Support for on-being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build

the Spiritual Foundation for a loving world.

Fetzer's new study, what does spirituality mean to us?

Reveals how spirituality informs our understanding of ourselves and each other and inspires us

to take action for the common good.

Explore these findings and more at spiritualitystudy.org.

Hanif Abdorakeeb is a cultural critic and poet. Music and performance of every kind is

everywhere for him. What makes people cry or feel safe or brave, held in struggle or joy

or love?

And I get to be a listener this week, as my colleague Padre Gotouma, a poet himself and

the host of on-beings Poetry Unbound Podcast, draws out Hanif, whose work he loves.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on-beings.

Hanif Abdorakeeb's writing is filled with lyricism, rhythm, people and precision.

In his essays and poetry, he introduces readers to a soundscape.

We hear hip-hop and jazz. We hear names like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Little

Richard. He's interested in black performance and black joy and what that feels like in

auditoriums and audiences in sport and television, public and private.

I'm such an audience watcher because, be it for films or for concerts, I really love seeing

how people are impacted and affected through a moment of shared witnessing.

And that compels me and brings me closer to what feels like a type of emotional salvation.

Hanif's mother died when he was barely a teenager and he wraps this grief in with grief and

objection at societal inequities and racism to write with profound wisdom about what contributes

...