This I Believe: We All Need Mending

I have a backlog of podcasts. I like to have episodes of Radiolab from WNYC and This American Life produced by Chicago Public Radio on hand for long runs. Most people seem to know about This American Life, but fewer are familiar with Radiolab. Click on the link above to check out Radiolab. It is innovative and well worth listening to.

The other podcast I subscribe to is This I Believe from National Public Radio. To quote from their site:

This I Believe is a national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives. NPR airs these three-minute essays on All Things Considered, Tell Me More and Weekend Edition Sunday.

This I Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. In creating This I Believe, Murrow said the program sought "to point to the common meeting grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization."

Listening to and reading these essays always leaves me feeling inspired.

In the hubbub of talk of faith caused by elections, I sometimes feel like I've heard a little too much about faith and beliefs. I wonder, like Kathleen Parker eloquently discusses in her column in the Washington Post, how faith and politic forums (or rather, debates) may be wrong and even un-American. [Thanks Dan for pointing me to this article!]

My faith is something deeply personal. But it is something that is shared. Between me, God, family, friends, communities, the Earth, enemies, and people I don't even know. Sometimes, I find it hard to find the balance between keeping my faith something personal, and something shared.

At any rate, a This I Believe podcast I listened to today was especially poignant and worth sharing. In her essay "We All Need Mending," Susan Cooke Kittredge, a minister in East Montpelier Center, VT, touches on something so fundamental to my Christian faith.

"Mending doesn’t say, 'This never happened.' It says, instead, as I believe the Christian cross does, 'Something or someone was surely broken here, but with God's grace it will rise to new life.'"

You can listen to or read her entire essay here.