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First, to Gail for her sculptures: isn't it amazing how we are able to translate these readings into personal experience with such confidence!

So far the alum responses seem to reflect the ability immediately to integrate into daily life and understanding the texts we are reading; the amazingly (but not surprisingly) articulate and searching undergrad responses seem to reflect difficulty, less certainty, perhaps because, as Maria Montessori theorized, one is not fully and absolutely an adult, fully formed, until about the age of 24. So undergrads as a group (no surprise) are still in formation: opinions developing, sense of self seeking definition -- this is why we would return to our youth only if we could go there equipped with what we now know! It's a long, long row to hoe!

One wants so much to be right, yet as long as one studies, one learns that there is more -- so it is in life. And then there comes the suggestion in re politics that there is no one answer, only answers that work depending on the situation, and therein lies the sense of community, not in a specific definition but in the openness to discovery in dialog.

Not sure how blog comments get into the discussion, so am reproducing one here, to Rhapsodica:

I appreciated your efforts to relate to The Mother. I did not respond to it on first reading yet ended up dredging out a poem full of ambiguities like hers. I, too, thought she might be speaking for others, not for herself, but then wondered how many abortions she'd had, if any. (I personally believe that birth control of whatever kind one needs will be our only salvation in the end, the only honest answer to global warming, e.g. Imagine what "politics" will do with that one!)

I'm not sure I've ever told my son about my abortion, perhaps because I have never felt guilty about any aspect of it at all, no regret, not even the need to defend the decision -- just shows how thoughts and feelings get compartmentalized, which brings me to your "weird relationship" w/ your mom, your expressed lack of reaction to her disclosure. The readings led me to write an abortion poem because I don't understand the stridency of the political debate -- to me, it is obviously, manifestly a personal decision that doesn't require anyone else's opinion at all. But look what came out! I think the feelings I expressed are in me, they've just never been called forth.

When I had my nanny agency (18 years to 2001) I discovered that people who didn't "know" the answer to a difficult question often were just not addressing it. You might find it useful to take a long walk (or some pages of a journal) to look within for reactions you have so far missed -- do you think? It is generally better to look hard at any issue to which we have no answer, at least if we think we ought to have a reaction but cannot find one.