Creating Our Own Lives

By On Being Studios

What's Creating Our Own Lives about?

We’re called to create a better world, but what about the more immediate task of creating our own lives? Inspired by a quote of Thomas Merton. Limited series (2016-2017) that explored running as a spiritual practice and humor as a tool for survival. Hosted by Lily Percy.

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Creating Our Own Lives episodes:

01.24.2019
Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — Un-becoming
The topic of the day was “courage,” with two singular, admired women (who happen to be married to each other): soccer icon Abby Wambach and writer/philanthropist Glennon Doyle. Abby is an Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion. Glennon entered...
01.24.2019
[Unedited] Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach with Krista Tippett
The topic of the day was “courage,” with two singular, admired women (who happen to be married to each other): soccer icon Abby Wambach and writer/philanthropist Glennon Doyle. Abby is an Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion. Glennon entered...
01.17.2019
Mary Oliver — Listening to the World
Mary Oliver was one of our greatest and most beloved poets. She is often quoted by people across ages and backgrounds — and it’s fitting, since she described poetry as a sacred community ritual. “When you write a poem, you...
01.17.2019
[Unedited] Mary Oliver with Krista Tippett
Mary Oliver was one of our greatest and most beloved poets. She is often quoted by people across ages and backgrounds — and it’s fitting, since she described poetry as a sacred community ritual. “When you write a poem, you...
01.10.2019
Claudia Rankine — How Can I Say This So We Can Stay in This Car Together?
The poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine says every conversation about race doesn’t need to be about racism. But she says all of us — and especially white people — need to find a way to talk about it, even...
01.10.2019
[Unedited] Claudia Rankine with Krista Tippett
The poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine says every conversation about race doesn’t need to be about racism. But she says all of us — and especially white people — need to find a way to talk about it, even...
01.03.2019
Maira Kalman — Daily Things to Fall in Love With
Writer and illustrator Maira Kalman is well known for her books for children and adults, her love of dogs, and her “New Yorker” covers. Her words and pictures bring life’s intrinsic quirkiness and whimsy into relief right alongside life’s intrinsic...
01.03.2019
[Unedited] Maira Kalman with Krista Tippett
To be in conversation with Maira Kalman is like wandering into one of her cartoons in The New Yorker. Millions have been prompted to smile and think by her illustrated revision of Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style” or a...
12.27.2018
David Whyte — The Conversational Nature of Reality
The poet-philosopher. To ask beautiful questions in unbeautiful moments. “Your great mistake is to act the drama / as if you were alone.” Rest as the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. The...
12.27.2018
[Unedited] David Whyte with Krista Tippett
The poet-philosopher. To ask beautiful questions in unbeautiful moments. “Your great mistake is to act the drama / as if you were alone.” Rest as the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. The...
12.20.2018
Walter Brueggemann — The Prophetic Imagination
The great scholar and preacher. “The task is reframing so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.” Prophets are also always poets. “A society finally cannot live without the...
12.20.2018
[Unedited] Walter Brueggemann with Krista Tippett
The great scholar and preacher. “Reframing so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.” The disarming use of language. “A society finally cannot live without the quality of mercy.” Walter...
12.13.2018
Pauline Boss — The Myth of Closure
The family therapist who created the field of “ambiguous loss” — loss without closure. Complicated grief: parents, divorce, addiction, dementia, aging. “You love somebody. And when they’re lost, you still care about them. You can’t just turn it off.” There is...
12.13.2018
[Unedited] Pauline Boss with Krista Tippett
The family therapist who created the field of “ambiguous loss” — loss without closure. Complicated grief: parents, divorce, addiction, dementia, aging. “You love somebody. And when they’re lost, you still care about them. You can’t just turn it off.” There is...
12.06.2018
Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein — #MeToo Through a Solutions Lens
The feminist journalist and the psychotherapist. “It’s partners and lovers and spouses…fathers and brothers and sons and friends.” The difference between apology and forgiveness. “Men are used to trying to fix things.” Trauma, and also healing. What we are naming with...
12.06.2018
[Unedited] Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein with Krista Tippett
The feminist journalist and the psychotherapist. “It’s partners and lovers and spouses…fathers and brothers and sons and friends.” The difference between apology and forgiveness. “Men are used to trying to fix things.” Trauma, and also healing. What we are naming with...
12.03.2018
Living the Questions: What does civility actually mean, and is it enough?
A question from Kevin: “I have been hearing a lot of deconstruction of the word ‘civility.’ The debate around this word has become, like so many other things, binary. ‘Civility’ is either a tool of oppressors to silence those on...
11.29.2018
Pico Iyer — The Urgency of Slowing Down
Absorption as a definition of happiness. “To bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.” Traveling not in order to move around but in order to be moved. His friend Leonard Cohen. Stillness & silence as a...
11.29.2018
[Unedited] Pico Iyer with Krista Tippett
Absorption as a definition of happiness. “To bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.” Traveling not in order to move around but in order to be moved. His friend Leonard Cohen. Stillness & silence as a...
11.22.2018
Rachel Naomi Remen — The Difference Between Fixing and Healing
The wise physician and lyrical author. How our losses actually help us to live. Perfection as the booby prize in life. “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.” “Stories are the flesh we put on the bones of the...
11.22.2018
[Unedited] Rachel Naomi Remen with Krista Tippett
The wise physician and lyrical author. How our losses actually help us to live. Perfection as the booby prize in life. “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.” “Stories are the flesh we put on the bones of the...
11.15.2018
Anand Giridharadas — When the Market Is Our Only Language
We Americans revere the creation of wealth. Anand Giridharadas wants us to examine this and how it shapes our life together. This is a challenging conversation but a generative one: about the implicit moral equations behind a notion like “win-win”—...
11.15.2018
[Unedited] Anand Giridharadas with Krista Tippett
We Americans revere the creation of wealth. Anand Giridharadas wants us to examine this and how it shapes our life together. This is a challenging conversation but a generative one: about the implicit moral equations behind a notion like “win-win”...
11.08.2018
James Doty — The Magic Shop of the Brain
A brain surgeon. “The brain is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.” The science of compassion. The baggage of evolution. The two way street of “neural innovation that comes from the brain stem into the heart.” Brain...
