[ Music ]
>> Stanford University.
>> Good evening and welcome
to the Roger W. Heyns Lecture
for 2013 on behalf
of the Stanford Office
for Religious Life.
I'm Scotty McLennan, the
Dean for Religious Life.
And in the mid-1990s, the James
Irvine Foundation established
the Heyns lectures on
religion and community.
The series brings to the
Stanford campus leading thinkers
who examine the intersection of
systems of belief and practice
with human groups and societies.
Recent Heyns lectures have
included the Dalai Lama,
Karen Armstrong, Bart Ehrman,
Amy-Jill Levine, Eboo Patel,
Jim Wallace, Bishop
Katharine Jefferts Schori,
and Anna Deavere-Smith.
And we're thrilled and honored
that Krista Tippett will be
this year's Heyns lecturer.
There's much to honor in
Roger Heyns and his legacy.
A professor of psychology
and then dean
and then vice president at
the University of Michigan.
He came to the University
of California at Berkeley
where he served as
chancellor from 1965 to 1971.
Heyns led the American
council on Education
and then the Hewlett Foundation
until his retirement in 1992.
For many years, he lent
his energy and wisdom
to Stanford having become
a regular participant
at its Memorial Church
and a consultant
to university leaders.
We're delighted to honor
him again this year
with tonight's lecture.
And I'm grateful to Religious
Studies Professor Emeritus
Robert Gregg, formerly the
Dean for Religious Life
who worked closely with
the Irvine Foundation
to establish this
lecture series.
I also want to recognize for
the primary work logistically
and organizing and producing
tonight's event from NaSun Cho
from the Office for
Religious Life.
In a moment, I'm going
to welcome my colleague,
Associate Dean for
Religious Life Joanne Sanders
to introduce tonight's speaker.
And at the end of the
evening, Senior Associate Dean
for Religious Life Patricia
Karlin-Neumann will end
our evening.
And now, can I welcome
Joanne Sanders to the podium?
[ Applause ]
>> Good evening everyone.
It is a great privilege
to have the honor
of introducing our esteemed
guest to you this evening.
Peabody award winning
broadcaster Krista Tippett grew
up in Oklahoma, attended Brown
University, and spent most
of the 1980s in divided Germany.
She was the New York Times
stringer in Berlin and I'm going
to have to ask Krista
what a stringer is.
I'm a former tennis coach
and stringer has a
different meaning for me.
And also reported for Newsweek,
the International Herald
Tribune, the BBC, and Die Zeit.
Later, she served as a
special political assistant
and chief Berlin aid to the
US ambassador to West Germany.
She wrote her first book
Speaking of Faith in part
to answer the question she
is often asked, how she went
from that mode of
geopolitical engagement
to becoming a religious person
and student of theology.
When she emerged from Yale with
a Master of Divinity in 1994,
Krista saw a black hole
where intelligent journalistic
coverage of religion should be.
She began to imagine
radio conversations
about the spiritual and
intellectual content of faith
that would enliven
and open imaginations
and public discussion.
She says, "It's always
been very important to me
to enlarge imaginations
about how this part
of life we call religious
and spiritual actually works
in real far-flung
21st century lives."
On Being with Krista Tippett,
formerly called Speaking
of Faith is public radio's
weekly program about religion,
meaning, ethics, and ideas.
The show was produced
and distributed
by American Public Media
and is currently heard
on over 200 public
radio stations
across the United States
and globally via
the web and podcast.
With Speaking of Faith and its
newest incarnation, On Being,
Krista Tippett has inspired
a new mode of intelligent,
in-depth discussion about
faith, ethics, religion,
and meaning in everyday life.
She says, "We aspire to
create hours of radio
that are beautiful, intelligent,
nourishing, edifying,
trustworthy, quiet,
and hospitable.
They're also challenging but
not in a way that puts people
on the defensive or
invites pasturing.
We invite listeners and give
them tools to open their minds
to see differently and to
start new conversations
within themselves."
Her latest initiative, the Civil
Conversations Projects is a
series of radio shows
and online tools
for healing our fractured
civic spaces.
In conversation with
Krista Tippett,
guests like Terry
Tempest Williams
and Vincent Harding ask,
"How can we bridge the gulf
between us caused
by disagreements
around politics and morality?"
I think all of us would agree,
these are certainly
timely questions
and considerations offering all
of us an invitation to honest
and respectful dialogue.
Many do agree that Krista
Tippett is indeed the measured,
balanced voice we need
and is a trustworthy guide
to the challenges of
religion and faith
in a dangerous complex world.
Please join me this evening in
warmly welcoming to Stanford
and our community a true
original and authentic author,
radio show host, and
journalist Krista Tippett.
[ Applause ]
>> Thanks to Reverend Sanders
for that lovely introduction
and I'm so happy to be here.
This has been on my
calendar for a long time.
I remember meeting various
constellations of the three
of you, Rabbi Karlin-Neumann and
Scotty McLennan in other places
around the globe
and here we are.
And I can't believe
that I'm talking
about civility tonight,
this week.
[ Laughter ]
I do want to say I-- we're
going to lots of time afterwards
for a conversation here with
whatever is on your mind
and I look forward to them,
happier in a conversation
than in delivering a monologue.
So, I put the word adventure
before civility months ago
when we came up with the
title of this speech.
Because I do worry that the
word "civility" has connotations
that I don't intend of
niceness, tameness, and safety.
Little did I know that I would
arrive here and we would be
in the midst of a bruising
week of government shutdown
and that civility in the
realm of politics would seem
like an impossible dream and
far too small to resolve things.
But I'm not here to talk
about political life.
I'm here to talk about public
life and that is bigger
than politics, though we have
narrowly equated these two
in recent years and I think
we have impoverished ourselves
as a result.
So, I want to start by pulling
back and taking a long view
of our moment in history.
We are turn of the
century people.
And this terrifying
and wondrous century
that we have entered is opening,
throwing open basic questions
that the 20th century
thought it had answered,
questions that are intimate
and civilizational all at once,
definitions of life and death,
of the meaning of marriage
and family, of human
relationship
to the natural world, of human
relationship to technology.
We are re-imagining the
very nature of authority,
of leadership, of community,
fundamentally reconsidering how
we structure our lives together.
We're in the midst of nothing
less than a reformation
of all of our institutions.
And that includes
politics, and education,
and economics, and religion.
And the interesting
and challenging thing
about this moment is that we
know the old forms don't work
anymore but we can't
yet see the new forms
that will take their place.
