Lee
This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Two of my favorite words to teach in my ethics classes are “magnanimity” and “pusillanimity.” Magnanimity is the virtue of seeking to live a large life, not ego large, but large in purpose and vision and the excellence of living well. This is the great antidote to the vice of pusillanimity, the vice of living a paltry and trivial subsistence, a small-minded existence obsessing about meager and trifling matters. So there was no small matter of pleasure in hearing this.
Naomi
Well, I was always interested as a child in living a big life.
Lee
That's today's guest Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People's Poet Laureate.
Naomi
I don't want to live a small, little, fearful life where I'm just huddled in a corner, worried about everything. I want to find out what's going on with my neighbors. I want to meet those people down the block who just moved here from Canada or Italy. And I was always thinking in those terms. How do I make my life bigger, or how does life expand to take a full deep breath every day so you're not just living in a sad little box by yourself?
Lee
This is one of those interviews I need to keep listening to. And you might find yourself inviting your kids or your friends to listen, too. It's about learning to pay attention, and the great abundance, the great riches, of beauty available all around us.
Naomi
You have just said the magic formula.
Lee
Our interview in just a moment, along with Naomi reading two of her best known poems.
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a wandering poet. She spent 40 years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops, inspiring students of all ages. Naomi was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, grew up in Ferguson, Missouri, also lived in Jerusalem and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling throughout Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Middle East, Nye uses her writing to atest to our shared humanity. And we got to do a Tokens Show together last year, I think it was, in Lubbock, Texas. Great to be with you again, Naomi.
Naomi
Lee. I'm so happy to be with you by any means possible.
Lee
And you're there at your home in San Antonio.
Naomi
Right downtown San Antonio, Texas near the river. Sending you good wishes from here.
Lee
Delightful to get to be with you. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm fascinated. One of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast are practices for human flourishing. That is my field. And in ethics, I've done a lot of reading and teaching in virtue ethics. And so one of the things that virtue traditions talk about are finding these practices and employing practices that help us flourish as human beings. And it seems to me that perhaps the great practice you point to for us in learning to flourish as human beings is simply the act of writing. Do you think that's a fair thing to say?
Naomi
I do think it's fair, and I love the word practice, so I'm very happy that you emphasize that word. I think it's a simple word that often doesn't get the respect it's due, because I think practice will give us so much more grounding and possible wisdom or insight. It's not just some kind of drudgery that we assign to ourselves. I was just asking a writer last week, whom I admire very much, how she had come to write a certain piece. And it was a non-fiction piece, and normally she writes poetry. And she said, “It took a lot of research and ritual.” And I love that, because I think that's what practice gives us time for and ability for. Looking at what we do, having a regularity about our tending to our art or our craft, and the ritual or practice is very welcoming to new ideas and to discovery.
Lee
I do think that that's one of the things that I've discovered in my writing through the years. It is simply showing up and doing the work, and the sorts of “eureka moments” typically don't come--sometimes they'll come in the shower or on a drive--but for me, a lot of times, breakthroughs happen when I didn't want to write that day, and I sit down and I write, and then all of a sudden, a half hour or 45 minutes in, I discover something that I wouldn't have discovered if I just hadn't started doing the act itself or the ritual itself.
Naomi
You have just said the magic formula. You were ready for it. You were open to it. You started, even though maybe you didn't want to. And then something was allowed to come through that door. And I think sometimes practice is simply gathering yourself together, sitting down at your table if you're a writer, and being open and starting anywhere: starting with what's nearest and dearest in your heart and mind, what you're worried about at the moment, asking your questions. That's how you begin, and that's how things come to us.
Lee
Yeah. I like the way in which you've seemed to repeatedly talk about how your own writing helps you pay attention. And it goes back to the poem that you have, “Please Describe How You Became a Writer.” The line is something like, “You took refuge from your insulting first grade textbook, come Jane, come look, Dick, look. Were there ever duller people in the world? You had to tell them to look at things?” Talk a little bit about that, about this sort of importance of paying attention.
