The News That Is ‘Breaking’ Is Never Seeing Things Whole

On deep truth, deep time, and the world ahead.

Dear Friends,

It is, admittedly, hard to write something this week that feels fitting to the moment or wise. The Moment is overwhelming on so many fronts.

I’ve found myself returning to the notion of Deep Truth, a core premise of physics first introduced to me by the wise and wonderful Nobel physicist Frank Wilzcek. Deep truths are not surface truths that can be reduced to mere fact, proven or unproven. In *fact*, one feature of a deep truth is that its opposite is also likely true.

This is an age of devastating tumult. It is an age of magnificent possibility. Much is breaking. Much is being born. The two go hand in hand, and that is one of the deepest and strangest, most terrible and most redemptive truths of human reality.

It is harder for us to train our eyes and imaginations on the beauty and creativity that are so alive in our world, the generative learning and stretching that are underway. These realities of our time are most visible close to home, in the worlds that we can see and touch. They are quiet. They do not trip the fear center of our brains, which inclines us to attend more seriously in every moment to what feels dangerous and destructive. And, in our time, that narrative of danger and destruction comes to us a thousand times, a thousand ways, each day.

Just after the new year I was asked to offer a few words at a gathering in Washington D.C. for the outgoing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and his team of colleagues (you may watch the moving ceremony here). I was delighted to honor these public servants who led with such dignity and curiosity and care.

Many people lauded Dr. Murthy’s calm and calming presence. Deep truth: this is a gentle human capacity. And: there is scarcely a calling that could be more powerful to bring to our world of fear and pain. We need settled, grounded bodies and spirits in order to meet what is hard and hurting and rise to what is beautiful and life-giving.

I want to be honest here: I am devastated and demoralized, too, by this Moment’s ravages, its shocking counterpoints of fragility and hubris. My heart breaks for the many human beings on the sharp edges of all that is breaking. We’re called to take what is harmful seriously and to care and protect, actively, as much as to calm, and Dr. Murthy does this too.

And (not but)… there is such a thing as “deep time” too — the view of time of the geologist as well as the mystic, the long arc of the moral universe that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of. Deep time doesn’t recognize the delineations we make in terms of years. It will see what is being seeded, what we tend across generations. What grows.

The news that is, as we say ‘breaking,’ is never seeing things whole.

Will you be my comrade in seeing things deep and whole and so keeping the possibility alive that wholeness and healing are what we grow and live into?

In next month’s Pause, I’ll share some On Being offerings we’ll be making towards this in the months ahead, in the podcast feed and beyond.

With love, and a muscular hope,

Krista

An offering: I was interviewed on this podcast of Christianity Today, The Bulletin, before the November election. But it brought forth so much of what I want to say in this new year: on the human drama that underlies our political drama, on the fracture within ourselves that lies beneath the fracture of our society — and on pondering and attending to these things, in order to be present to the larger world across our many divides.

I was moved by the lovely host Mike Cooper’s offering that the people who listen to this podcast “feel to some extent spiritually and to a large extent politically homeless. Their options don’t represent them well."

I think that describes almost all of us right now.

In the World

Attend and Listen

Krista will be in conversation with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver at the On Air Festival in NYC on February 21, 2025. Day passes can be purchased to attend Friday’s programming. The interview will be livestreamed on WKCR. We will also let you know when the interview is available in our podcast feed.

Enjoy a unique blend of mindfulness and music at Carnegie Hall on February 1, 2025. Part of the innovative Well-Being Concert, the event will feature the music of Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita, and Gustavo Ovalles, a trio who NPR described as sounding "as if it was dropped directly from the heavens of musical compatibility." The performance is presented as part of Nuestros sonidos (“Our Sounds”): Celebrating Latin Culture in the US. A small amount of tickets remain available.

Join us for "On the Mystery and Art of Living: Foundations for Being Alive Now" at Yale. Named Yale University's Chubb Fellow for Spring 2025, Krista will speak on Wednesday, February 12, 4 - 5:30 pm. Zhang Auditorium, Evans Hall, Yale School of Management, 165 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. Admission is free to the general public. Please register to attend.