Sometimes on Sunday mornings, I’m fortunate to take my run during Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” which is broadcast on my local National Public Radio station. Unlike so many fitness freaks, I listen to NPR more often than music when I’m running.
Tippett speaks soothingly in her interviews with all kinds of deep thinkers, and my run transforms from a slog into a meditation.
Today, she interviewed Jean Vanier, a Canadian philosopher and Catholic social innovator who founded a community centered around people with mental disabilities, L’Arche. Tippett called him “simply one of the wise men in our world today, an icon of lived compassion,” and listening to him as I ran was tranquilizing, even as I barely managed to keep a pace of 5.8 mph.
One of the things he said has me thinking, now hours later and I thought I’d share it here:
“And you see, the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be to this reality, and somewhere to love reality and then discover that God is present in the reality.”
To live a life not of could haves and should haves and regrets and wishes, but a life of acceptance of reality, that’s a gift.
For the whole interview with Vanier, click here.
Minnesota Transplant 
I love Speaking of Faith, always encouraging.