Here are some words I love, words that describe presence rather than means towards an end.

Nourishing, edifying, redemptive, courageous, generous, winsome, adventurous, curious, tender.

I began my professional life as a journalist dealing in words the 20th century favorite,

crisis, containment, realpolitik. Along the way in that era and beyond it, we reserve some of

the other words we need the most for sidebars to the news. They fell into disrepair and

cliche. Of course, all words are just containers on some level, but that is really the point.

The connection between words and meanings resembles the symbiosis between religion and spirituality.

Words are crafted by human beings, wielded by human beings.

They take on all of our flaws and

frailties. They diminish or emboldened the truths they arose to carry. We drop and break them

sometimes. We renew them again and again. This is becoming wise, an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.

I'm Krista Tippett.

Here's what we crave.

We crave truth-tellers.

We crave real truth.

There is so much baloney. All the time, you know, the performance

of political speech, of speech, as you say, on the news, doesn't it often feel to you like

there should be a thought bubble over it that says, you know, what I really would say, if I could say it is, you know,

these people who I oppose, I don't like them and I don't want to work with them because

they're obstructionist, but I have to act like I want to partner with them because that's the

accepted form of discourse, but in fact, it's not really getting us anywhere.

Elizabeth Alexander was the poet of the first Obama inauguration, and she's one of my favorite

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