This morning, I'm grateful for the life and work of Bill Moyers. Back in June of this year, Moyers moved on to join the Undiscovered Conversation after his earthly life ended, thereby wrapping up his life's calling of being a charitable, thoughtful, conversant journalist and all-around decent human being.
My first encounter with Moyers was via my senior English class back in the mid 80s when our teacher showed video recordings of Moyers interviewing philosopher Mortimer Adler about Six Great Ideas (truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, and justice). I was intrigued by Adler's rough and tumble approach to conversation and philosophy; I probably soaked up a little too much of that approach and attitude over the years of watching, listening to, and reading Adler. The much better influence was actually Bill Moyers, who artfully asked questions about ideas, relationships, flourishing, society, and self-development, inviting all sorts of people into conversations, questions, and relationships. Those weren't the sort of conversations I was used to at home, at school, or elsewhere in public. Although they're both good to emulate as stewards and curators of ideas, I often find myself needing to be a lot more like Moyers and a little less like Adler in terms of engaging others and ideas. (My lovely wife's cue for this has been variations on, "You might want to soften that...")
Moyers had a legendary series of interviews with mythologist Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth, still available online and in book form. Campbell's analysis of "The Hero's Journey" (a.k.a. "The Monomyth") reveals some of the most common patterns of storytelling that various creatives throughout history and across cultures work with--or against--to produce intriguing tales, characters, and conflicts. It didn't take too much reading and study to find the limitations of some of Campbell's anthropology and Jungian assumptions, but Moyers and Campbell both helped me (and, I suspect, many others) think more imaginatively about the purpose(s) of life and the potential paths to long-term flourishing.
I'm also grateful this morning for used bookstores, a few of which helped me reclaim copies of three of my favorite Moyers books this summer: Bill Moyers' World of Ideas, World of Ideas II, and The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. Each of these books are packed with people, ideas, and conversations to be grateful for.
There's also something special about books like these because they aren't available in PDF or ebook formats, something more human and down to earth, something more like Bill Moyers. At the risk of being a little nostalgic, we could use more charitable, conversant, conversational journalists these days. Perhaps, they're coming of age as part of their heroic journeys.
So many persons, things, and ideas to be grateful for...