We are making them
up in real-time.
Now, all of this drives
us back to grapple anew
with core human questions,
questions that have
animated philosophy
and religion across the ages.
Why are we here?
What does it mean to be human?
What matters in a life?
What are we to each other?
We're undertaking this
grappling also at the same time
with the proximity
and interdependence
with different others that is
unprecedented in human history.
For us, the question
of what it means
to be human has become
inextricable from the question
of who we are to each other.
This magnitude of change
is deeply unsettling
for human beings.
Physiologically, science
is showing us this.
Now, I am aware that here at
Stanford, I'm at an epicenter
of entrepreneurial vigor.
And natural entrepreneurs
are actually invigorated
by the stress that comes
with uncertainty and change.
But for most human beings,
and I think for all of us,
some of the time, change
and uncertainty generate
anxiety and fear.
They do. And fear sends a lot
of people sheltering
behind their barricades.
It shuts imaginations down
rather than opening them up.
It is no wonder that cohesive
public life has become something
daring, a frontier to settle,
not territory we
can easily recall
or imagine getting back to.
So, we started what
we eventually began
to call the Civil
Conversations Project
in the election season of 2010.
We've kind of gotten used to
this now but it, you know,
election seasons are
traumatizing times.
And then this project
intensified a few months later
in early 2011 after the shooting
of Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.
Those days and weeks before
Tucson were another political
period in which divisive
cultural rhetoric had just
reached toxic levels.
And suddenly, for a brief
moment after those events,
beautiful speeches were given
and this new vocabulary
entered our public life.
The language calls
for moral imagination
and social healing
and civil discourse.
Those longings never went away
but they were also
never really met.
And what I saw is that
well so many of us,
including our politicians,
resonated with those calls.
We had no idea how
to make them real.
We could not point
to where visibly
in our public life those
qualities are robustly modeled.
We must discover for our
time what moral imagination
or social healing or
civil discourse can look
like in the public sphere.
What do they sound like?
What makes them possible?
Where can we see them embodied?
Who will be their leaders?
Recently, actually as I was
formulating what I wanted to say
to you tonight, I heard a
legal scholar give a definition
of politician as a
conversational entrepreneur,
someone who shapes, creates,
and launches public discourse.
I have to say I don't see many
conversational entrepreneurs
in our current political
class, but I do believe,
and this gave me
some good language
to something I believe
passionately,
that we are all called to be
conversational entrepreneurs
at this moment in time
to immediately begin
to create the spaces for taking
up the great, hard questions
of our time with
different others,
to start those conversations we
want to hear, to discover how
to calm fear and plant the
seeds for robust civil society,
for that robust civil
society that we desire
and that our age demands.
And these callings are too
important and too life-giving
to wait for politics at its
most strident to change.
This is civic work and it
is human spiritual work
in the most expansive
21st century of that word.
We all have it in
ourselves to be nourishers
of discernment, forces
of healing.
So, this evening for
the next few moments,
I want to offer you what I'm
calling a few encouragements
in that direction
that I'm going to draw
from my life of conversation.
My first encouragement is that
words matter, and it may seem
like a kind of obvious
statement to make in a room full
of students and teachers
and scholars,
I make it as a journalist.
The words we use shape how
we understand ourselves,
how we move through the
world, how we treat others.
And the world right now
needs the most vivid,
transformative universe of
words that you and I can master.
The latter part of the
last century was driven
by vocabularies of technological
advance and social progress
that aspired to order
our common life by way
of ideologies, data, and facts.
And when this country
first began
to experience genuine
diversity in the 1960s,
genuine diversity ethnically,
racially, religiously for the--
for really the first time, we
pursued the reasonable order
that would be achieved by a
civic mandate of tolerance.
That's the word we chose.
Tolerance was the
primary civic virtue
by which we would navigate
this new difference.
And that word itself
was always problematic.
Tolerance connotes allowing,
enduring, and indulging.
In the medical context which
is where it comes from,
it's about the limits
of thriving
in an unfavorable environment.
Tolerance is not a lived virtue.
It's a kind of cerebral
assent and it is too cerebral
to animate guts and
heart and thus behavior
when the going gets rough
and the going has
gotten pretty rough.
I am not saying that
tolerance doesn't have value.
It does. It was probably
the right place to start
but it's not big enough for
where we need to go next.
And I don't think it was
ever big enough from a human
and spiritual perspective.
Tolerance does not ask us
to care for the stranger.
It doesn't even invite us to
know each other, to listen,
to be curious, to
be open, to be moved
and surprised by each other.
The week of Tucson, the week
of the Tucson shootings back
in 2011, as that all unfolded,
we'd already put our program
to be broadcast up
on the satellite.
And it was a conversation with a
poet, with Elizabeth Alexander,
the poet who delivered
the poet--
the poem at the first
Obama inauguration.
And, you know, we were concerned
about this, putting a poet
on the air, seeming
pretty irrelevant
in a week of national tragedy.
That podcast went
through the roof.
Elizabeth Alexander in that week
talked about how we are starved
for fresh language to approach
each other that we crave
and she said she saw this in
her children as much as herself.
We crave words that shimmer,
individual words with power,
words to convey real truth
which is something different
from conveying facts.
I think we've hit the limits of
our collective belief and facts
to tell us the whole story
or even necessarily
to tell us the truth.
Elizabeth Alexander said, "We
need imagination and spirit
to glean meaning in the midst
of our quotidian difficulties
and rise above them."
And that that is one of
the reasons that poetry,
her milieu, is magnetic.
"Poetry," she said, "gets
at undergirding truths
at the essence of the
world and ourselves."
Our spiritual and religious
traditions have always
known this.
You know, naming is one
of the original fundamental
creative acts
in almost every sacred
traditional I know of.
And the bible and other sacred
texts masterfully use all kinds
of language, including lots of
poetry to convey the canvass
of truth about life that
facts alone cannot convey,
to deal in words that
shimmer and enliven and heal.
The other thing about
the language
in those texts is they've
also worked with words
that have practices
attached, practices that go
where tolerance never could,
compassion, kindness, mercy,
mindful attention,
practical love,
love of neighbor, love of enemy.
Here are some lines from a
poem of Elizabeth Alexander.
"Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God in
the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry, and now my voice is
rising, is not all love, love,
love and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry, here I hear myself
loudest, is the human voice,
and are we not of
interest to each other?"
Are we not of interest
to each other?
