On Being with Krista Tippett

Careen Stoll, a potter living in Portland, Oregon, submitted an essay about his reflections on the moral and spiritual aspects of the economic crisis. She writes about the difficulty of competing with large retailers, the beauty of craftsmanship, and why a "dirty rebel" like her found solace in hearing President Obama's call for small artisans.

More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, or find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. Our guest, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, says the spiritual life begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.

A riveting Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement -- a grassroots organization that empowers African women to improve their lives and conserve the environment through planting trees. She knows what many in the West have forgotten -- that ecological crises are often the hidden root causes of war. Maathai speaks about the global balance of human and natural resources, and she shares her thoughts on where God resides.

The 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet Rumi has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. Rumi created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. With our guest Fatemeh Keshavarz, we hear his poetry as we delve into his world and listen for its echoes in our own.

Scientist and author Jon Kabat-Zinn has changed medicine through his work on meditation and stress. We explore what he has learned, through science and experience, about mindfulness as a way of life. This is wisdom with immediate relevance to the ordinary and extreme stresses of our time -- from economic peril, to parenting, to life in a digital age.

Theologian Vigen Guroian experiences Easter as "a call to our senses." We'll explore his Eastern Orthodox sensibility that is at once more mystical and more earthy than the Christianity dominant in Western culture. And at this time of year and beyond, Guroian does real theology in his garden as richly as in church.

Avivah Zornberg is one of the great, creative interpreters of Talmud and Torah in the contemporary world. She guides us through the Exodus story that is remembered at Passover, and that has inspired oppressed peoples in many cultures across history. We find meaning in the text that Cecil B. DeMille and Disney never imagined -- about the worst and the best of human nature, and the realities and ironies of human freedom.

Khalid Kamau, a financial analyst who was recently laid off, submitted an essay about his reflections on the moral and spiritual aspects of the economic crisis. He talks about his free time as being an opportunity to reexamine his career, his role in the black church, and the status quo that remains within American society.

Our guest, psychologist Alan Dienstag, has led support groups and a writing group for people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. We explore the human and spiritual terrain of this illness, what it might teach about the nature of human memory and identity, and what remains when memory unravels.

The poet Marie Howe relates personal stories of ambition and reflection, and a surprising reference to Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter." With her daughter, she's been reading Wilder's writings about the frontier and survival as a source of inspiration and wisdom that puts into perspective her own place in these tumultuous economic times.

With an Argentinean scientist, we explore the human landscape of forensic sciences and its emergence as a tool for human rights. Doretti has unearthed bones and stories of the dead and "the disappeared" in more than 30 countries, including victims of Argentina's Dirty War, over two decades. She shares her perspective on reparation, the need to bury our dead, and the many facets of justice.

Poet and psychologist Anita Barrows first appeared in our program, "The Soul in Depression." She sees the moral challenges of these economic times as an opportunity to come to terms with change in a healthy sense. She also looks to poets like Rainer Maria Rilke and Pablo Neruda for ways of finding strength and compassion as we're called now to examine how we take care of each other.

Former surgeon Sherwin Nuland reflects on the meaning of life by way of scrupulous and elegant detail about human physiology. He speaks about his sense of wonder at the body's capacity to sustain life and support our pursuits of order and meaning, and why he believes the human spirit is an evolutionary accomplishment of the brain. The three-pound human brain, he says, is the most complex structure that has ever existed on this planet.

Vigen Guroian, an Orthodox Christian theologian, sees the value of this pivotal moment in history through the lens of great literature, the coming of spring and the Lenten season, and the wisdom of beekeeping.

The second program in our ongoing series on moral and spiritual aspects of living in and beyond economic crisis, this time with wise voices from religion, science, industry, and the arts -- including Rachel Naomi Remen, Prabhu Guptara, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Marty, Esther Sternberg, Anchee Min, Majora Carter, and Vigen Guroian.. As the economy has faltered, we've grasped to understand what went wrong, and how. But beneath economic explanations and remedies, these questions compel us to other kinds of reflection: On qualities of human nature that ultimately determine economies and markets; on qualities of humanity that we want to cultivate in ourselves and our children. How will we redefine what matters in this moment? Who will we be for each other?