Becoming Wise is supported by the Fetzer Institute.

I've had hundreds of big conversations, and my conversation partners share wisdom I carry with me wherever I go.

Naomi Shihab Nye's words point to shining corners of beauty in the world we see

every day. She calls herself a wandering poet. She reveals language as a gift.

This is becoming wise. I'm Krista Tippett. I know your poem, kindness has been really important for many people.

It's interesting that would you kind of tell?

Because the backstory to that poem doesn't sound like the circumstances under which you would write a poem about kindness.

Right.

So I'd love for you to just tell that story and then maybe read it

also. I really feel amongst all my poems that this was a poem that was given to me. I was simply the

secretary for the poem. I wrote it down, but I honestly felt as if it were a female voice speaking in the

air across a plaza in Popayan,

Colombia. And my husband and I were on our honeymoon. We had just gotten married one week before

here in Texas, and we had this plan to travel in South America for three months. And at the end of our

first week, we were robbed of everything.

And someone else who was on the bus with us was killed.

And he's the Indian in the poem.

And it was quite a shake-up of an experience.

And we, what do you do now?

We didn't have passports.

We didn't have money.

We didn't have anything.

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