You know, what if we just
planted that question
in the middle of our common
life in the halls of Congress
and just let it sit
there and let it echo?
And that gets to my second
encouragement which is
to rediscover questions,
questions as spiritual
virtues and civic tools.
In American civic life, we
mostly trade in answers,
we trade in competing answers,
or we trade in questions
which aren't really questions
at all, but tools or weapons
that are meant to corner
and catch and insight
or at the very least
to be entertaining.
In that ever present
spectacle, there's a truth
that I'd invite you to
really notice and ponder,
and that is what a powerful
thing a question is.
Questions I have learned elicit
answers in their likeness.
I remember a few years
ago, I was at an event
that the Lilly Endowment
was hosting.
It was about the future of
Christianity and the fact
that like every institution,
the forms make no sense
and what will this be and just
sitting around just listening
to a lot of really wise
people agonize about something
that meant a great deal to them.
And there was a man I
was very impressed with
and he talked about how he felt.
One thing he said is,
"I'm amazed at the discussions
people aren't having."
And that's a good
general statement.
And he said that he was aware
that where things went wrong,
they started with
the wrong question.
And he said, "A wrong question
leads to a wrong answer,"
then he said, "which leads
to a simplistic conclusion
which leads to a
meaningless argument."
And what a depiction of a
dynamic that we've all seen
so many times and we've just
seen it unfold again this week,
right, in our public life.
Now, I'm also aware
I've talked about this
in educational settings and I
know also in my own education
to say that there's such a thing
as a wrong question
raises some alarm bells.
And so, I had to
think about that.
You know, what I'm not
saying is that, you know,
sometimes a simple question
is absolutely what's needed
to bring clarity.
So, this isn't about simplicity
but it is about intentionality.
It's about being mindful
of the intentionality
behind our questions.
And, again, that power,
a simplistic question draws
forth a simplistic answer.
It's very hard to transcend
when you are asked a
simplistic question.
An inflammatory question
elicits an inflammatory answer.
But I can also state
this positively.
It's hard to resist and not to
rise to a generous question.
We can formulate questions that
draw forth honesty and dignity
and revelation in the
best sense of the word.
There is something
redemptive and life-giving
about asking a better question.
And I have also learned
that even
with the most intractable
issues,
the issues that we rehash in our
public life over and over again
and we're convinced that they
can only end in a fight that is,
it is actually possible to start
those with a different question
and not trod the same
old ground and not end
up in the same dead end place.
You know, are you
pro-life or pro-choice?
This is the-- these are
the framing questions.
Are you for guns
or against guns?
Are you pro-gay marriage
or anti-gay marriage?
We can start discussions
aimed at the adventure
of exploring what is at stake
for all of us in human terms.
One of the wonderful
conversation partners
that I've gotten to know through
Civil Conversations Project is
Frances Kissling.
And if you know her name,
you probably know her name
because she was the long-time
head of Catholics for Choice.
She was a very well-known
pro-choice activist.
What's less highly publicized
about Frances Kissling is
that when she retired
from Catholics for Choice
about five years ago,
she decided to embark
on a new adventure of exploring
what it would mean to be
in real relationship with
her political opposites.
And that's what she has devoted
herself to these last years
and she's a fascinating person
to talk to and, you know,
a lot of the things she's
learned have been uncomfortable
and she's still learning
them like she talks about--
she's learned about
the necessity
of developing the courage to
be vulnerable in front of those
with whom you passionately
disagree.
That's a long road to walk.
And then this past fall, as part
of the Civil Conversations
Project,
I brought together Frances
and David Gushee who's
a wonderful theologian
from Mercer University
in Georgia.
And he's on the pro-life side of
the spectrum but that's really
to diminish him to put it that
way, and so what we tried,
what we did is we had a
discussion about abortion
which was not framed
by the categories
of pro-life and pro-choice.
We actually tried not
to use that language
and we almost succeeded.
And, you know, we had a
discussion that was big
and messy and provocative
in such an interesting way.
You know, what I want to stress
is that taking that language
out of it doesn't make
it easy or simple.
It actually reintroduces
complexity and the hardness.
I mean, we ended up
talking about things
like whether the sexual
revolution was good for any
of us and how we
might re-humanize
and deepen our relationship
to sexuality in public as well
as private spheres, you know,
this was big unsettling,
thrilling stuff that
was all new.
It was all fresh.
So, I want to stress
that, you know,
the conversations I'm
proposing also are not
about leaping to common ground.
That's not the point of this.
They're not about the move
tolerance often made which comes
under the rubric of celebrating
diversity which has meant kind
of putting diversity
up on a pedestal
and not engaging its
messiness or its depths.
This, what I'm aspiring to,
is about engaging difference
with humility and vulnerability
and creating new possibilities
for moving forward
while being different,
and while even probably
continuing
to hold passionate disagreement.
It's about how we
can live together.
Here's something
Frances Kissling says,
she's not a big believer
in common ground either.
She said, "I think that
common ground can be found
between people who do not
have deep, deep differences
and in politics, you
can find compromise,
although I think that's up
in the question right now.
Politics is the art
of the possible.
But to think that you are going
to take the National Conference
of Catholic Bishops and the
National Organization of Women
and they are going
to find common ground
on abortion is not practical,
it's not going to happen.
And we could extend that."
But she says, "I do think
that when people who disagree
with each other come
together with a goal
of gaining a better
understanding
of why the other
believes what they do,
good things come of that."
But the pressure of
coming to agreement works
against really understanding
each other.
That's a provocative thought.
And we don't understand
each other.
In my work, I have been very
deeply formed by some words
of the poet Rilke on living the
questions, holding questions.
He wrote that we should love
the questions themselves
as if they were locked
rooms or books written
in a very foreign language.
Don't search the answers which
could not be given to you now
because you would not
be able to live them.
And the point is
to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then someday far in
the future, you will gradually,
without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
These intimate, civilizational
questions we are revisiting
as a culture are not going
to be resolved any time soon
with answers we can
all agree on.
But surely, we can agree
that we want to live our way
into the answers together,
which flows into my
third encouragement,
to honor the difficulty of
what we face, the complexity
of what it means to be
human, to be realistic
about how badly we've
done this in recent times
and that we are beginners
again, to start small,
to realize for example
the critical importance
of creating safe spaces before
anything profound can happen.
Back to that fear place that our
non-entrepreneurial brains send
us to in the face of
uncertainty and change.
We can't ask people to come
vulnerable in front of those
with whom they passionately
disagree unless we can make them
safe first.
