Fear-Wall Gorge: The Poetry and Joy that Can Arise in Mindful Awareness and Self-Compassion

In 8th century China, the classical Chinese poet Tu Fu, as translated by David Hinton, described his journey down a river through Fear-Wall Gorge. It was a war-ravaged time. At first, I didn’t see or feel the poetry of the poem, the artistry; it seemed simply a list of natural and personal elements. Then I slowed down enough to re-read it a second or third time. And I was there, feeling an old man in a boat, on a river rushing through a gorge.

 

…mossy rock slipping past my unused cane,

kingfisher-green sky empty buffeting skin.

 

Cliffs parade layers of frost-edged sword,

streams cascading pearls of falling water…

 

The scene intense at times, fearful; at others, filled with delight and maybe grief.

“Indifferent to this sparse thing I am, I rest

At ease…” Later, he’s “lit with joy.”

 

I’ve been trying to figure out why this poem stayed in my mind so clearly after reading it, besides literary appreciation. And it must be because, in a sense, we’re all in the boat with Tu Fu. We might not be facing such a bloody and destructive war. But we are, always, hopefully, going on with our lives, facing the familiar and the unknowable, the light and the intense, the beautiful and the fearful, sailing rivers, passing steep cliffs, noticing mossy rocks beyond our unused or used canes, wounds, pains.

 

And maybe we notice the details as clearly as Tu Fu does, feeling them directly. Sensing the shared life, shared feeling, the percipient, knowing, awareness within it all⎼ the silence in the sounds, the unity linking the sights. And the joys possible in such sensing⎼ when we’re quiet enough. We feel nothing is missing because nothing is excluded; all that is possible to touch is touched.

 

Resting at ease⎼ not so easy. Letting my mind flow where it will⎼ not so easy.

 

In a workshop on mindfulness, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg talked about “the golden moment.” This is when we’re practicing meditation, or when we’re working on a task or focusing on an activity, and we drift away and forget what we’re doing; we notice nothing except the words, memories, anxieties or plans in our head.

 

And then, suddenly, we realize what we’re doing. We notice we’ve drifted. We take in what’s not easy for us. What do we do then? If we yell at ourselves, about how bad a meditator or worker we are, we then run off again into thoughts and recriminations. Our mind becomes so small. We become recrimination. Instead, when we do our best, whatever that is for us, to simply notice we’re lost; and we just observe, then we find ourselves anew. Our awareness and mind expand. We take in more.

 

And maybe this is why this poem spoke to me. There it was, so much of life⎼ what feels right, what feels wrong, the joy and fear.

 

How do we get free from the cage of thoughts endlessly recreating themselves in our mind?…

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

More Is Being Asked of Us Now Than Possibly Ever Before in Our Lives: We Strive, Not Yet Knowing How, Not Yet Knowing If We’ll Succeed. All We Know is the Need to Act

How do we read the signs that the world and our own hearts and minds are giving us? The universe doesn’t just text us one, clearly typed message, explaining all we’re facing. Would we even welcome such a message? Maybe we do get such messages sometimes and aren’t sure if we’re hallucinating it?

 

I’ve been reading Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji, by Shinshu Roberts, and just started to alternate it with Seaglass: A Jungian Analyst’s Exploration of Suffering and Individuation, by Gilda Frantz. Dogen is a 13th Century Zen teacher and founder of one of the main schools of Japanese Buddhism. I usually read only 2-4 pages at a time, because each paragraph is like a puzzle requiring considerable reflection. But the beauty that can be discovered in doing so is immense. Frantz’s book was recommended by 2 Facebook friends. It’s been a remarkable find, of essays, personal stories, and interviews about facing the difficult in life and revealing the myths and motivations that drive us.

 

And yesterday, after reading a little in both books, a deep realization, frightening in its scope, grabbed my mind and challenged my emotions. Both books synchronistically seemed to be sending one message, a message of something being asked, no, demanded of me. Something more than I’ve already given, to the world, to myself. It was less a regret for something left undone than a glimpse into an opportunity⎼ if I could take it. Frightening in the risks involved, both in the doing or undoing.