11.08.2018
[Unedited] James Doty with Krista Tippett
A brain surgeon. “The brain is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.” The science of compassion. The baggage of evolution. The two way street of “neural innovation that comes from the brain stem into the heart.” Brain...
11.01.2018
Tracy K. Smith — love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak
The U.S. Poet Laureate. “There’s this whole other narrative unfolding.” How history “which once felt so remote, feels closer and active and unresolved.” Listening for the spaces that are under-imagined. “Little leaps of imagination” that can restore us. Tracy K. Smith...
11.01.2018
[Unedited] Tracy K. Smith with Krista Tippett
The U.S. Poet Laureate. “There’s this whole other narrative unfolding.” How history “which once felt so remote, feels closer and active and unresolved.” Listening for the spaces that are under-imagined. “Little leaps of imagination” that can restore us. Tracy K. Smith...
10.25.2018
Mirabai Bush — Contemplation, Life, and Work
Co-creator of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “There is a calming, quieting, centering practice that leads to insight in every tradition.” Contemplative practice and social change. Mindful emailing. Creative, relational, ritual, cyclical. Mirabai Bush works at an emerging 21st...
10.25.2018
[Unedited] Mirabai Bush with Krista Tippett
Co-creator of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “There is a calming, quieting, centering practice that leads to insight in every tradition.” Contemplative practice and social change. Mindful emailing. Creative, relational, ritual, cyclical. Mirabai Bush works at an emerging 21st...
10.18.2018
Arlie Hochschild — The Deep Stories of Our Time
A creator of the field of the sociology of emotion. Treating emotion seriously in our life together. “I could see what they couldn’t see but not what I couldn’t see.” Our stories as “felt” not merely factual. Caring is not...
10.18.2018
[Unedited] Arlie Hochschild with Krista Tippett
A creator of the field of the sociology of emotion. Treating emotion seriously in our life together. “I could see what they couldn’t see but not what I couldn’t see.” Our stories as “felt” not merely factual. Caring is not...
10.15.2018
David Whyte — Poetry from the On Being Gathering (Closing Words)
“The sense of having walked from far inside yourself / out into the revelation, to have risked yourself / for something that seemed to stand both inside you / and far beyond you, that called you back” David Whyte sent us...
10.11.2018
Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson — Relationship Across Rupture
What happens when you call your Internet trolls. The peril of forgetting our next door neighbors. “You don’t have to love people to not hate them.” “People believe things that are mutually contradictory; I think we all do. I know I...
10.11.2018
[Unedited] Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson with Krista Tippett
“People believe things that are mutually contradictory; I think we all do. I know I do.” — Erick Erickson Earlier this year, the University of Montana invited On Being to attempt an outside the box civil conversation between two political pundits...
10.08.2018
Living the Questions: Can conversation make any difference at a moment like this?
“Conversation is not just about words passing between mouths and ears. It’s about shared life. Listening is about bringing our lives into conversation.” About the Living the Questions series, from Krista Tippett: “I think of a good conversation as an adventure. You...
10.04.2018
Layli Long Soldier — The Freedom of Real Apologies
The Oglala Lakota poet. “I wanted as much as possible to avoid this nostalgic portraiture of a Native life.” The reward and joy of patience. The difference between guilt, shame, and freedom from denial. When apologies are done well. Layli Long...
10.04.2018
[Unedited] Layli Long Soldier with Krista Tippett
The Oglala Lakota poet. “I wanted as much as possible to avoid this nostalgic portraiture of a Native life.” The reward and joy of patience. The difference between guilt, shame, and freedom from denial. When apologies are done well. Layli Long...
10.01.2018
Poetry From the On Being Gathering — John Paul Lederach
A series of haikus from peacemaker John Paul Lederach on the fourth day of our On Being Gathering. This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for...
09.27.2018
Frances Kissling — What Is Good in the Position of the Other
From abortion activist to bridge person. Questions to break out of intractable polarization. Wisdom beyond the news cycle. “What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you...
09.27.2018
[Unedited] Frances Kissling with Krista Tippett
From abortion activist to bridge person. Questions to break out of intractable polarization. Wisdom beyond the news cycle. “What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you...
09.24.2018
Poetry From the On Being Gathering — Marilyn Nelson
A morning of poetry with Marilyn Nelson from the third day of our On Being Gathering. This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation,...
09.20.2018
Seth Godin — Life, the Internet, and Everything
“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.” Seth...
09.20.2018
[Unedited] Seth Godin with Krista Tippett
“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.” Seth...
09.17.2018
Poetry from the On Being Gathering — Naomi Shihab Nye
A morning of poetry with Naomi Shihab Nye from the second day of our On Being Gathering. This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection,...
09.13.2018
Eula Biss — Let's Talk About Whiteness
“If you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. I’ve worked with students who could barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.” This conversation was inspired by Eula Biss’s stunning New York Times...
09.13.2018
[Unedited] Eula Biss with Krista Tippett
“If you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. I’ve worked with students who could barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.” This conversation was inspired by Eula Biss’s stunning New York Times...
09.10.2018
Poetry From the On Being Gathering — David Whyte (Opening Night)
An evening of poetry with David Whyte from the first day of our On Being Gathering. This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation,...
09.06.2018
Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson — Choosing Words That Deepen the Argument of Being Alive
Two poet/contemplative/social creatives. To make sense in times of senselessness. Prayer is words and shape and art around desperation and delight and disappointment and desire. “Shame’s first language is the body.” Dignifying the desires we wish to name. “We erase...
09.06.2018
[Unedited] Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson with Krista Tippett
Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson are beloved teachers to many. To bring them together at the On Being Gathering was a delight and a balm. Marilyn is a poet and professor and contemplative, an excavator of stories that would...
08.30.2018
Eugene Peterson — The Bible, Poetry, and Active Imagination
A beloved pastor and biblical interpreter. The poetry of the Bible as what keeps it alive to the world. The spirituality of loving books. Reimagining God. Prayers as tools not for doing and getting but for being and becoming. “Prayers are...