And in this, I am comforted and
buoyed by a conversation I had
with a very erudite philosopher
Kwame Anthony Appiah.
He has an amazing
personal story.
He's British and Ghanaian
and then now, he's American
and his parent's
marriage in the 1950s of--
his African father and his
high-born British mother was one
of the love stories that
gave rise to the movie
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."
So, he actually lived
through one of these moments
of social change, of moral
change because remember
in that time, you know,
interracial marriage was seen
as a moral issue, morally
repugnant by many people.
And that was something that,
you know, within a generation,
people would look back on that
and say, "What were we thinking?
How could we have
lived that way?"
I find the memory that
we make those turns
in human society very
comforting at a moment like this
where it's really impossible
to see how we'll find our way
out of this dysfunction.
And then, Anthony Appiah
has gone on to study
in many societies across time
and geography how these kinds
of pivotal moral, social
turning points happen,
how foot binding ended in China,
how slavery ended as a fundament
of the British Empire,
how dueling ended as a way
for honorable gentlemen
to resolve disputes.
And what he found in
all of these cases is
that for a long time, there
were people in those cultures
who knew this was crazy, right?
And-- but so gradually, so
change took place over time
across time in the human
heart and then at some point
where that has built, they
wouldn't have used the term
"critical mass" in China
in the-- or foot binding--
we will get to that, then
the movements come along
and they uproot the structure
and then the change happens.
But, again, what's comforting
about what he found is
that change comes
about quietly by way
of what he calls conversation
but in the old-fashioned sense.
And that is conversation
defined as simple association,
habits of coexistence,
seeking familiarity
around mundane human
qualities of who we are.
So, we called the show
that we created with him
"Sidling Up to Difference."
That's a phrase he uses.
Difference is something
you can sidle up to.
He does say that when you turn
a dispute over to legislation,
it becomes something of
a conversation stopper.
And, you know, that is one thing
that we reach for very quickly
in this culture, not only
in our political life
but in our religious
institutions
and all of our institutions.
Let's make a law
and get this over.
So, Anthony Appiah says,
"The way to set moral change
in motion is not to
go for the jugular,"
or even in the first
instance to go for dialogue,
it's not to go straight for
the things that divide you.
He says, "It's all right to
talk about sports and talk
about the weather and
talk about your children
to make a human connection."
And then he says down the day,
"If you have that background
of relationship between
individuals and communities
that is in that sense
conversational,
then when you have to
talk about the things
that do divide you,
you have a platform.
You can begin with the
assumption that you like
and respect each other
even though you don't agree
about everything."
And we also all have
a lot of those people
in our own families by the way.
So, we know that it's possible
to navigate this and stay
in relationship with people.
And that maybe you
can build on that.
And you can know that at
the end of the conversation,
it's quite likely that you'll
both think something pretty
close to what you both
thought at the start.
But you might at least
have a deeper appreciation
for the other person's
point of view and that turns
out to make it easier to
accept the outcome, what,
whether it's the
outcome you favor
or the outcome the
other person favors,
and there's actually some
really interesting science
about that now, that when people
feel that they have been heard,
when we feel that
we have been heard,
we can also find it easier
to accept something we may even
resolved in a way not that--
it's not in a way we hoped to.
We can make peace with
that and live with that.
What Anthony Appiah calls
conversation almost necessarily
involves another virtue,
and that is hospitality.
And as virtues go, I
really like this one.
It's also a very small
reasonable place to start.
You know, we talk about
aspiring to compassion and love
and reconciliation
and forgiveness.
Those are complex
experiences that take a lot
of investment and a lot of time.
But hospitality?
You don't have to love
someone to show hospitality.
You don't have to
agree with them.
You don't even have
to like them.
And yet, you can be
gracious in that same moment.
So, I say when in doubt,
practice hospitality.
But then, give that practice
all the sophistication
and complexity that it has
in life when you offer it
to your best friends, right?
It's not just the
issuing of an invitation.
It's the preparation of a meal.
It's lighting candles.
It's an atmosphere.
It's knowing what conversations
you're going to push
and which ones you will
leave for another time.
I love an image of the
Quaker author, Parker Palmer,
who some of you may know.
That, he talks about how, in
this culture, we're very skilled
at bringing our intellect into
public spaces and public events.
We know how to wield
our opinions.
And we've actually gotten
very good in this culture
in recent generations,
at bringing our emotions
into public spaces.
But to invite the
insights of the soul,
this deep spiritual human part
of us is something different.
And Parker likens the soul to
a wild animal in the backwoods
of our psyche and if
it's cross-examined,
it will just run away.
And he says that, "For
the insights of the soul
to speak its truth, we have
to create quiet, inviting,
and trustworthy spaces."
And that's really
been a guide for me.
Every time I start one
of my radio interviews,
I try to create a quiet,
inviting, and trustworthy space.
And that makes all of
the difference in terms
of what follows that
precedes the words
but it opens possibilities.
And, you know, quiet, inviting,
and trustworthy spaces are
strangely rare in our world.
So, what a gift
if the conversational
entrepreneurs among us could
begin to plant these
and let them grow.
So, again, we have the language,
the tools, the virtues,
and the calling as human beings
to create hospitable spaces,
to convene and curate
the new forms
of encounter our world is
giving birth to, to teach
and model these new
forms into vitality.
We talk a lot about the
downside of technology
in our relationships and this is
certainly a huge thing we have
to deal with.
But one upside of
technology in this context is
that we have these
manifold tools
that can amplify what happens in
our smallest most local spaces
and the small yeasty
environments and send
that out virally into the world.
And I want to tell you, and we
can talk some more about this
in a minute if you want.
There's so much good
news on this front.
There are so many amazing
initiatives of people taking
out this good work in local
spaces and in national spaces,
and it's all happening as
we say below the radar.
The radar is broken.
Don't trust it.
And my final encouragement
to you follows on that,
that insistence,
that observation.
And I draw it from this
beautiful biblical injunction
to develop eyes to
see and ears to hear.
I think that developing
eyes to see and ears
to hear is a critical spiritual
discipline for the 21st century.
You know, so much
information is coming to us
from so many different
directions
and what is failing
drives the news
which is what a spotlight
is shown on.
So, develop eyes to
see and ears to hear.
And this is not just
about seeing what is new.
It's also about becoming
attentive to the wisdom
of elders in our midst,
to people who have lived how
social change happens starting
below the radar.