Naomi
Yeah. And that last line is, “Why weren't they looking to begin with?” It always seemed to me, even as a child, that people weren't curious enough. What were they waiting for? Why did they want to be entertained all the time? Why weren't they just staring a little harder, putting things together in a little more interesting way, and coming up with their own new thoughts or new possibilities? I was always very attentive as a little child. I got in trouble in school a lot for what the teachers called daydreaming, but now I would think I was in trouble for having imaginative thoughts. I was sitting there staring, and it wasn't like I was trying to be rude to the lesson, but sometimes the lesson was just too dull to focus on very long, so my mind would start spinning out and putting new things together. Looking back at old school notebooks, recently I found even little beginnings of poems in all the margins of my pages. And my mind was just always curious about words that were floating in the air, what was outside the window, what did someone say that no one else seemed to pay attention to, what did I need to remember from yesterday before it left me forever. I think I was already a very nostalgic person, even when I was a little child. I was always thinking about precious yesterday. What happened yesterday? I'll never see yesterday again. So there was some kind of appetite for remembrance in me as a child. Who can say where that comes from? I don't know, but I had it in an acute way, and I've basically carried that along all through my life. And writing has really helped me to realize how rich we all are in experiences, even when we go months and don't travel anywhere, even when we're hardly leaving our home place. There's so much to think about, and so much to look at, and so many ways you could try reaching out or having a new thought.
Lee
That relates to a line which I think you picked up from another poet, but I found in my notes from when I was with you in Lubbock. You quoted this line that said, “To me, poetry is someone standing up, so to speak, and saying with as little concealment as possible what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.”
Naomi
From Galway Kinnell, Irish-American poet. Great poet.
Lee
Yeah. What's that connote for you?
Naomi
The line of standing up and saying what it is to be alive at this moment... for one thing, we're so lucky to be alive at this moment and paying attention to that reality, but also feeling comfortable describing at any given moment what we're going through, whether it's worry, or panic, or regret, or anticipation, or disappointment, whatever it is--it doesn't have to be sheer happiness and exaltation; it could be any human emotion--but feeling comfortable describing it, because that's really how human beings mix and mingle in this world, and how we learn from one another, and how we find our friends, and how we do everything involved with learning and living. So, one thing I've always been trying to do with kids is help them realize how much material they already have. I'll tell them, “You're so rich with images, memories, ideas.” And I love how kids will stare back at you if you say, “You're so rich,” because too many times, “rich” is a word only connected with money and stuff, a certain kind of lifestyle. But when you say to someone, “How many memories do you have? How many things have you lost already? How much do you miss? How much do you dream about?” That's what I'm talking about when I talk about richness. And I was always interested as a child in living a big life. I remember having that as a concept in my mind. I don't want to live a small, little, fearful life where I'm just huddled in a corner, worried about everything. I want to find out what's going on with my neighbors. I want to meet those people down the block who just moved here from Canada or Italy. I want to go take a job on the farm so I can get to have young black boys as my friends. And remember, I grew up in Ferguson, and it was a segregated community at that time. So that's where we met: at the farm. We all worked there together. And I was always thinking in those terms. How do I make my life bigger, or how does life expand to take a full deep breath every day so you're not just living in a sad little box by yourself? Now, maybe it helped that I had an immigrant father who was always talking about a beloved place I had never seen yet. I wouldn't see Palestine till I was 14 years old, when we moved and lived there for a year. I wouldn't meet my Palestinian grandmother till I was a teenager. And so, when you're hearing, all through your childhood, of this deep, precious world that belongs to your very, very beloved parent, that changes you. And also, I think I was very lucky that my mother was an artist. She really felt that art had saved her own life. And she took us to the St. Louis Art Museum probably every Sunday afternoon of my entire childhood. We had lunch there every Sunday, even though we didn't have much money. I always ordered the same thing every Sunday: fruit plate. And yeah, it's weird to remember that fruit plate. I could concoct one that looks exactly like the St. Louis Art Museum fruit plate tomorrow. But I was given the gift of looking at art from early childhood on. And having my mother's beautiful guiding voice, which thankfully is still in my life, saying, “What do you see? What does that make you think about? Pick your favorite painting in this room. Do you like any of these sculptures?” She would ask these open-ended questions about art, which really gave me agency as a child, like my opinion matters. My mom wants to know which painting I like best. Matisse is now my personal friend. I found out early that I was wildly in love with the painter Paul Klee from Switzerland, and later, on a family journey to go to the Swiss village my ancestors had come from on my mother's side, I went to the Paul Klee Museum. I went to his town, and it was incredible, because I felt like Paul Klee has been my personal friend my entire life, and all I've ever owned of his is a postcard. But because I love him so much, and I read about him, and I thought about him, and I know his nickname was the Little Arab, I always felt close to him. So, I think, Lee, that we're lucky if we have people in our lives who are willing to try to expand us in whatever way. And I know this happens for so many people with music, because you hear so many musicians talk about, “Well, my parents listened to all kinds of music, or we always had this certain kind of music going in my house.” My mother loved Black Gospel music, so we had Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Paul Robeson. We had all these black artists who were part of our daily soundtrack in our house, and I know that marked me in terms of music I love and ways of listening.
