me and me and
00:45:36.880i'm alone with this thing and i'm kind of getting smaller and smaller by the page and yeah and it's
00:45:42.380like, this is me. This part is me. This is the most me I am. Right. And I think the light heart
00:45:49.560has stopped walking through the world, you know, putting up any kind of facade, like just
00:45:56.200understanding this is what I have. This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. It's me walking
00:46:00.300into the room. Yeah. It's me sitting across from you. Yeah. So failure is inevitable, not just
00:46:07.760professional, but more personal and ethical and moral, small and large. How good are you
00:46:14.040at apologizing? And is there something that you're trying right now to sort of get better at or
00:46:20.680conquer that's really putting up a fight for you? I think I'm pretty good at apologizing
00:46:27.420just because I'm not good at kind of staying mad long. Is there a stone you keep tripping on?
00:47:02.380I think I'm good now at when I'm struggling with something, which happens all the time, not letting it sit, not putting it to one side.
00:47:14.540I think I'm good not at not failing, but at finding ways to speak truth and ask for truth from others.
00:47:26.540What's a surprising source of contentment for you these days?
00:47:32.380I'm surprised at how contented I can be with, like, the things that are full of contentment are just the simplest things, right?
00:47:41.600It's like making soup or watching a TV show with my daughter who's living with me this year or having a really good book to get back to at the end of the day.
00:47:52.120I love, you know, I have a big backyard, I have a little house with a big backyard, and I have this sofa where I have this window out, you know, looking at the oaks and pines in that backyard, and that makes me really happy.