Absolutely, some of my most
treasured conversations are
with people who are
in their 80s.
And as part of the Civil
Conversations Project,
some of the most important
conversations I've had have been
with elders and I want
to just close tonight
with Vincent Harding who
is a civil rights veteran.
He ran the Mennonite House
in Atlanta which was one
of the hubs of nonviolence,
philosophy, and practice.
He wrote speeches for
Martin Luther King Jr.
and he spent these last
decades after the heyday
of that movement, bringing
the lessons of that movement
to young people in this country.
And Vincent Harding reminds us
that Martin Luther King
Jr. was a preacher first
and a theologian before
he was a political figure.
And that the Civil Rights
Movement was not merely
about political rights.
It was about creating
the beloved community.
And it was always about
that from beginning to end.
The Civil Rights Movement
used vivid language
and asked world-changing
questions.
Also, I was very
struck a few years ago,
I spoke with another elder,
Walter Brueggemann who's an Old
Testament professor and he's one
of the great scholars of the
prophetic tradition of prophets
and he pointed out to
me, you know, he said,
"Prophets often use
poetic language
and that's how they
transcend the, you know,
the forms of speech
they get us--
that devolve into argument."
He said, "Think about the most
famous political line of King,
you know, the one line
we'd all remember.
I have a dream."
That's a line of poetry.
And here's what Vincent
Harding--
so I was talking
to Vincent Harding
about what wisdom can you impart
from the life you've lived
from this vast social change
that you took part in for us,
at this moment in our civic
life, in our political life,
in our democracy, and
this is what he said.
"For me, the question
of democracy also opens
up the question of what does
it mean to be truly human.
Democracy is simply another way
of speaking about that question.
Religion is another way of
speaking about that question.
What is our purpose
in this world?
And is that purpose related
to our responsibilities
to each other and
to the world itself?
All of that seems to
me to be a variety
of languages getting
at the same reality.
And it seems to me that
we need again to recognize
that to develop the best
humanity, the best spirit,
the best community, there
needs to be disciplined,
practices of exploring.
How do you do that?
How do we work together?
How do we talk together
in ways that will open
up our best capacities
and our best gifts?"
That's a different way to talk
about what civil
conversation is about.
And then he finished by
saying, "My own feeling is I try
to share again and again,
is that when it comes
to creating a multiracial,
multiethnic,
multi-religious democratic
society,
we are still a developing
nation.
We've only been thinking about
this for about half a century.
But my own deep, deep conviction
is that the knowledge,
like all knowledge, is
available to us if we seek it."
I find this a wonderfully
nourishing message to in
in a week of narrowly
averted political catastrophe,
to remember that we are in the
midst of a long-term project.
And I also find this
a wonderful message
for the young among us
'cause we spend a lot
of time bringing home to them
that the generations have
preceded them have left a lot
of messages for them to fix.
But this, too, is their
calling and all of ours to grow
up this democracy to its
full political as well
as its full human and
spiritual potential.
May you develop eyes to
see and ears to hear this
as the adventure it is and
dare to make it real in ways
that none of us can yet imagine.
That's it.
[ Applause ]
Oh, is there some water here?
[Inaudible] Anyway, so
now, we can talk about that
or anything else
you'd like to discuss.
Are we-- oh-- oh, thank you.
Thanks. There's a
mic coming around.
[ Pause ]
>> So, you've provided
a lot of encouragement
in many different areas but
let me begin with two areas,
encouraging discourse
in the public
and the social sphere
and asking questions.
What specific vehicles can you
recommend to instigate the type
of discourse that you
referenced in your talk
and what sources can provide
us as source for emulation
of asking the right questions?
So, given the current
state of things--
>> Yeah.
>> Where do we begin?
>> What did you-- initially--
what did you say, what views?
>> No, what I said
was that based
on what you've provided
us with encouragement--
>> Yes. You want something
a little more immediate
to start with.
>> Well, you know, I think
one has to be inspired,
and listening to
you, I am inspired.
But leaving this hall, I'm
still not sure where I begin.
Certainly--
>> Right.
>> -- with my circle of
friends, my associates
on an individual basis,
I can begin to do that.
But we are talking
about not challenges
of just our local community
but also national
and international--
>> Yes.
>> -- challenges that we face.
And we know that United States
is in a position to be a source
of emulation for many other
parts of the world as it is
in so many different fronts.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I'm really looking to you
to recommend some specific
things that I can walk away with
and know that it has
the ability to multiply.
>> OK. Though I have a
few different responses,
one is that, you know, there's
this pivotal like piece of moral
and this story-- and
there's this notion
in Judaism that's
essential moral imperative
to repair the world.
And I-- I've been very comforted
in, you know, a reading of that
that that's, you know, we're
called to repair the part
of the world that we can see
and touch, and I think that's
where we have to start
and I think one way we get
discouraged is you're right.
I mean, the problems are local,
the problems are national,
the problems are global.
But I think that sometimes when
we see too much of the problem
that that becomes an impediment
to beginning where we can,
you know, just start
trying to heal the part
of the world you
can see and touch.
That's the calling.
I can talk about some questions,
some particular questions that
and ways of starting
a conversation
that are useful to me.
I started to imagine that you
could have a different kind--
or you could bring religious
voice, draw religious voices
out in a way that was
completely different
than anything we heard in media.
Through some experiences
I had at Benedictine Abbey
in Central Minnesota,
Saint John's Abbey
which had been a real pioneer
in the whole sphere of ecumenism
when that was a big new thing
in the mid-20th century.
And they would take up
huge theological questions
that people had argued
and killed each other
over for centuries.
But they would ask a
theological question,
they would pose a theological
idea and/or question and say,
"Answer the question through
the story of your life."
You know, theologically,
if you're having a religious
discussion, you know,
you could ask a question
like, what is prayer?
Who is God?
Answer the question through
the story of your life.
I saw that by insisting on
people using the first person
which was not to say that it
was a completely personal story,
but not trying to speak
for God or for their group
but through a life story, it
made that story listenable,
it humanized a doctrine.
And I think you can, you know,
you can extend this logic
to other spheres, it doesn't
have to be about doctrine.
Now, the trick is in
that setting, you--
you know, you had five days,
'cause that's really what
you have to give people.
So, what I try to do in my
interviews is, you know,
I have maybe 90 minutes with
someone, and you don't even get
to hear that whole 90 minutes
when it becomes a radio show.
But I try to do-- try to
formulate some question
that will take them
to that place
and themselves quickly enough.
