Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

by Krista Tippett

I’ve been deeply formed, finally, by a kindred insight of John Paul Lederach, the haiku-writing, globally esteemed conflict resolution and transformation practitioner. He says that imaginations are too narrowly oriented to “critical mass” when we imagine how social change happens. Critical mass—rallies, galvanizing leaders, large numbers of bodies on the street—plays a cathartic role in toppling old realities and making way for the new. But in his experience with people who have transformed conflicted realities across time and continents, new realities are envisioned and brought into being before and beyond those cathartic points—patiently, doggedly, over years and decades—by a new quality of relationship in small, unlikely groups of people. They are not obvious compatriots, at least at first; they represent different places on the societal spectrum and embody divergent passions and perspectives. But they see the dead end of the polar opposite conflict in which their lives have become enmeshed, and they step out of fear and into care. John Paul Lederach calls what they create “critical yeast.”