Study guide for session 2
Don and Joyce
Study Guide, Second Session --Becoming Wise, by Krista Tippett
(finishing a question we had not fully addressed in the last session):
4. “I’ve learned this: a question is a powerful thing, a mighty use of words. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. . . . It’s hard to transcend a combative question. But it’s hard to resist a generous question.” (pg. 29, 30)
Tippett proposes that we shy away from taking up hard discussions with different others, in part because we live in a culture that frames issues in terms of the most strident, extreme people and positions. Imagine a gathering, in the words of Tippett’s guest Frances Kissling, of people on both sides “who absolutely refuse to see each other as evil.” Imagine the questions you impulsively want to ask “the other side,” and the ways you might reframe your questions more generously, to invite honesty, dignity, and revelation.
Chapter Three --Flesh: The Body's Grace
1 “We need our bodies to claim our souls. The body is where every virtue lives or dies, but more: our bodies are access points to mystery.” “Our bodies tell us the truth of life that our minds can deny: that we are in any moment as much about softness as fortitude.” How does this relate to the messages you received in your early life about body, mind, and spirit?
2 Tippett makes the argument that our bodies carry wisdom, and that “we can insist on delight as a virtue.” Are there areas of life where this rings true for you? Have you experienced delight to become an opening to virtue?
3 Tippett calls beauty a virtue that clarifies the interplay between what is sensory and spiritual. She takes John O’Donohue’s definition of beauty as “that in the presence of which we feel more alive.” What are the sources of beauty in your life?
What other senses/sensation experiences have made you feel alive --Narrow escapes, taking risks, swells of gratitude?
4 “Rituals are sophisticated ancient intelligence about the body. Kneeling, folding hands in prayer, and breaking bread; liturgies of grieving, gathering, and celebration—such actions create visceral containers of time and posture... They embody memory in communal time.” How do you see this at PCC.
5 “The core of life is about losses and deaths both subtle and catastrophic, over and over again, and also about loving and rising again.” “Grief and gladness, sickness and health, are not separate passages. They’re entwined and grow from and through each other, planting us, if we’ll let them, more profoundly in our bodies in all their flaws and their grace.” How do you reflect on these statements?