Krista Tippett on Humility, Mystery, and Self-Knowledge

The Table Audio w/ Evan Rosa

Evan Rosa interviews Krista Tippett (host of On Being and author of Becoming Wise) on humility, mystery, and self-knowledge. We all admire and praise and strive to be like humble people. St. Augustine is on record, and has been quoted across the Christian tradition: “almost the whole of Christian teaching is humility.” (De Virginitate 31). Augustine even once instructed a student named Dioscorus, “If you were to ask me, however often you might repeat the question, what are the instructions of the Christian religion, I would be disposed to answer always and only, 'Humility.’” (Letter 118.3.22) St. Thomas Aquinas considers humility foundational and the beginning of virtue precisely because it opens us up to the formative power of others—exemplars—to apprentice ourselves to them—apprenticeship especially to the Holy Spirit.

#About Krista Tippett

(@KristaTippett) Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times best-selling author. In 2014, she received the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of ​every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”

Krista grew up in Oklahoma, the granddaughter of a Southern Baptist preacher. She studied history at Brown University and went to Bonn, West Germany in 1983 on a Fulbright Scholarship to study politics in Cold War Europe. In her 20s, she ended up in divided Berlin for most of the 1980s, first as The New York Times stringer and a freelance correspondent for Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, the BBC, and Die Zeit. She later became a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany.

Krista left Berlin in 1988, the year before the Wall fell. She lived in Spain, England, and Scotland for a time, then pursued a M.Div. from Yale. When she graduated in 1994, she saw a black hole where intelligent coverage of religion should be. As she conducted a far-flung oral history project for the Benedictines of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, she began to imagine radio conversations about the spiritual and intellectual content of faith that could open imaginations and enrich public life.

In 2007, Krista published her first book, Speaking of Faith. It is a memoir of religion in our time, including her move from geopolitical engagement to theology and the cumulative wisdom of her interviews these past years. In 2010, she published Einstein’s God, drawn from her interviews at the intersection of science, medicine, and spiritual inquiry. And now, Krista’s New York Times best-seller Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living opens into the questions and challenges of this century. Maria Popova calls it “a tremendously vitalizing read — a wellspring of nuance and dimension amid our Flatland of artificial polarities, touching on every significant aspect of human life with great gentleness and a firm grasp of human goodness.”

Krista’s two children are at the center of her life. She also loves cooking for her children and their friends, radio plays, beautiful writing, great science fiction, cross country skiing, and hot yoga.

#Show Notes
00:01 - Is humility a joke? Is it self-defeating?

00:30 - The elusive virtue of humility

01:00 - Political examples of self-defeating humility

01:44 - “What is the whole teaching of Christianity?” according to St. Augustine

02:15 - St. Thomas Aquinas on humility as the beginning of virtue

02:30 - Introductions, Humility, Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise

04:32 - Becoming Wise’s book dedication; children as beloved teachers

08:00 - Homo quaerens

08:20 - Mountains of mystery according to Flannery O’Connor and Krista Tippett (sections of Becoming Wise)

10:15 - Humility, the companion to curiosity and delight; the humility of the child

11:00 - Negative connotations of humility, humility based in reality and a stance in wonder

15:10 - Resilience: Growing Stronger Through Struggle

16:45 - Self-knowledge; Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos; Nietzsche on the difficulty of self-knowledge; humanity’s most vexing problem

19:10 - Complications, the difficult work of humility and self-knowledge; attentiveness, searching, and love

20:16 - On love and humility held in community; “loving, knowing, becoming”

21:25 - Final thoughts and next episode preview

22:34 - Credits