 

There’s a sense of inevitability posed by life in these times, hidden between news reports and the sounds of rain. Between bare tree branches, deep gray clouds, and the feel of tension in my hands and shoulders. Between the ordinary, the known, and the extraordinary and unknown. And a question⎼ We know we must act. But how?

 

More is being asked of all of us than probably ever before in our lives. No matter how much I might want this not to be so, that is the reality. We must let go of so much of what’s normal to our lives so we can do what the times require of us. What our inner selves demand of us.

 

How do  we change our lives internally so we can respond skillfully to the fear DT incites and manipulates in us? To the assault on our values and humanity? How do we respond to his blatant assaults on our security as a people and a nation? To our health care? To our incomes? To threats of deporting immigrants of color, from Latin America? Threats to LGBTQ+? To anyone who opposes him? To the rule of law? How do we respond to the expanding climate and ecological crises?

 

How do I feel less the me isolated from the rest of us, and more of the rest of us in me? Doing so might not only reveal how to help others, and maybe help others realize what they, too, can do, but inspire or expose unseen depths in myself. I want to meditate even more than I do. To learn more than I know. To do more.

 

To help me do this, I plan to read poets and writers from Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, and the US, about how to face the horrors caused by one group of humans against others. Or read writers from the distant past, in ancient China when the social order had collapsed, or even in Ukraine or Eastern Europe, in the villages where my own family might have once lived⎼ so we can feel any horrors of life can be faced, and the strength in ourselves to act can be found….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

When We’ve Chased Ourselves from Our Home: Under Siege

Just yesterday, I was on my computer when I was tired. This is something I usually avoid. And there was an email labeled “scam alert.” My thought-brain screamed “fake.” Yet, as I said, I was tired. I opened it, regretted it immediately, deleted it, and became worried about possible malware. Then I was angry at myself for opening it and angry at the spam itself.

 

Every day, we all get so many scam emails, texts, or phone calls, or calls for donations or sales, things we just don’t want to interact with. And every year, it seems to get worse. We now need to erect a wall against our own phone, all communication devices, snail mail ⎼ so much wasted paper. Wasted time. So many businesses we interact with get hacked, so much of our information stolen. I won’t even go into social media. We need security on so many aspects of our lives, so many walls to put up and maintain, so much distancing.

 

And then there’s the news that can be so scary, of the climate emergency, of the threat to our right to vote, to job protections, to the right to control our own bodies and medical treatment. It can feel like we’re under siege. Being under siege, it’s difficult to feel comfortable, at home in ourselves, at home even in our home.

 

Yet earlier today, I remember watching one of my cats, Mikey, walking comfortably and with attention through the flower beds. I realized these beds, these flowers, and the trees around them, the stones and wind were his home. Not only our house, not even us, but all of it. Everything within his territory, at least, was home. Not just home but him. The borders of his territory were the borders of his skin.

 

We often suppress this border, this skin of place, by imagining our skin is our end⎼ and not a border that allows us to touch other borders and be embraced by other beings. We pay an enormous price for this suppression.

 

The American poet Robinson Jeffers wrote:

A severed hand

Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth

And stars and his history…

Often appears atrociously ugly.

 

Many humans have known the importance of place, indigenous cultures and others. I’ve been re-reading a book called Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, by the poet and translator of Chinese literature, David Hinton. Hinton says, “Things are themselves only as they belong to something more than themselves: I to we, we to earth, earth to planets and stars…” We recognize and become truly ourselves only with others, in whatever place, time, and universe we are in. We recognize the air we inhale is the air others exhale; we feel the streams of the earth as the veins of our bodies.

 

When I felt the fear from the possible malware embedded in the email, I at first didn’t want to deal with it. I knew intellectually that since I didn’t click on anything in the email itself⎼ and quickly turned off my computer, later changed my password and checked Malwarebytes⎼ there was little to fear. But still, some fear remained. And I wanted it gone. I wanted it out of my body and out of my mind….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

It’s Too Easy to Be Judgmental: Finding the Communion Beyond Calamity

It’s so easy to judge ourselves, isn’t it? ‘Judge’ in the sense of putting ourselves down. We do something we think is wrong and we suffer regret. Or we wonder: am I a good person?

