Leaving for a Promised Land, An Ex-Con’s New Life
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Exodus is a story of longing and loneliness, redemption and new horizons. Diana Ortiz, a 45-year-old woman who was incarcerated for 22 years for second-degree murder, tells the story of her conviction, rehabilitation, and the need to show others released from prison the journey can start anew.
A Retrospective Slide Show on Faith and Being
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
If you were able to tune in for last Saturday’s live video stream of a conversation between Krista and HuffPo Religion editor Paul Raushenbush, you might have wondered what all the PRPD attendees were watching to the left of the stage while the audio clips were playing. This audio slide show above pairs an audio collage (tip: expand for maximum effect) of past guests of this program speaking about faith and being with a selection of marquis images for each show’s website from the past seven years. We produced this special subset to give you a picture of what the public radio folks were simultaneously seeing and hearing.
Funny thing is that we had no intention of producing the event this way. We were going to have a static image of Krista and Desmond Tutu layered with some program branding project on a single screen behind Krista and Paul while the audio rolled.
But, like most conference events we don’t manage, plans changed. The venue changed so one screen center-stage became two mega-screens far off both sides of the room to accommodate the width of the space. During rehearsal, as we played the collage, we liked the depth the pairing created by cycling through our content-rich images. We changed course. The off-angle made it impractical to pan and zoom and still see clearly, so I held the shot on the stage.
What’s so great about these events is that audiences continually break open my own design conceptions and presentation ideas about what works together. Not only are they educational moments, this event showed me once again that people orient to strong visual and aural elements naturally. They make the passive active. They want to be engaged as long as you elevate your game and give them something worth looking at. The producer has a responsibility to create an experience. I am that producer.
It’s also a reminder to make the most of my work, that it’s okay to repackage our work for others and proudly display what we’ve created from the past seven years. Because the slide show above is under two minutes, we had to create a subset of the actual images displayed on the big screens. Here’s the extended version of that slide show:
Thanks to my colleague Nancy Rosenbaum for helping produce this video.
LIVE Video: Huffington Post Religion Editor Paul Raushenbush in Conversation with Krista
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
NOTE: At 9:30 a.m. EDT (Saturday, September 25th) the live stream will open; conversation will begin promptly at 9:50 a.m.
If you’re a loyal public radio fan or a reader of the religion section at The Huffington Post, you’re going to enjoy this video stream coming to you live from Denver, Colorado. From the PRPD (Public Radio Program Directors) annual conference, Krista will be speaking with Paul Raushenbush, HuffPo Religion editor and associate dean of religious life at Princeton University.
The emergence of HuffPo Religion is one of many recent signs that religion and spirituality have evolved to occupy a very different place in American culture than they did a decade ago. Krista and Paul will look at the transition from Speaking of Faith to Being through this lens, and share segments from the program including listener-generated stories and interviews with special guests.
Grab a cup of coffee and watch this live conversation with us. We’ll open up the live stream at 9:30 a.m. EDT (7:30 a.m. Mountain), and the conversation will start promptly at 9:50 a.m., lasting about 30-45 minutes.
Faith is nothing else but a right understanding of our being — trusting and allowing things to be; a right understanding that we are in God and God whom we do not see is in us.
Thanks to listener Mark Atma from Bellevue, Wisconsin for this lovely definition of faith from Julian of Norwich.
by Krista Tippett, host
Tai Chi Informs an Understanding of Religion through Form
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“L’art du combat avec son ombre” (photo: Frank Taillandier/Flickr)
Over at The Walrus Blog, David Rusack writes a smart and creative reflection on how his training in a specific martial art form of tai chi (Chen-style chuan) has provided a structure that allows him to see with better-informed eyes the parallels with religious traditions and that “the point of the practice is in its form, not its content.”
“…when I went off to school and began to mix there with people who studied other martial arts, I found myself dealing with just the same problem. Nobody else followed the rules of movement that had been drilled into me as the Right Way of doing things. A student of Crane-style kung fu stood with his feet angled bizarrely inward; a teacher of Wu-style tai chi took unnervingly short steps and struck small, constipated poses, barely making visible the graceful flowing motion that Chen style emphasizes. Plainly, many of the things that had been presented to me as the doctrines of effective martial practice were in fact only specific to my style, were maybe even just part of a graceful-flowy Chen aesthetic that had little to do with usefulness. I fretted over the question of how much of what I had been taught was mere stylistic fluff, and how much was of genuine substance. …
As I realized this about my tai chi problem, I could not help but notice it extended to the case of religion as well: why reject all things arbitrary? One cannot really convene in an empty room on a randomly chosen day, declare “Be good to others,” and then depart until some day next week. The contingent pieces of a religion — its symbols, stories, places of significance, and special ceremonies — make up that structure that must be posited, even if arbitrarily, in order for it to be possible to have religious practice at all. This ritual structure allows religious practice to impart moral lessons and create feelings of community and spiritual fulfillment that ultimately stand apart from the factual claims of a particular creed. … Whatever end modern believers intend to reach by continuing religious practice even while perceiving a baselessness to it all, I can now say I see how they might hope to achieve it.”
(Thanks for the heads-up, Shiraz!)
Krista on Being
by Kate Moos, managing producer
As we began to spread the word to close friends about our name change from Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett to Krista Tippett on Being, we were invited to speak to an audience of colleagues here at American Public Media earlier this month. Our pal, Future Tense host John Moe, agreed to interview Krista and get at the basic questions: Why the change? Why Being? What does it all mean? In this video, our inimitable host takes on these questions with passion, intelligence, and grace.
We’ve heard from hundreds of you that the name change is a brilliant idea, a terrible idea, or something in between. Some who regret the change see the necessity for it. Some who love the old name acknowledge the new name is a better fit for the program content. Others says they need some time to think about it and adjust. For many, there is some sadness in losing the word “faith” in its robust and broadest meanings, and we acknowledge that loss. We’ve also heard you say you don’t quite get Krista’s name in front of Being. It’s there (especially during this transition) so you know that Krista Tippett remains central to this program and its vision. In general conversation on the radio and in other applications, the name of the program will most often be Being.
But we also want to reassure you that we are not losing faith in a programmatic sense. The name change is not a signal of a change in the editorial vision or content. As you will hear Krista relate in this video, the new name reflects an evolutionary change that has occurred over time. Being will remain the conversation about “religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas” you have come to know.
How Did You Become a Unitarian Universalist?
Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Following up on last week’s video post, here’s a 3½-minute video snack where a mix of UUs explain how they came to this tradition. Listening to these voices, it’s clear that each person’s journey is unique and doesn’t necessarily follow a linear path. Some arrived through predictable channels — friends, marriage, family — while others had more surprising stories — and why they decided to stay.
Later this week we’ll be posting a longer-form piece that caps this video series of interviews from the Unitarian Universalist 2010 General Assembly. And, next week, a video showcasing a sped-up procession of beautiful quilted banners for the opening day festivities!