Lee
You actually gave me some new language, I think, to think about one of the things I've said in my teaching for years. I'll tell my students sometimes, “You might come to this class, you might come to this theology class or this ethics class, looking for answers, but I'm really more interested in giving you good enough questions that you can take with you the rest of your lives.” And I think I heard that hooking up with the gift of giving someone--your parents giving you, for example--the gift of learning how to pay attention. And I think that's what a good question does, right? It just allows us to pay attention to certain things we might not pay attention to otherwise.
Naomi
You're so right, Lee. It opens the door. A good question opens a door of thinking, and then all kinds of images and possibilities can come in. And I feel your students are so lucky to get to have you asking them to think in that way. I was a religion major in college, and I loved theological study, and I loved all the different questions that come to us along the different paths of study and devotion and theory.
Lee
So, when you think back to your... it was Comparative Religions, I think, you did. Is that correct?
Naomi
Lee
So when you look back to Comparative Religions work, what do you think would be some of the key questions, key lenses, that you got through that discipline of study that you've carried with you that have helped you pay attention to certain things?
Naomi
Well, luckily my parents were both very ecumenical in their ways of thinking. Neither one of them practiced the religions of their parents or their grandparents officially. They respected them. My father's family was Muslim. My mother's family was Lutheran Christian. And my father had told his mother when he was 12 years old he didn't want to practice and be a practicing Muslim, but he would respect Islam all his life. My mother had a bit of a harder time with her family, because they wanted to reject her open-mindedness, whereas my father's family did not. So they were mutually committed to raising their children as ecumenical thinkers. And these are some things that I learned as a religion major that I got first from my parents. There is truth in every path. It is always important to treat others as you would like to be treated. Always respect others. There is some great spirit, whether we call it God, or Allah, or Buddha, or the Great Spirit of the Native American traditions, or Yahweh. Whatever we call God, there is some great spirit abiding from which we all came. Respect that idea, even if you don't want to apply a particular name to yourself of what it is you practice. I was lucky to be raised in such an open-hearted home. My mother sent us to Bible school as children in the summers, because she felt it was very important to know the Bible, to know Bible stories. When somebody talked about things that happened in the Bible, she didn't want us gazing off into space having no idea what they were talking about. And my father told us about the tenets of Islam. I was very attracted to Sufism, which is a mystical branch of Islam and Zen Buddhism, particularly for myself, but I was also attracted to mystical Christianity, and these were things I tried to study and kind of bring together as a student. And certainly they all ask basic questions, all the religions, like, “How might we treat one another better? How might we take better care of one another? What do I do to be the best human being, honoring the universe we spring from? How can I be an honest person in everything I do? How do I learn how to respect people who aren't just like me? If someone else is very closed-minded and tells me there is only one way of salvation, how do I respond to that? How can I embrace their passion and their belief without feeling insulted by it or telling them they're ridiculous? There's always more to learn. I'm still working with these things. And I think many of the questions that I asked as a student of Comparative Religions are some of the same questions I ask these days regarding politics, society, community. How do we become better global citizens? How do we care about everybody in our city? How do we reach out beyond our little group of friends and neighbors we feel comfortable with? “Kindness” has been the poem of mine which people ask for the most, which touches me very much, because I really do not feel like the author of this poem. I feel that I was a scribe and I wrote the words down as I heard them. I heard them spoken by a woman's voice across a public plaza in the colonial town of Popayan, Columbia. My husband and I were on our honeymoon. We had