 

Is this self-judging a flaw in our character? Something conditioned by culture? Maybe, a way we hurt ourselves? Or something entirely different?

 

Maybe we’re judgmental of others. We might feel another person is too blind to see the truth. Or they’re trying to undermine us. Or that they think they’re “better” than us.

 

Or maybe we sometimes feel we’ve wasted time, or our lives. When it seems we’re wasting time, what’s wasting away? It’s wonderful we don’t want our lives to be meaningless. But maybe we know this yearning not to be meaningless because we thankfully know meaning; we know moments when we’ve done something that feels glorious, that make a difference.

 

Or we feel vulnerable. Being alive means we’re vulnerable. When we love, we’re vulnerable. But our vulnerability, although frightening, is a life-giving gift. Because we’re vulnerable we can learn; we can feel. We can act. Vulnerability can reveal our need for and our essential connection to others. It can reveal our sincere presence right here and now.

 

Sometimes, we get competitive with our ideas and turn a discussion into an argument we feel we must win. But what is it we think we lose if we don’t get the other person to accept our viewpoint? Underlying the passion of this competition is often a feeling we could be mistaken. The more insecure or wrong we feel, the more vigorously we might defend our position. When I was still teaching, I noticed the more experienced and comfortable I was in my profession, the more open I was to a diversity of ideas⎼ and more capable at helping students be themselves.

 

Or we see ourselves as “bad” because we so want to be “good.” Or, when we judge others, or ourselves, it could be because we feel, deep down, there’s something more to us; there’s such a wonderful possibility in us of living more deeply and kindly.

 

Recently, I became anxious about a medical procedure I needed to undergo. One doctor reminded me of a mindfulness teaching I thought I already knew: we often feel anxious because we know calm and want to live. This was a helpful reminder.

 

Right now, we’re all suffering from a divisive world, and from wars and other unbelievable horrors. But our understanding of how threatening divisiveness is to our survival is aided by knowing the need for cooperation and peace. We might know, somewhere inside us, a communion sits waiting beyond the calamity.

 

Because what’s not often seen in our perception of division, competition, duality, self-judgment is there’s something distorting our thinking process or conclusions about the world, about life….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

The Darkness Closest to Us: Don’t Get So Absorbed in the Universe of Words that We Lose the Universe of Being

One thing I love about many of my good friends is that they’re honest with me and willing to find and kindly tell me about holes in what I’ve said or argued, and to hear what I didn’t speak.

 

A great friend and college roommate found a point in a recent blog of mine that I had left unexplained and that had filled him with questions.

 

The lines were: Black holes the shape of trees, buildings, and hillsides stood silhouetted against a gray sky, a massive gray cloud filled by moonlight, yet with no moon visible. And the darkness appeared to begin in close to myself and lessen as it spread out into the distance. And he asked: “How did the darkness appear closer to yourself?” Or “why did it appear darker the closer you came to yourself?” Did you realize the implications of what you said?

 

Perceptually, the world was darker closer to myself because the only physical illumination was far off, from the lights of a nearby city, or from the moon itself.  But I rebelled against my own first understanding of the psychological or metaphorical meaning of the line. I heard “dark” as meaning sinister, something negative or evil. But I didn’t mean sinister or evil.

 

I later realized other meanings of dark, as in unknown or unknowable. As in beyond words. As in unrealized possibility. As in the unknown before from which everything after emerges. Before we speak there is an emptiness, a silence. Buddhists, Taoists, mystics speak of this.

 

Lao Tzu spoke about the emptiness out of which the universe, or fullness of life, emerged:

“In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,

Words came out of the womb of matter…”

 

Of course, since we don’t know what will happen or what will emerge from the womb of time and matter, we can feel frightened. We don’t know if what emerges will be helpful or hurtful. We don’t know if we’ll have the ability to face the unknown or do something with it we can be proud of.

 

We often think we know so much about ourselves, maybe too much. We might think we are so clear, obvious, unchanging. In fact, we can never fully know or fully capture ourselves or be contained in any number of words, thoughts, judgments.

