The host of NPR’s On Being draws on conversations with poets, scientists, theologians, and other seekers of truth, focusing on five concepts—words, flesh, love, faith, and hope.
Becoming Wise challenges all forms of dogma, in science, politics and philosophy as well as religion, and it affirms the holiness of the body and the glory of the inquiring mind. While our dominant media suggest that humans are incorrigibly selfish and greedy and cruel, Tippett and her conversation partners demonstrate that the longing to lead a good life, a moral life, remains powerful and pervasive in our day.
The reader (at least this reader) cannot help but become a grateful voyeur, as Tippett prods and dives into robust exchanges with physician Rachel Naomi Remen, scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, essayist Pico Iyer and countless other big thinkers ... Not light reading, but inspiring reading, for those willing to pull up a chair.
With Becoming Wise, Tippett gives herself an opportunity to speak her mind—and does so with a soft-spoken breadth of understanding in keeping with the tone of her program. As the title suggests, Becoming Wise is a thoughtful examination of what it means to be fully human and aware, open eyed in the face of 'the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life.'