barely been married a week yet. We had just suffered the most traumatic experience of both of our lives till that time. We were robbed of everything we had on a bus, and also we had witnessed a murder of someone else, an Indian man on the bus who didn't have anything for the robbers to steal, and so out of retaliation, they just killed him. And it was terrifying. We didn't know what to do next. I was sitting quite traumatized back in the town we had come from, and a man had addressed us in a kind voice in Spanish asking us what happened to us. He could tell we were disheveled and strangers to the town. And we had tried in our pitiful Spanish to explain it to him. And he nodded sadly and said he was sorry, and went on his way. And the word kindness came into my mind. That man was kind. He was sorry for us. And then the poem was spoken to me, and because I still had a little tablet in my pocket and a pencil, I scribbled it down, trying to keep up with the voice I was hearing. And the voice really felt as if it was floating in the trees across the plaza. And the poem would change very little. Only a couple of words would change. But I copied it down just as I heard it.
Kindness.
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
Lee
You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. Grateful, grateful to have you joining us. Please leave us one of those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and subscribe there or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. We do have video of this interview, as well as videos of Naomi reading a number of poems, including some not on the podcast today, on our YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com/tokensshow. Remember, of course, you can find out more details, links, photos about our guest this episode by visiting tokensshow.com/podcast. And know that we love hearing from you. Recently, for example, we heard from a new friend working in the Navajo nation, and we also send greetings to those of you listening in Christ Church New Zealand, and to some of our neighbors up North in Toronto. Send us feedback at podcast@tokensshow.com. Again, this is our interview with the poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Coming up, Naomi and I talk about the juxtaposition of joy and pain, Naomi's defense of Texas, and her delightful poem, “Gate A-4.” Part two in just a moment.
You're listening to tokens and our interview with poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
I'm fascinated with the juxtaposition in that poem between kindness and great grief, great tragedy, great pain. And that seems to be one of the things I see as a theme that surfaces repeatedly in a number of your writings. And it just seems so true to my own experience. I remember our college president. When I was an undergrad, I listened to lots of chapel speeches during those years, but his was one of the few I remember, and it was a very simple little bit of wisdom. He told stories, and in the midst of telling those stories, he would say, “Life gets better and better, and harder and harder.” And I've always carried that with me now for--I forget how many years it's been now--thirty-two, three, four years now. But that's sort of holding together that here you have kindness and loss, or happiness and loss, or happiness and pain. How have you seen that surface in your own work? Or why do you think that is? Is it just simply life experience that's prompted that in your work?
Naomi
Well, you know, I really am thinking about his comment “better and better, and harder and harder,” because often when we have a very hard time, there's also a sense of almost emptiness that comes to us. We feel empty of our enthusiasm, for example, or our energy, after a very hard, sad, difficult, grief, or trauma, or terrible time. We're just empty. And sometimes being that empty vessel is necessary so that we could have some new refreshment, some new insight, some new understanding, about the world be given to us. And I think, probably, many practices and traditions would suggest that, that sometimes we're so full of ourselves, how would we have room to have a new, interesting, creative thought? But if we empty ourselves of all our previous convictions, and if we're in a very hard time, then often, something will be given, if we're open to it. And I do recall with great love a writer from Texas, William Goyen, who used to say, when people asked him where his stories and novels began, he smiled, and he said, “Ah, they always start with trouble.” Usually I think of something I still haven't quite worked out or some deep trouble I've been through in my life.