 

Each word, each thought is an abstraction, a recording, or occasionally, as philosopher J. L. Austin argued, a performance or action. Think about an officiant saying. “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Or when we are overcome with beauty and all we say is “wow.” Words facilitate remembering and can help us evaluate, analyze, think about something. They can be so beautiful⎼ or painful to see or hear. They can lead to rumination or take us out of it. There’s so much that just can’t be spoken. Yet here we are talking.

 

In every moment, we have this choice….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

I hope you have a wonderful celebration of Juneteenth, and a Happy Father’s Day.

When the Sky Clears, What Is It We See? The Bird Danced on the Roof Top, Saluting Sky, and the Emptiness in Which It Flies and We All Live

Last week, my wife and I were walking down our rural road when we noticed a large bird enter the space above our heads and circle lazily. Then a second arrived, and a third. Probably Turkey Vultures, magnificent in flight. And suddenly, all three were just gone. We didn’t see where they went.

 

At first, we felt the sky as empty, emptied of birds, lacking. But as we looked more fully, what before was merely background became something else, something more. We saw in full clarity the deep blue beauty of the clear afternoon sky. Not only the sky had cleared, but our minds.

 

The great poet and translator, David Hinton, in his book Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, said when we open our eyes, we open the sky inside us. We feel this empty space the size of the universe.

 

A Chinese poem, says Hinton, is not a metaphor seen or conjured from inside a spirit or identity center, or a self-separated from the universe, but the mind of the poet at that moment. Hinton quotes an early Chinese Ch’an (Zen) poet, Hsieh Ling-yun, as saying mind is “a tranquil mirror, all mystery and shadow.”

 

The sky mirrors our conscious awareness coming awake in, or more accurately, as the world. We often think of the sky as that blue or cloud filled something far off in the distance. But it’s also what we breathe in and out right here; what we move though each moment of our lives. We see and breathe in the world and the world sees and breathes in us.

 

And then the birds were back; first one, then the other two. They circled gracefully into the area above us. One went to sit on the ridgeline of a barn next to the road. The other two soon joined the first, but at the other end.  And the first raised its wings, held them out to the side as it would do if it meant to take off. But it stayed in place, in a different sort of flight.

 

Was this a mating dance? Or was it saluting the sky, the emptiness, the medium in which it flew, and we all lived? Was it bowing? For us, we might bow by first bringing our open hands together; for the vulture, it bowed by opening its wings out. Hinton says the ancient Chinese characters for bow mean hand-whispers, or maybe hand as the silence of mountain peaks, or clear minds. Maybe by opening its wings thusly it became the sky itself, the light, the silence.

 

We watched to see what the vulture would do next, but it just held the position. The three birds, my wife and I, the barn, the universe. And we walked on. The opening through which the universe was aware of itself walked on….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

**The photo of the Buzzard Dance was taken on our walk.

That First Taste of Consciousness: The Family of Awareness Is Infinite

Just imagine the moment when the first human being, hominid, or whomever first became conscious. Not just when a human felt for the first time their feet on the earth; but the first time any hominid was aware they were aware of where they placed their feet and where they were going. First became aware of the beauty in the scent from a flower, or in a sunrise, or first became aware of a memory of a bad morning.

 

One of my closest friends was talking about this with me on a recent Zoom call. What a powerful moment to consider. Was there ever such a moment? Or has consciousness always, somehow, been part of nature?

 

And this image can tease us on so many levels. Think of a baby. When is it first aware of itself? In the womb? At birth? When someone takes away its toy, a parent calls its name, or leaves them alone? Or it cries when another infant or its mother cries?

 

Anthropologists and others speculate humans had an increase in consciousness somewhere between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, when the first art caves were created, or maybe when the first languages were developed. Or maybe before that? Art and written language are likely indicators of conscious awareness.

 

Human consciousness is doubly aware. Our species name is, after all, homo sapiens sapiens, humans twice wise. We know (somewhere inside us) by knowing we know. Conscious means con, or with, scio, to know, or know with. I thought about this in a recent blog. This allows us to reflect on our actions, thoughts, and feelings and learn from the subtlest levels of all of them.

It allows us, when we hold hands with someone we care about, to not only feel their hand and ours but know we feel it.

 

This double awareness can give us the ability to abstract and imagine, to plan or time travel, or substitute an idea for a perception. We can use words to symbolize most anything, including a self, or evoke something in us, to dream, to craft, and to understand reality.