What's Creating Our Own Lives about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Creating Our Own Lives episodes:

Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — Un-becoming

[Unedited] Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach with Krista Tippett

Mary Oliver — Listening to the World

[Unedited] Mary Oliver with Krista Tippett

Claudia Rankine — How Can I Say This So We Can Stay in This Car Together?

[Unedited] Claudia Rankine with Krista Tippett

Maira Kalman — Daily Things to Fall in Love With

[Unedited] Maira Kalman with Krista Tippett

David Whyte — The Conversational Nature of Reality

[Unedited] David Whyte with Krista Tippett

Walter Brueggemann — The Prophetic Imagination

[Unedited] Walter Brueggemann with Krista Tippett

Pauline Boss — The Myth of Closure

[Unedited] Pauline Boss with Krista Tippett

Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein — #MeToo Through a Solutions Lens

[Unedited] Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein with Krista Tippett

Living the Questions: What does civility actually mean, and is it enough?

Pico Iyer — The Urgency of Slowing Down

[Unedited] Pico Iyer with Krista Tippett

Rachel Naomi Remen — The Difference Between Fixing and Healing

[Unedited] Rachel Naomi Remen with Krista Tippett

Anand Giridharadas — When the Market Is Our Only Language

[Unedited] Anand Giridharadas with Krista Tippett

James Doty — The Magic Shop of the Brain

[Unedited] James Doty with Krista Tippett

Tracy K. Smith — love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak

[Unedited] Tracy K. Smith with Krista Tippett

Mirabai Bush — Contemplation, Life, and Work

[Unedited] Mirabai Bush with Krista Tippett

Arlie Hochschild — The Deep Stories of Our Time

[Unedited] Arlie Hochschild with Krista Tippett

David Whyte — Poetry from the On Being Gathering (Closing Words)

Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson — Relationship Across Rupture

[Unedited] Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson with Krista Tippett

Living the Questions: Can conversation make any difference at a moment like this?

Layli Long Soldier — The Freedom of Real Apologies

[Unedited] Layli Long Soldier with Krista Tippett

Poetry From the On Being Gathering — John Paul Lederach

Frances Kissling — What Is Good in the Position of the Other

[Unedited] Frances Kissling with Krista Tippett

Poetry From the On Being Gathering — Marilyn Nelson

Seth Godin — Life, the Internet, and Everything

[Unedited] Seth Godin with Krista Tippett

Poetry from the On Being Gathering — Naomi Shihab Nye

Eula Biss — Let's Talk About Whiteness

[Unedited] Eula Biss with Krista Tippett

Poetry From the On Being Gathering — David Whyte (Opening Night)

Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson — Choosing Words That Deepen the Argument of Being Alive

[Unedited] Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson with Krista Tippett

Eugene Peterson — The Bible, Poetry, and Active Imagination