Lee
Yeah. That reminds me of your “Different Ways to Pray.” “The shepherds raised their arms. Hear us. We have pain on earth. We have so much pain. There's no place to store it.” And then a number near the end, “At night, the men ate heartily flat bread and white cheese and were happy in spite of the pain because there was also happiness.”
This is a sweet juxtaposition, and I think, in your paying attention in that way, and helping other people pay attention to that possibility, it actually engenders the possibility of happiness in the midst of pain in beautiful ways, I think.
Naomi
I'm very grateful to you for picking out those lines, because I really love those lines, and in some ways, for me, I love the lines because they remind me of Palestinian people, or say, Mexican-American people. I live near the Mexican border here in San Antonio. And you're very conscious of collective groups of people who suffer a lot during certain periods of history. And I've always felt as if Palestinians were somehow the funniest people on earth, the most comedic. They have a fantastic, sharp, witty sense of humor. And also, all my beloved Mexican-American neighbors in San Antonio: I feel that they have such access to beautiful humor on a daily basis, even though we're all aware of this trauma of the border that we dislike tremendously, that's going on so near us. So, because Palestinian people have suffered a lot, because Latinx people have suffered so much, there's a sense of proximity to affection for life, for enjoying the flat bread and the white cheese, because look, we'd better. ‘Cause what else do we have? We're right here. We have to be present in our bodies. Things are tough, but we're also going to treasure our lives. And if we can only realize that about others, always, how would the world be different?
Lee
Your own experience of the diversity of your cultural experiences, going back to your parents' sharply different religious and cultural traditions, and then, as a consequence of that, you getting to live in such different places and travel to such different places... would you talk to us a little bit out of that, about learning to appreciate cultural diversity, and how you might see that as a particularly important human practice for being kind?
Naomi
Wow. Thank you for that question, Lee. You know, at this moment in our national history, for example, it's curious to think about people wanting to band together in sort of a tribal fashion, like us and them, or this is for our group, this is what we believe, but that's what they believe. And I'm not quite sure where that impulse comes from, because to me, mixtures have always been interesting, and to be around people who are not exactly like me is much more interesting than just being with a bunch of my fellow Arab-American writers. That's very cozy, and I love them, but I also like to be with people of such diversity and different background, different experience, or see movies or read novels in which we have a chance to enter into that other world. And in all the years I've been traveling everywhere--a lot of places--to work with poetry and kids and community, I used to laugh thinking, wow, now even the smallest town in the United States has a Thai restaurant. That has to be good, because that means the people in this tiny town get to expand their pallets. And so in some little way, they respect Thailand, because look how many people are here eating tonight. And I just think every time we get to share cultural details of a world that is not exactly matching of ours, we're a little bigger people. So for me, that goes back to childhood. I want to have a big life. So we should keep focusing on those larger things which bind us together as human beings, and stop pointing the fist, pointing the gun, pointing whatever, to separate from one another, because really, I don't think that serves us in the biggest picture as human beings. And I think it's kind of embarrassing. It's embarrassing for towns and for States if they start trying to develop a persona, like “we're different from you,” crossing the border to your state. As a Texan--and I do identify with Texas a lot, since I've lived here the longest, although I wasn't born here and didn't grow up here--I feel like I've had to defend Texas a lot in other American States, because people say mean things about Texas. I guarantee you, they don't say as mean things about Tennessee as they do about Texas.
Lee
But they do Alabama, which is my home.
Naomi
They do about Alabama? Maybe so. My favorite project in architecture is Rural Studio. That comes out of Alabama. I'll stand up for that everywhere. But we have to just witness one another as human beings, and all the little labels that get applied to us--urban, rural, North, South, all this stuff, whatever our ethnic background is, whatever our job is--ultimately, that's not the most important thing.
Lee
St. Augustine had some line where he said something like, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” And I'm learning to appreciate the beauty. And that goes back as well to what you said earlier about wanting to live a large life, which reminded me of the Aristotelian virtue of magnanimity. You want something large, and you want large, not in the sense of ego, but large in the sense of accepting the beauty and the diversity and the wonder of life. And too, I see how that connects in your own life with learning to pay attention, because I think without paying attention, we really can't even begin to appreciate the beauty that comes to us through such diverse experiences. So I love all the way I hear all of that connect in you.