 

Words enable us to leap into a story, one of our own making, or one we adopt from someone else. We prepare ourselves for a future event by telling a story of it. We can name a type of feeling as worrying, dreadful, or lovely. Or talk about something instead of experiencing it. We can distance ourselves from something or stick ourselves to it.

 

Thus, our double awareness can confuse us. It can provide our greatest gifts as well as the source for our greatest suffering. Language and the ability to distance ourselves mentally and emotionally from aspects of the world can create a false sense of separation between the one who knows and what is known. By telling ourselves stories we can create anxiety as well as excitement over what might never be. Since words are abstractions masquerading as objects and other beings, they can deceive us. They create illusions as well as revelations. Because they can help us, they can hurt us….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

Poetry the Universe Writes to Itself: Aging and the Gifts of Friendship

Friends can bring us back to ourselves. Over Thanksgiving with old friends, we each see ourselves in the others. Three of us have known each other for 57 years and we’ve come together for over 40 of those years to share the holiday together. We were freshman in the same college dorm at the University of Michigan. Our future wives entered our lives not long afterwards, anywhere from one to seven or eight years later. We see in each other how we’ve aged, faced threats and tribulations, pains, and losses, inspirations, and successes. How we are facing life now.

 

And it’s all out there for us to talk about. Right in front of us. Each friend with their own gifts and limitations. We give each other tips, perspectives to help us prepare for the next months, years, moment. We talk about illnesses, present and past work experiences, roof repairs, water pics, other friends, podcasts, music videos, movies, books, philosophy, and sleep. Sleep is so tenuous for half of us who, each night, have no idea how much or where in the house we will sleep. Nothing is assumed. We speak of dreams and family members. Deaths and losses. The threats to our world.

 

And then there’s the joy. So much to be grateful for. For the food, certainly. And sure, it’s an old stereotype, but all the men played football in one form or another when we were young, yet none of us attended a football game after our sophomore year. After a few years of college, it seemed so meaningless and violent. But sometime in our 50s, we began to pay attention once again and listen for scores. Especially Michigan v Ohio State. This year, we watched together, shouting and cheering. Even the women were drawn in by the drama and emotion. And then my wife and I had to leave early to return home. Ohio State was ahead by 3 points.

 

But about 3 hours later, still on the road, my wife checked her phone for the score. Michigan 45, Ohio State 23. We won. We actually won. We called our friends. What a celebration ensued.

 

And when we arrived home ⎼ we have 3 cats, but we couldn’t find any of them. They hide from our cat-sitter even though she feeds and talks to them. Sometimes, they punish us for leaving by not showing up. But this time, in 5 minutes or so, one emerged from the basement, one appeared by the door as we brought in the suitcases. Twenty minutes or so later, the third came up behind us, crying. They all cried for food and contact. And when my wife and I sat down later to eat dinner, they sat with us.

 

This year, something extra sat with us. There was a darkness in the house not attributable to the night. A warning in the air, or in me. How many more of these returns do we have? Aging is not about winning but presence. In the dark was a reminder to take in this moment more deeply. To embrace it as much as possible. To do everything I could to give back. This is all there is ⎼ feel it. Enjoy it. Be thankful for what we can be thankful for. Be kind, caring, even if it hurts. Pet the cats, love my wife. And maybe we will let more of the light in….

 

**If you live in Georgia, please vote on Tuesday, Dec. 6, to help protect your right to vote, the right for women to make their own health care choices, to protect the environment, Medicare, and Social Security ⎼ to help stop the politics of hate. Bring water, a photo ID, and friends. No matter where you live, you can help get out accurate voting information.

 

***To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Art of Knowing and Truly Befriending Ourselves

I look outside the window right now and see maple trees with orange and reddish yellow leaves reaching into a tender blue sky. And lower down, green leaves, with burnt red Virginia creeper clinging to maples all cabled together with grape vines. And lower still, deutzia and lilac and honeysuckle.

 

But just five hours ago, none of this. The moon was out, and the night was day. After waking up unexpectedly at 5 am, I looked out a window and didn’t know what year or millennia it was. There before me was something ancient. The trees and bushes were all constituted of shadows, timeless shadows. And the rest was silvered by a unique light, a softened glow.

