Repossessing Virtue (1/5)

On Wednesday, I gave a telephone interview on one of my favourite podcasts, NPR: Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. It was the first time I have done a radio interview and it was a rather fun, if not bizarre experience. The interview is to be part of their Repossessing Virtue series and will be published later,

“Repossessing Virtue is part of our ongoing series exploring the moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downturn. We've been contacting familiar voices of wisdom and insight, and asking them a series of questions about the current economic climate.”

Originally, I wanted to do the interview in our living room. But, the noise of passing buses on the cobblestone road outside our building cancelled this possibility. The fact that my husband was lying in bed with a 40 degree C fever, cancelled my going into our bedroom (much more quiet). The fact that my children’s bedrooms were inexcusably messy and not indigenous of intelligent thought, cancelled those possibilities. So, I ended up sitting on the floor of our bathroom, trying to feel as if this was a good place to hold an interview.

I have no recall of what I said. Since I cannot guarantee that I spoke succinctly or even well during the interview, I thought I would publish the answers I prepared for the interview.

The producers of the series ask the same four questions to each person:

In what way do you consider this a spiritual or moral crisis of your own or of our culture?
What resources are you bringing into this situation?
And what are you doing now that is different?
What sort of wisdom or leadership are you looking for at this time of your life?

A lot of what I wrote I didn’t have the opportunity to say, for there just wasn’t enough time or I didn’t find the right entry to expand on a topic. Some of what I write is a variation on what I have written before (e.g. trust in question 1), but there are other new ideas as well. I would be very happy to hear from you about what your answers would be to these questions.