And so a question that
I always ask, and again,
there are variations on this,
is a-- whoever I'm talking to,
whether it's a quantum physicist
or a poet or, you know,
whether they are deeply
religious or atheist or--
I'll ask, you know, tell
me was there a spiritual--
was there religious or spiritual
background to your childhood,
and the thing is, I mean,
just think about this.
Probably, the most
intimidating question any
of us could be asked,
including me,
is tell me about your religious
or spiritual life now, right,
that's-- OK, but tell
me about the religious
or spiritual background
of your childhood.
Everyone has a story, everyone.
But more importantly, the
reason I ask that question,
although we may leave it behind
and not return to anything
like it, is about
where it plants people.
It plants people in a place
that is soft and searching,
much more soft and searching
than we present ourselves
to the world, and also
that happens to be a place
where a lot of us started
asking these questions
that we followed--
that we have followed
to the rest of our lives.
So, humanizing the people
and the subject at hand.
I could go on about this
but I do want to say,
this is a little bit of
a plug from my projects,
some of my colleagues are here.
As part of the Civil
Conversations Project,
a lot of people have been posing
precisely that question to us,
saying, you know,
"We want do this."
And so, we've been approaching
this on a couple of levels
and one is learning about all
the other projects that are
out there and there is
actually a lot online in the way
of resources and
guides and templates.
So one of the things we're doing
is actually mapping some of that
to put it in one place to,
you know, find the best of it
and to make available to people.
We don't really have to
invent the wheel here.
So one thing I can
say is stay tuned.
And go to onbeing.org
in maybe three months.
Because it's a perfectly
legitimate question and--
but there are some really
incredible things happening.
[ Pause ]
>> I just wanted to ask you--
your discussion brings to
me the concept of trust.
For me, personally, to really
do what you're trying to do is
to have a sense of trust
in the other person.
And I wanted to ask you how
do you personally deal with--
do you always trust?
Or do you just bring your
trust into the conversation
because it will bring
probably a better outcome
for the conversation.
How do you manage issues of
trust in a cynical, doubting,
manipulating, misinforming
environment that is so prevalent
in the world that we live in?
>> Yeah. So the question is
about this issue of trust
and how do you-- how does one
give oneself over to that.
And I-- you know, those dangers
that you're raising are real
and that's why I talk about
having-- you have to create.
There has to be structure
around this.
I mean, you know, there can also
be a great dinner party with it.
But the kinds of things
where you're talking
about with trust
would be an issue,
where people would genuinely
have reason not to feel safe.
That has to absolutely
be taking into account.
I also think that-- that,
I hate to keep coming back
to the same old issues 'cause
there are other issues.
But some of these areas
like abortion or, you know,
differences over
same sex marriage.
Issues over identity, sometimes
the people who are really
on the front lines of that
whose identity is being called
into question, probably
shouldn't be the first ones
in the room in that dialogue.
I think some of us who are not
intimately directly threatened
have to be bridge people.
You know, that we can't
ask everyone to muster
that trust to be in a room.
And we shouldn't.
But some of us without being
directly intimately threatened
would be able to put ourselves
in that place of saying--
you know, and this is where
we're talking about saying,
I really want to understand why
you can care so much about this.
I remember talking to Richard
Mouw who was the President
of Fuller Theological
Seminary which is a really one
of the most important
evangelical institutions
in the world and, you know
he is somebody who actually
on theological grounds,
doesn't believe
that churches should
bless same sex marriages,
but he also believes that the
measure of Christianity is much
about how you treat other people
as what positions you take.
And he also is very dismayed
by the vitriol and, you know,
what he said to me is I wish we
could stop trading, you know,
our insults and try to
understand the hopes
and fears we bring to this.
You know, just imagine a
reframed discussion around that.
Why are you so, you know,
what are you afraid of?
Can we give voice?
And also give voice to
our hopes around it.
But again, the people who are
most intimately involved maybe
aren't in that room, at
least in the beginning.
We can't necessarily ask
them to be vulnerable.
[ Pause ]
>> Hello, Krista.
It's wonderful to see you.
I'm a frequent listener of On
Being podcast and I thank you
so much for being here.
I remember sometime ago,
might been over a year ago,
I heard an interview that
you had with Gabe Lyons
and I believe it was Jim
Daly focused on the family.
>> Yeah.
>> And I thought it'd be great
to perhaps get Gabe Lyons or one
of them in conversation
with Gene Robinson.
And in fact, that's what's
happening here in a couple
of weeks, Gene-- Bishop Gene
Robinson is coming to Stanford
and Gabe Lyons is
coming to Stanford.
And I'm wondering what advice
you have for us on how to manage
that conversation that we're
hoping to have with them?
>> Yeah. So let me say, so, this
was one of these events we did
and I think the most-- It
was surprising to many people
that we had Jim Daly who is the
head of Focus on the Family.
And Focus on the
Family really stand--
is symbolic for a lot of
people of that very strident
and hateful face of Christianity
of the last few decades.
What's so interesting is
he's not James Dobson,
and he is also deeply
dismayed by that same face
which doesn't mean that he
doesn't have some opinions
that a lot of people
would disagree with.
But the spotlight has never
been shining on him 'cause he--
you know, he-- I mean, I hold my
fellow journalists accountable
for this as much as
the strident voices.
You know, it's like these
voices throw themselves in front
of microphones and cameras,
and that's where the
microphones and cameras go.
Again, this is somebody
who holds positions
that have intensified a lot
of these difficult debates,
but wishes to conduct himself
in a very, very different way,
which is to navigate
that and is navigating
that a different
way in his life.
So, what could I say about--
I just think, you know,
this is so simple but draw them
out as human beings and not
as representatives
including Gene Robinson.
Not as the symbol he became
but as the human being he is.
Frances Kissling
in her adventure has comment
two questions that she says
when you-- you know, that these
are questions you need to get
to the point that you can ask.
And the questions would be
what do I find attractive
in the position of the other?
You know, is there something
in them or their position,
or their passion that I can
respect, and also to be able
to honestly articulate
what makes me uncomfortable
in my own position?
And those are kind of magic
questions, you know, when I--
when we've done these
civil conversations events
in a few different contexts,
I introduced those questions.
You know, each side
answered them.
You have to build
up to that place
where those are the questions
you can post and that's
about humanizing and
creating the safe space.
But those-- I mean
those are some guides.
Does that help?
[ Pause ]
I'm sorry.