 

During the day, we see the ten thousand things of the world distinguished by specific details and the spaces between them. But in the moonlight, the edges grew fainter. There was light and shadow, but nothing else sharply divided or defined. Everything was softened and somehow linked. Nothing stood on its own; the whole scene was so engrossing. And the moonlight made mind light, made all my thoughts and feelings, so noticeable.

 

And then this morning I picked up a book I had been reading a week or so ago, Hunger Mountain: A field Guide to Mind and Landscape by David Hinton. It describes walks he had taken on Hunger Mountain in Vermont and includes discussions both of Chinese poetry he had translated and of Taoist cosmology inspiring those walks.

 

In the first chapter of the book was a poem I had read before; it was by the Chinese poet, Tu Fu, titled “Moonrise”. I read again about the new moon, and the ancient, changeless “Star River” and “White/dew dusts the courtyard.” And I realized that last night it was Tu Fu looking out my window.

 

We normally think of things at a distance. Words can do that. They are abstractions, usually. And we are the distance the words create, or what distances. We think of ourselves in a manner that separates us from whom we speak to or about. We all have thoughts, plans, dreams, sensations, emotions filling our mind and heart. The ego self is what glues us to some of these stimuli and excludes us from the rest.

 

Many people would argue that it wasn’t Tu Fu looking out the window. He’s dead. It was just that my buried memory of the poem influenced how I interpreted the moonlight I perceived and how I saw the earth, trees, and bushes. I was clearly in a dream intoxicated state. But last night, a different vision occurred. The moon met and befriended the poet. For a second or two, the thing seen met the act of seeing and became the seer…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Man Project. 

Spirit Music, and A Study in Sincerity

Today was a tough day. My body hurt in so many places and for reasons that are beyond my knowing. And the daily news is so mixed, the horrible mixed with the beautiful. Yet…

 

Even on days like today, we can read, hear, or see something that takes us someplace totally unanticipated, to a mind-state, or a universe so alive, so conscious, that moments which once seemed painful, tired, or sad are transformed into something wonderful we embrace with all our being.

 

I’m reading a book called Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, by the poet and translator of Chinese literature, David Hinton. And I feel this. I’ve felt this in other books by Hinton, and books by other poets, and philosophers, historians, meditators, travelers, and psychologists. I’ve felt this with certain people, animals, and places.

 

Books have forever been a way to inform, challenge, and inspire us, to understand what before was incomprehensible. They allow a depth of examination that other formats don’t. For me, the internet, tv, social media all favor little sound or information bites that keep us more focused on the surface of things.

 

But the words in books like Hinton’s are spirit-music. When we read them, if we’re open to them, if we can inhabit them so we walk as the inhabitants in the books walked, we create something never seen before, yet ancient. The very air breathes us, speaks the words with us.

 

Hinton says, “Things are themselves only as they belong to something more than themselves: I to we, we to earth, earth to planets and stars…” We recognize ourselves and become truly ourselves only with others, in whatever place, time, and universe we are in.

 

The first chapter is called ‘sincerity.’ Hinton says the Chinese character for sincerity depicts a side view of a person walking or standing next to words rising out of a mouth. A lie attempts to hide the truth from others, but usually hides the universe and others from ourselves. This creates an inner tension. If we’re sincere, our thoughts are the same as the words we speak; all of what happens supposedly “outside,” in language, mountain, and sky, opens inside. And what we say unites us with where we are and who we’re with; it reveals to us that, in fact, we’re the universe itself speaking.

 

Sincerity raises us like a parent’s love, one that is absolute, yet clear seeing and adapting. We each have different loves, different doorways to the mysterious. Everything provides such a doorway if we can find it. Sincerity is the sign that marks the door.

 

When I was teaching secondary school literature, philosophy, or history, the students and I talked about finding that doorway. Children, especially teenagers, are not shy about calling out insincerity and respect the care and trust expressed by sincerity. For example, poetry can often be so difficult to comprehend. But when we read a poem with full attention, a word, phrase, or image would stand out, but which word or image did that was different for different students. And once we realized the door was there, we could feel or question our way in deeper….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.