Mary Oliver interview

I've been spending some time in airplanes, airports, and trains this past week, thanks to the record breaking snow in Boston (more on that trip in a different post).  I often wish I could read while I'm in these types of holding patterns, expected or unexpected hours of waiting; time that is completely out of my control.  I've learned that the environment is too stressful for me to do quality thinking or reading, and I more easily get motion sick.  Yet I want to be engaged in something.  So I have been listening to NPR's On Being podcast, a lot.  Krista Tippett's voice is calming and elicits a meditative sense of listening and letting go of the chaos around me.  If you don't know the radio program, I suggest tuning in to the recent, rare interview with Mary Oliver (Feb 5th).  She reads some new poems, describes her writing discipline, and highlights the challenge of writing in the first person while enabling the reader to embody the "I" in the poems.  She is such a private person, and has aged more than I had realized, because her poetry is so alive and her writing is so prolific.  Do any of you remember the reading she gave in Minneapolis ~8 years ago?   What a night!

Other On Being favorites include:
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Seeing the Underside and Seeing God: Tattoos, Tradition, and Grace (Oct 23rd)
&
Joanna Macy - A Wild Love For the World (Nov 6th, "A philosopher of ecology, Joanna's path wound from CIA to Tibetan Buddhism, to translating the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that exquisite poetry as a lens on her wisdom on the great dramas of our time...")

Once you get started, you'll find that listening to several episodes in one sitting is nothing at all.