[ Pause ]
>> Do you think there's
any place anymore
in civil discussion for debate?
Because that's the way we often
frame these matters and we do it
in the academy as
well as other places.
Is a well-framed debate a
way to get out these issues,
or is everything you're telling
us that's no longer helpful?
>> Yeah. Well, you know,
there's a place for debate.
But everything shouldn't
be debated and one
of the worst things that goes
wrong when you turn something
into a debate is you reduce
it to two sides, you know.
And when we've taken this
debate model and we've applied
to these huge complicated,
intimate civilizational issues,
we've just-- we've
impoverished right there.
Right from the outset, we've
limited where we can go.
And the problem also-- I
mean as we've really taken
that to this macro level,
everything is defined-- we--
everything has two poles, right?
And what I'm so aware
of is most of us
on almost anything you could
name whether it's an economic
issue or a moral issue.
Most of us are not at this
poll or that poll, you know?
We may be far to the
right or far to the left.
I'm not sure I really
believe there is
such a thing as a center.
Everybody is somewhere
to the right of center,
to the left of center,
but most of us stop short
of those two positions,
and at the very list,
we know we have a
few open questions
or we have a few things
we're uncomfortable
with in our own position, right?
But all of our debate-- all
of our discussions get framed
in that debate which
only gives legitimacy
to those extreme positions.
So yeah, I think, as
I-- just as we get
to reject the framing questions
and start these conversations
in new places, we get to
say this is not a debate.
We can call it any
number of things.
We can do it any number of ways.
Sometimes actually-- sometimes
a most effective way to get
at the real deep
complexity in an issue is
to interview one person who's
lived a trajectory, you know,
from being here to being there.
It also doesn't have
to be multiple people.
[ Pause ]
>> Hi. A recurring theme of your
talk has been the re-imagining
of relationships--
>> Oh, I can't hear you.
Can you?
>> I'm sorry.
The re-imagining
of relationships is a
recurring theme of your talk.
I was wondering if you could
say anything about the role
or purpose of how we might
re-imagine our relationship
with nature in another
side especially when--
or effects on of-- of
manifest in a global,
entire earth wide scale.
I was just wondering if
you could say anything
about the relationship with
the nonhuman other if you will.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I have
a lot of thoughts about that.
It takes us a little bit
outside this discussion.
Although, I also think that that
question is something we need
to ponder together and a lot
of people are pondering that.
Again, this is really from a
different corner but I feel
like something that actually
religion has contributed
to is the way in 20th Century,
we got a very kind of chin
up understanding of
ourselves, you know?
I really feel Descartes
has a lot to answer for,
I think therefore I am.
And one thing that 21st people,
century people are doing is
rediscovering their bodies
like it sound so simple,
we got very disembodied.
And again, religion
was disembodied, right?
Like religion is now that,
you know, became this place
where you sit on a comfortable
pew and listen to a monologue.
And it used to be
this cathartic,
our spiritual traditions used
to be this cathartic places
where you were dancing,
and singing,
and laughing, and crying.
This physical and the fastest
growing spiritual traditions,
all of them are full
body spirituality.
So I think a lot about that and
what I also observe and hear
from other people from
different directions is that,
precisely when we get back--
that getting back into your body
which also means getting
into your body is a messy
imperfect thing, right?
It makes you more compassionate
towards all of life.
It's not necessarily
something we think we're doing,
and we're becoming more
getting into our physicality.
Yeah, and actually I think--
I think being more
embodied is all--
I mean it's related to this
discussion we're having
in this sense that I
think compassion flows
from being more embodied, just
it physically flows from that.
And, you know, if you look at
all these debates, you know,
there are all chin up, right?
They don't even acknowledge,
they cut,
even the talking heads, right,
that's the language we used,
they are actually cut off
from the complexity
of themselves, right.
I mean the same people is--
revelations come out about the
messiness of their reality.
So I actually think you can,
I mean that's how I
would draw a connection.
If, you know, understanding
ourselves
as creatures among
other creatures,
and that means our
relationship to each other,
and our relationship
to the natural world.
[ Pause ]
>> You talked about social
healing and I'm wondering
if there are certain realms
or areas that you are noticing
or identifying nationwide
of social healing
or are you really talking about
something that happens more
on that like individual or small
community level, but are there
like what you be able to name
like this a thing in our culture
that needs to be healed,
that kind of a top three--
>> Yeah.
>> -- to five list.
>> Oh, there's so many things
that need to be healed.
I mean, I think a
great wound that a lot
of people are feeling now is,
you know, income inequality
which is also a little bit--
it's kind of a dry
way to say it,
but I think that this is
incredibly painful for a lot
of us but people have no idea
what to do about it, you know?
So I'm really longing
to kind of try
to wrap my arms around
that like.
And I do believe that part
of the reason it becomes
such an abstraction is
because we actually--
we're so segregated in
so many ways, you know,
in every aspect of our lives.
We don't actually
have relationship
with those people
we'd like to help.
And so, because we
have no relationship,
we don't know them.
We can't have a robust
imagination
about what we could possibly
do to make a difference.
So that's one thing.
Something else I actually would
like to name is this
whole matter of bullying.
I actually want to call this
out because I think
something really--
I think we're in one of these
moments that I mentioned
like with interracial marriage,
we are suddenly looking
at something that has
just been, you know,
it's been around
forever and parents
and teachers would
just you say, you know,
"That's the way it is,"
right, "It's just--
that's just what happens."
We have just tolerated
this for generations.
So I mean, you know,
there's another terrible,
terrible story today
about a young girl
who committed suicide.
I mean these are terrible
things but what I actually want
to make us aware of is
this is a moment of growth,
and maybe the internet,
maybe the fact
that the cyber-bullying
made this so public
and so global has
actually contributed
to this being a moment
of awakening.
I'm kind of saying I want us to
like pat ourselves in the back
and say, look, because
this is not--
I mean clearly it's a
painful, protracted process.
It's not going to go away
tomorrow, but suddenly,
it's just-- it is one of these
moments where we shake our heads
and say, "How could we
have lived like that?"
So, you know, that
is like that's a form
of social healing
that's happening
but healing comes
by knowing the pain.
>> I really appreciate
your words and questions
so I'm glad you talked
about them tonight.
And I think I remember that you
have children, and I'm wondering
like how do you teach
conversation
and how do you teach--
and at what age can
people really converse?
And yeah, just the
education of conversation.
>> Well, the difficult thing
about raising children is,
as much as you want it to be
about you teach, you know,
it's just-- it's really
just about what you do
but which is really hard.
