Twenty Reasons for Being – The Marginalian

Twenty years in the past as we speak, Krista Tippett birthed the life-force that’s On Being. It started as a small native public radio present and ended up as a beloved podcast making lives everywhere in the world infinitely extra livable and luminous. President Barack Obama gave her the Nationwide Humanities Medal for it. Hundreds of thousands gave her their hearts as she gave us the universe of hers.

It’s a landmark second for On Being because it shape-shifts into its next incarnation, and for Krista as a human being transferring by means of the levels of a human life.

To have a good time it, and to bow to the horizon of the following twenty years, I combed by means of the On Being archive to compose a twenty-line pastiche poem, constructed from the titles of episodes which have aired someday previously twenty years.

Right here it’s, with every line linking to the episode it got here from:

TWENTY REASONS FOR BEING

notice the rage
notice the silence —
silence and the presence
        of everything:

small truths
        and other surprises
what we nurture
how we live with loss
        saved by the beauty of the world

seeking language
        large enough
a life worthy of our breath

when no question
        seems big enough:

what if we get this        right?

this tiny slice of eternity —
mathematics, mystery,
        and the universe —

this fantastic argument
                        of being alive.