To reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in life and society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift to Northern Ireland as one of its foremost living poets. He is a voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the force of words in a society that has moved away from sectarianism in living memory. The Good Friday Agreement was signed 20 years ago this month, and social healing is ongoing work to this day. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “The Vitality of Ordinary Things.” Find more at onbeing.org.

[Unedited] Michael Longley with Krista Tippett

The Becoming Wise podcast offers depth and discovery in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Each episode is curated from hundreds of big conversations with wise and graceful lives. Reset your day. Replenish your sense of yourself and the world. On Being Studios is the producer of On Being, This Movie Changed Me, and more to come. Krista Tippett is the author of the New York Times bestselling Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. President Obama honored her with the National Humanities Medal for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.”

Personal Journals

Society & Culture

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Season two of Becoming Wise is a wrap! We’re so grateful you joined us for these months of reflection and recentering. Before we go away to work on our next season, we’d love to hear from you. What did you love? How can we make the podcast even better? Go to onbeing.org/bwsurvey to tell us a little about yourself and what you’d like to hear next. Stay tuned for more episodes when we’re back with season three.

What did you love? What would you like to hear?

The last episode of season two. Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg are icons of American Buddhism, and they are joyful, longtime friends. They challenge us to reframe our anger by seeing love for our enemies as an act of self-compassion. “It’s very hard to see love as a force, as a power rather than as a weakness, but that is its reality,” Salzberg says.
Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher and the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She is the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” Her other books include “Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness,” “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation,” and “Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace.”
Robert Thurman is the president of the Tibet House U.S. and the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” His latest book is “Man of Peace,” an illustrated biography of the Dalai Lama.
Find the transcript at onbeing.org.

Releasing Anger as an Act of Self-Compassion | Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of our wisest models on the territory of reckoning with past wrongs that infuse and haunt the present. In the 1990s, he helped galvanize South Africa’s peaceful transition to democracy after decades of white supremacy as the law of the land. He tells a story from his time chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to those who would fully confess their crimes — of how healing and human redemption unfold. “Human beings can leave you speechless, really. They can leave you speechless by the horrible things they do, but they also leave you speechless with the incredible things,” he says.
Desmond Tutu is an Anglican archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He has written numerous books for adults and children — including “The Rainbow People of God” and, together with his good friend the Dalai Lama, “The Book of Joy.”
Find the transcript at onbeing.org.

Healing Through Story | Desmond Tutu

The physicist Leonard Mlodinow changes how we think about the agency we have in shaping our own destinies. As a scientist, he works with principles like Brownian motion, by which Einstein helped verify the existence of molecules and atoms. As the child of Holocaust survivors, he dances with the experience we all have: that life never goes as planned, and yet the choices we make can matter. “The course of your life depends on how you react to opportunities and challenges that randomness presents to you,” he says.
Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist and the author of several books, including “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” “Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior,” and his latest, “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World.”
Find the transcript at onbeing.org.

The Daily Opportunity in Randomness | Leonard Mlodinow

Public theologian Ruby Sales opens up what it was like to be a teenage participant in the civil rights movement — including the impatience she had with religion and how she circled back, through her experiences of the movement, to a sense of the deep reason for inner life and religious groundings. The question she carries with her, “Where does it hurt?”, models new ways for us to understand one another.
Sales is the founder and director of the Spirit House Project. She was recently honored at the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum.
Find the transcript at onbeing.org.

[Unedited] Michael Longley with Krista Tippett

Download our free app to listen on your phone