They're not listening to you
but they're watching you.
Yeah, you know, in terms of
conversation generationally
like raising new generations.
Again, I just think if
we started doing this--
I mean how do we learn language?
How do we learn any language?
We learn language because
people talk around us
and we will impart the art
of conversation and a love
of conversation, a respect
for conversation by doing it
and by showing it to kids.
And, you know, honestly, I
want to say, I think it can--
I just keep emphasizing this.
It can start really simple.
I think people should
have dinner parties more
and not worry about
everything being perfect.
I mean this is something people
just don't do in this culture,
and that's something that
absolutely rubs off on kids.
If you live in a home
where people are invited
over but we stress out.
So, I mean, I'm talking about
myself here too, you know,
you stress out so much about
do you have time to prepare it
and what will you cook, and
will the house be clean?
And we have to understand
that there's something
much more important
in life-giving that's possible
here and get over that.
And yeah, so I mean, I honestly
I can't imagine something
that could instill children with
a better regard for conversation
as part of life than living in
a home were people are invited
over to be in conversation.
>> How would [inaudible]
your children would ask the
best questions.
>> My children bring
me down to earth.
[ Laughter ]
I would tell my children
that you said that
and they would roll their eyes.
[ Laughter ]
[ Noise ]
>> I love the term
conversational entrepreneur
in your encouragements and
the thing that I'm struck
by is beyond the words and
beyond the generous questions
and the honoring
of the difficulty.
There's also the quality of our
presence in our way of being,
and yours is quite
remarkable and it comes
through in the radio show
and it's quite palpable
here tonight.
And my question for you is
what practices do you have
to bring forward this quality
of presence in way of being.
So that in a way
you're an invitation
into that soft certain place
without even the question
just through the presence.
>> Well, I also have my rough
sides, you know, I don't know.
I don't know how to
answer that question.
I-- this is kind of a
serious answer but I--
there's a sense in which I
started becoming who I am now
when I went through a
really serious depression
in my mid 30s.
I mean, a lot of things
obviously I was who I am but one
of the most kind
of countercultural spiritual
truths is this notion of,
you know, strength and weakness
which just it doesn't make
any sense in this culture
and it hardly make
sense to me either.
But the wise people I
interview and to the extent
that I have wisdom-- it is about
understanding that the things
that go wrong for you are also
part of your gifts to the world,
and it's about letting
those things,
your suffering be an opening
to the suffering of others.
It's something that unites you.
But again, you know, I-- that's
why my children are so great
like I tell people, I tell them
people say that I'm so serene,
you know, they just find
this uproariously funny.
And my colleagues would
find it funny too.
So, but, you know, I want
to say, yeah, presence,
I mean I do work at that.
And that I-- people say to
me, "Oh you must have come
from a family of great
listeners" and in fact,
I came from a family
where no one listened
and no one was present.
So, you know, to the extent
that I've cultivated that it's
in response to something
that I realized was absent
which comes back to the
point I made a minute ago
that we're only whole with
our darkness in our light,
both of those things together.
[ Pause ]
>> Hi. I was struck by
your comment earlier
about shimmering language
and the idea of expanding.
I've been concerned about
the diminishment of English
as a language and about the
role of the media in targeting
and focusing, and getting the
right word and the right phrase
to literally become triggers
for particular reactions.
And I would like to ask you to
look past the spiritual side,
because I'm an atheist,
to the journalist
and the media specialist side
and ask how do you
refocus language?
>> How could journalists
refocus language?
>> What's the role of the media?
What's was your role as a media
specialist in fixing this?
>> Well, right, you know,
journalism could be a healing
art, right, it could be.
I kind of have the
same answer that I--
the same feeling that I have
about politics which is that,
you know, it is changing,
it will change.
There are some pretty
incredible things happening,
there are something called the
Solutions Journalism Network
which is started, yeah--
so you've never heard
of it under the radar?
There-- and it started
by some young people.
There's-- one of them
who founded that is--
has a column in the New York
Times call the Fixes column.
We were just today a place in
the Bay Area called the Center
for Investigative Reporting
and they're doing
really interesting things
about humanizing the news.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> No. Is it alarming but
it's just like what's going
on in congress it's like--
>> It's the same thing.
>> We can't let that
define our take on reality
and we can't wait for journalism
to change to start looking
for the stories we want
to be reading, and yeah.
But it does, I think it's
redirecting our attention and,
you know, it's so interesting.
If you think about the
New York Times, right,
like I read the New
York Times Sundays now.
I don't read it during
the rest of the week,
but Sunday I read it religiously
and I have for years.
Just think about all these
years that on the front page
of the New York Times, it
says "All the news that's fit
to print" and that nobody
ever made fun of that, right?
Like, until about ten minutes
ago, I mean I don't know
if this is true,
we're not in New York,
but I mean in New York or,
you know, yeah, of course,
of course, six white guys can
sit around at noon everyday,
sift through everything
that's happening in the globe.
>> The Kardashians.
>> So, I mean I think at least
we're like waking up to--
and that also makes
it more confusing
because then the picture
is so huge, but yeah,
I think the question is not
how can we change immediate,
it's changing, it will
change, we just have
to redirect our attention and
really leaven what we get out of
that with other sources.
>> So before I thank Krista,
I want to call your attention
to the fact that you
have another opportunity
to meet with her.
Tomorrow morning there will be a
breakfast at nine in the CIRCLE,
the Center for Inter-Religious
Community Learning
and Experiences on the third
floor of the Old Union.
There are books in the lobby
that Krista will be happy
to sign and you can continue
the conversation with the
"flat friend" as well as the
"flesh and blood" friend.
And there also are on
the tables outside flyers
of upcoming events including
the one that was mentioned here,
Bishop Gene Robinson in
conversation with Gabe Lyons
and also in conversation
with Rabbi Steven Greenberg.
So there's a flyer
about that in the foyer.
When we began this evening,
a student came up to Krista
and asked her what animates her?
And her first two
words were "I listen."
And as we had the opportunity
to listen to her listening,
to absorb what she's learned
through her listening.
We've heard words that
shimmer and generous questions.
So I want to thank you
for giving us conversation
that matters and I was
thinking about the words
that are part of
Jewish liturgy--
[ Foreign Language ]
Blessed is the one who speaks
and worlds came into being.
So thank you for bringing
worlds into being.
[ Applause ]
>> For more, please
visit us at Stanford.edu.
