My heart is sore. Your heart is sore.

Let this be common ground between us.

Dear Friends,

The long cumulative conversation that is On Being has taught me to see the world, and tell the story of our time, in this way: through an eye on what is unfolding in human psyches and bodies and spirits.

This way of seeing naturally surfaces truths that are not partisan, or don’t want to be. We are profoundly distressed, intimately and globally, at a nervous-system level — and this distress crosses every identity and dividing line. Opinion polls have their uses, I suppose. But they don’t unearth that, beneath whatever simplistic answer I give to a simplistic question, my heart is sore. Your heart is sore. We do not want to live in a world of rage and cruelty, one human being to another. We do not want to live in a world in which we scroll through videos of real people humiliated and dying at the hands of other real people, with these videos at our children’s fingertips too.

We can disagree on questions of rights and laws, and those questions have their place. But I’ll say it plain: whether a human being is a citizen or an immigrant, a neighbor or a stranger, does not have any bearing whatsoever on the moral and spiritual question of whether they are being treated with cruelty or humanity.

There is nothing abstract or mysterious about this notion of humanity I’m invoking. It is carried in the phrase of Abraham Lincoln that has rippled through history, because it names something fundamentally real and true: “the better angels of our nature.” I believe that the same images and meanings surface naturally, in almost all of us, when we hear those words. I also know — with my eye on the human drama underlying everything we call “political” — that it becomes more and more difficult to believe in these meanings and be true to them when a body, or a body politic, is living in fear. My lens on the human condition will not let me forget that human beings on the giving end of unfolding scenes of cruelty are themselves in a dehumanized condition. They too are distressed inside, living in fear. This is not an excuse for anything, but it is a piece of the reality before us that we must also take seriously.

At the very same time, this is one of those moments when the strange and beautiful reality of the human condition rises in the face of what would deny it. In Minnesota, where I raised my children and grew this On Being Project, a world of care and dignity one human being towards another has flourished within and around all the images coming to us of violence and protest and despair. There are churches converted to food banks. There are families accompanying other families and neighbors delivering meals and other essentials to individuals who feel vulnerable for multitudes of reasons. There are strangers bearing witness, non-violently, as homes are approached and doors beaten down. There are teachers and librarians and healers stepping up to care for children and teenagers who are traumatized by all of this. I am hearing a thousand stories that are not making the “news” as I’m trying to follow it, but they too are the story of our time, and they are stories of what makes us human and humane.

I repeat: I cannot believe that this beautiful strangeness and complexity reside on one side of our political lines and not the other. A few years ago, I penned a few lines in this newsletter that have become my credo:

Enough of us see that we have a world to remake.

We want to meet what is hard and hurting.

We want to rise to what is beautiful and life-giving.

We want to do that where we live, and we want to do it walking alongside others.

We’re asking, where to begin?

We have a long way to go to find our way back to feeling our belonging to each other that has never stopped being true. But it is what we are called to. I cleave to my faith that there are “enough of us” longing to meet this calling.

The common ground of our sore hearts may be the place to begin, and return, and ever begin again.

With love,

Krista

P.S. I’m excited to tell you that we will be rolling out a season of new On Being episodes that embody and embolden healing and reasonable hope and resilient joy. Keep an eye on your inbox in coming weeks for that.

P.P.S. Poetry Unbound is out with a new season NOW. And if you’re not yet subscribed to Pádraig’s wonderful, growing Substack newsletter, you can sign up here. In his latest writing, he shares a moving poem written from these weeks in Minneapolis.

In the World

You’re Invited:

New York City, Thursday, February 26, 7 p.m. Krista will host a Well-Being Concert, presented by Carnegie Hall, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Grammy Award-winning tenor Nicholas Phan will perform works by J. S. Bach and Buxtehude, joined by Theotokos, a renowned sacred ensemble, and the Cathedral’s timeless, healing acoustics. Purchase tickets here.