Krista Tippett - Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

T his book was many years in the making, and has been held and made possible by a life-giving ecosystem of friends, family, colleagues, and conversation partners near and far. I must begin with the elegant and erudite Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency, who kept this project alive across years when I did not believe I could do it. She is the best champion a writer could have, and at pivotal moments she provided precisely the insightand friendshipI needed to move forward. Scott Moyers and Ann Godoff saw potential in this manuscript when it was still messy and largely unformed. I will always be grateful for that and for Scotts sensitive editorial intelligence. Thanks also to the whole team at Penguin Press, especially Sarah Hutson, Meghan White, and Matt Boyd, and to Jacqueline Ko at Wylie. Eli Horowitz provided helpful writer whispering at an early, difficult stage of this writing.

I was helped in carving out time and mental space by a few people and places. Nell Hillsley has been a friend and source of courage and inspiration from the very beginning of my adventures in radio and writing, and once again she and Van Lawrence provided a beautiful, hospitable space for me to write. Susan Boren and Steve King also offered respite and friendship in their lovely world. Will Rosenzweig opened his fantastic home/garden/salon, the IdeaGarden. I found an early muse while at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. The magical Ragdale Foundations writers retreat outside Chicago took me in at blessedly short notice. The exquisite Mesa Refuge writers retreat in Point Reyes, California, was the place I finally found the voice, my voice, for this manuscript. Across these years, I found restoration again and again at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, and I was fortunate to retreat there for a last, cathartic edit. The Birchwood Caf in Minneapolis is my enduring place of local, momentary retreat, and many of the words in here have spent time there with beautiful local food, wine, coffee, and company.

My incredible and beloved team of comrades at On Being is a source of everyday joy and inspiration. Our move to independent enterprise in 2013 delayed and complicated the writing of this book, but it ultimately unleashed a creativity, joy, and integrity that I had not known in my working life before. Trent Gilliss has been my partner in crime now for a dozen years, and it is such an honor and pleasure to work with a person who is not only brilliant and prodigiously creative and productive, but always growing, always searching, always deepening. Lily Percy has brought a genius and an incredible spirit of excellence and fun to leading our production process and in so doing literally freed me to be able to write and do so much else. Chris Heagle is a creative master of the art and craft of radio, of the wonders of audio, and he has become such an essential partner and friend in helping me grow more winsomely into my own craft. I cannot believe my good fortune each and every day when I begin work with these three along with the amazing teamat this writingof Mariah Helgeson, Maia Tarrell, Annie Parsons, Marie Sambilay, Aseel Zahran, Bethanie Kloecker, and Michelle Keeley. Parker Palmer, Omid Safi, Courtney Martin, and Sharon Salzberg are part of the On Being team through the fabulous voice they bring weekly to our blog, and they are accompanied by others too numerous to name, spiritual geniuses of the everyday. Graham Griffith has been a tremendous friend and colleague of my work in these years, as has Padraig OTuama of the Corrymeela Community and the one and only Seth Godin. Our wonderful board members are Julie Zelle, Jay Cowles, and Jeffrey Walker. I am constantly amazed by our design colleagues at Pentagram, especially Emily Oberman and Elliott Walker, and Im beyond grateful for their beautiful imagining of the jacket of this book.

A world of generous and gracious funding partnership underpins On Being and has made my life of conversation possible. It includes the Ford Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the John Templeton Foundation, Bill and Penny George, Bill and Bonnie Clarke of the Osprey Foundation, Kalliopeia Foundation, and in earlier years the Lilly Endowment, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the NEH, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. I am privileged to be part of these networks of companionship, support, and inspiration, and also of the remarkable network of community and goodness that is public radio. I was fortunate to be able to create the show at Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media. Public radio stations around the United States were the place all of the conversations in this book were initially welcomed and hosted. Our friends at StoryCorps and The Moth, especially Dave Isay and Catherine Burns, are exemplars of the best public service tradition of public radio, and provided special comradeship for the spirit and some of the passages in this book.

Webs of friendship and chosen family have held meespecially Kathy Crowley and her crew, Laurisa Sellers, Arnie Shore, Kerri Miller, Chris Cohen, Betsy Hodges, Larry Jacobs, Julie Shumacher, Pauline Boss, Dudley Riggs, Irene Dunkley, Ulrich Koestlin, Beate Herbig, Candace Eck, fellow hockey moms Shelley Berven and Wendy Tully, and my childhood best friend and anchor Karen Fluke and her parents, Nita and the late John Fluke. I once listed my dear, spectacular friend Serene Jones as my spiritual adviser, and she is that and so much more. Our impassioned conversations across the last six years, and through travel and adventures together and apart, have shaped this writing in a thousand ways and flow all the way through it. And my actual family, especially my wise mother, Charlotte Lankard, together with Gene Rainbolt, who has become so important to me, has been enduringly loving and supportive. A shout out also to J. T. Weedman, Jayna Oakley Haney, and Bart Weedman. This book could only be dedicated, as it is, to my utterly delightful and admirable children, the people with whom I am privileged to share life and to continue, myself, to grow up.