Naomi
I just love everything you've just said. And that magnanimous spirit also has to be... we have do, like, a selfie picture. We have to apply it to our own lives. We have to be magnanimous to our own experience. It is valuable experience. It's what we have. And even if we never traveled anywhere... like I think of Henry David Thoreau, the great transcendentalist writer whom I was madly in love with when I was a high school student. I went to Walden pond, walked around the whole pond, stood in front of his desk with tears running down my cheeks. But I think of Thoreau who used to have a lot of suspicion about travel, and he said, “We need to enter into our own backyards. We need to enter into the forest that's closest to our house, and really get to know it.” And he felt, even at his time of life, back in the 1860s, that people were not paying close enough attention--and this is incredible to think about now--to what was right next to them, to the plants, to the animals, to the light. And he used to say, “Go outside your door, and bend down in the grass, and look at every little thing.” And so I think that's another kind of generosity we have to give ourselves, reminding ourselves, you can dig in the dirt right where you are and find more to think about than what you've thought about till now.
Lee
Yeah. I love that as well. I think that one of the things I've loved about the place I live here in Nashville is sitting on my front porch. In spending hours on my front porch reading or meditating or being still or writing, I've seen all sorts of amazing things sitting on that front porch, from foxes, to coyotes, to parents with children walking and talking and teaching. Or sitting in my study here, there's an old flowering shrub that sits right outside the window that's behind my desk. And I wish you could see, right now, the multiplicity of bumblebees just while we've been talking, and the hummingbird that's come up that I see at least once a day that comes to visit. The beauty that's present to us, if we will just pay attention, is really overwhelming.
Naomi
I love your descriptions. I love looking out your window at your bush and the bees and the bird. And I feel exactly the same. I always tell kids how much we have that we don't have to own. I don't own the moon, but I trust it. I don't own those trees in the park across the street, but I look at them every day, and I have a personal relationship with them. I've grown attached through the months of pandemic to watching one man who I never met before. He's training tricks to his one dog. And I've learned their names. We call out to each other across the street. And I'm not even a dog person--I'm a cat person--but I am so impressed by this dog and how much it has learned over the past few months, and I feel very touched by them, like they're part of my world now, even though we've never stood on the same side of the street. So much is out there. Just watch it. “Gate A-4” is an anecdotal poem, and it's really written as a prose poem, so it looks like little chunky paragraphs on the page. It really happened in the Albuquerque airport. Every time I go there now, I take a deep bow in front of gate A-4. My only mistake, I feel, in this piece was I did not get the woman's address so that I could send her the piece. But even as it was unfolding, I started feeling it as a story. And by the time she got off the airplane, I knew it was something I had to write, and I started writing it immediately so I would get every little detail correct. I didn't want to forget any little bit of it.
Gate A-4.
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been detained four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help, said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.” I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a
Lee
As I was listening to that, I could not help but be reminded of the fact that it was the Hebrew prophets, later Isaiah--for example, Isaiah 65--who describes new heavens and new Earth, and he does it in poetry. I think you give us a glimpse of, as you say, the world in which you want to live, which is of course... one possible way to think about the meaning of hope and the theological meaning of hope is to anticipate a world that we want to live in. So thank you. That's so, so beautiful. Well, we've been talking with Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet, Young People's Poet Laureate from her home in San Antonio, Texas. And she has brought us numerous gifts today. Thank you Naomi, so much, for your time.
Naomi
Lee, thank you for all the music and all the wisdom you share with the world. You make every place you are better.
Lee
Naomi
Lee
You are listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. Thanks so much for joining us. Please remember to subscribe wherever you subscribe to podcasts, and in addition, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at Tokens Show, and subscribe to our email list at tokensshow.com. You can find out more details, links, photos about our guest this episode by visiting tokensshow.com/podcast. Got feedback? Email us text or attach a voice memo at podcast@tokensshow.com.
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Thanks for listening and peace be unto thee.
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