"We are Alive to Imagination and Possibility"
"… We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be."
Dear Friends,
As we thought we were winding down production for the year, the very special Nikki Giovanni died, and so we followed a final calling for 2024 to send the conversation I once had with her out in remembrance and celebration. It was uncanny, actually, to revisit her words and wisdom and find them so pointedly rich with solace for now. Many of us have been disabused in these years from any sense that the world progresses in a peaceful, linear path of our planning and choosing. Or, perhaps better said, we’ve been released from illusions that didn’t serve, and given to grapple with reality with all its sharp edges and strangeness. One of the things that jumps out at me about Nikki Giovanni more vividly now is how she lived life as a great beckoning to learn and grow through all circumstances. She seems to have done this to the end, with gusto and a commitment to taking pleasure wherever and whenever she could find it along the way.
“As I have grown older, I refuse to let who I was at 25 inform or make me be who somebody else thinks I should be at 72.”
“Don’t waste what you know. You’d be surprised at how many people actually waste what they know, not to mention waste what they feel.”
“Everything is a lesson. And so you have to find out what’s the lesson, and how do I embrace this lesson, and how do I go forward? And you have to watch out for the bitterness. That’s what you don’t want to be bothered with.”
It seems to me that in this age, this call to keep learning and growing is also collective, national, global. She taught at Virginia Tech for decades, and was a beacon of courage after a terrible shooting there in 2007 foreshadowed more violence to come in our country. Lines of poetry she wrote for that community feel present and urgent for our communal hearts — words we might stand before reverently together amidst ongoing fracture in the whole wide world:
We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning… We are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
…We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all this sadness.
Whatever sadness in your life and for the world that you are holding as this year draws to a close, I hope you are also able to tether to what you love, as Nikki Giovanni and all the wise souls I’ve interviewed commend — to cleave to what brings you joy and move forward without being consumed by bitterness. This is spiritual discipline. Yet part of that discipline, too, is to know our need of others to help carry and hold this intention on the days when it is too much to ask of ourselves.
I’ll go quiet here for a few weeks, but will be back with the Pause as a monthly offering in 2025.
I send this with blessings for the holidays, wishing a peaceful turn of the year for you and yours, and with much love, as always,
Krista
In the World
Listen, Watch, Attend
Poetry Unbound is Back!
A new season is underway AND the new year will bring two new books in early 2025 — 44 Poems On Being with Each Other and Kitchen Hymns. You can pre-order them today and subscribe to Padraig’s newsletter Poetry Unbound to be first to know about where he is in the world.
Krista at Modern Elder Academy (MEA), June 29-July 4
Join Krista and Chip Conley at the Modern Elder Academy — “the world's first midlife wisdom school," for a 6-day retreat in Santa Fe, June 29 to July 4, 2025. “Becoming Wise – An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living” will lead attendees through an immersive exploration of wisdom, mindful living, and human connection. Reconnect with what it means to be human – and rediscover the abundance of beauty, courage, and grace that life has to offer. Details and Registration Here. Experience Chip’s wisdom in his book “Learning to Love Midlife.”
Krista named 2025 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident
We are thrilled to announce the Rockefeller Foundation has invited Krista to be a 2025 Bellagio Center resident. She’ll work on a book that has been long in gestation, in community with global leaders thinking and writing about some of the biggest challenges in their respective fields. Learn more.
“Everything is a lesson. And so you have to find out what’s the lesson, and how do I embrace this lesson, and how do I go forward? And you have to watch out for the bitterness. That’s what you don’t want to be bothered with.”
in the spirit of Nikki, i add this to what she found as true (not "truth", which is the 'embalmed' form of what was alive as 'true'):
"Everything is a lesson..."
and a lesson is not a punishment, a 'gun pointed to your head' kind of thing of force. A lesson is an invitation - of future, of potential, of growth or evolution. It's a choice and not a must.
"And you have to watch out for the bitterness. That’s what you don’t want to be bothered with."
... unless you are able to embrace the bitterness... as a portal, as an invitation... a "lesson". again, it's a choice. and a potential or portal... a voice from and of a future we can't see or know.
Years ago I got to host Nikki for an event at the bookstore I worked at. Preparing for it was the first time I’d read her work and I immediately was smitten. She was the loveliest, kindest person. I reached that judgement not as a result of the event itself, though that was good (I’ve found that writers who are teachers are often the best events), since sometimes people have a necessarily-performative version of self for just such an occasion/purpose. Instead, it came from what happened afterwards.
It was a snowy night in Milwaukee. We were having trouble getting her a cab, but I was heading in the direction of her hotel anyway so I offered to drive her. My car was parked in a structure across the street, however I somehow missed that they’d recently turned it paid from free. And I was NOT prepared.
So we get to the exit and I realize I don’t have any money. I was going through a divorce at the time and financially strapped, didn’t even have a credit card to use. I was mortified, apologetic, and a little panicky but trying to stay cool because I was in the presence of someone I thought was cool. I remembered I have coins stashed in the car’s ashtray (aka parking meter $ storage) and took out the container. And then proceeded to feed quarter after dime after dime after nickel into the machine, slowly, hoping I had enough.
I also kept thinking about how tired she must be and eager to settle into her hotel and here I am delaying that.
But she simply sat there, so patient. She didn’t offer to pay either, though. Yet somehow that combination made me feel like she was letting me overcome the obstacle—allowing me to retain a sense of dignity underneath my embarrassment. She could have swooped in with a card, but it would have made me feel worse and I got the sense she knew that. I have no doubt she would have helped if I wasn’t ultimately able to get us out.
The 10-minute drive after was fairly cozy, with the quiet city and the snow, and I don’t recall what we talked about but my memory is that it was nice. She was so gracious.
For years, I told the story in a way that made it funny… because I told it with myself at the center. But when I retell it with her as the main character, it changes the air. Makes it softer, gentle, humbling, and…a lesson in how to be so for others as well as ourselves.
Thank you for modeling that in life and on the page, Nikki. I’ll always treasure our awkward moment together. Truly. 💜