What does our reaction to another person’s pain mean about us as humans?  Why, when someone experiences something heightened, heavy, painful, or extraordinary, can we feel it in ourselves, in our bodies, in our hearts?  

Responding to a poem called “A Retreat to the National Forest, Ostensibly to Pray” we reflect on all they ways we belong with each other as human beings, today on Don’t Hold me To This.

Don’t Hold Me To This Podcast is produced by Shaynor Newsome and Jeremy Reeves. A big way you can support our work is by sharing this with your friends

or, you know, if you hate it, share it with your enemies. Music this week is by Enzo Orefice  and we20fifty.

Like the podcast, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you are on. You can find out more, do some more reading, get in touch, and subscribe to our writings at dontholdmetothis.substack.com.

Here is a reading of the piece On A Retreat To The National Forest, Ostensibly To Pray that we discuss in the upcoming episode 15 of Don't Hold Me To This. You can read the piece for yourself at dontholdmetothis.substack.com

We humans were made to make a difference in the world, and each of us has somewhere maybe deep within us a sense of how we are designed to do that: a love, a longing, a gift we want to develop and deploy into the world for the common good.

Here is a reading of the piece "Swinging a Hammer" that we discuss in the upcoming episode 14 of Don't Hold Me To This. You can read the piece for yourself at dontholdmetothis.substack.com

It is hard to be told the hard truth: that we’ve made a mistake, that we’ve hurt a person’s feelings, that we’ve wronged someone is some real way. But a harder truth than that, and maybe more unbearable, is to be told that we are good, true, and beautiful.   Why is it so hard to hear that we humans are remarkably lovely, and why is it so heavy a name to bear?  Ordinary Lives are Remarkable Lives, on this episode of Don’t Hold Me To This.

Here is a reading of the piece "The Most Fundamental Thing About Us" that we discuss in the upcoming episode 13 of Don't Hold Me To This. You can read the piece for yourself at dontholdmetothis.substack.com

I think it is right to say that we all want to help in times of deep need—when a friend is hurting, we want to be a healer. But sometimes the tragedy seems too big, too far beyond our ability to help. And sometimes the tragedy is us, is in us, and worked too deeply into our story.  What then, what do we do then?

Tragedy, Empathy, and Withness, on this episode of Don’t Hold Me To This.

Don’t Hold Me To This Podcast is a production of Don’t Hold Me To This. Music this week is by Humans Win, CJ Harris, and Q Hef 777.  Like the podcast, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you are on

You can find out more, do some more reading, get in touch, and subscribe to our writings at dontholdmetothis.substack.com

Here is a reading of the piece "An Encounter with My Attorney--an Accidental Ash Wednesday Reading" that we discuss in the upcoming episode 12 of Don't Hold Me To This.

In a poem called “I Happened to Be Standing” Mary Oliver said

“I don’t know where prayers go,

And maybe that is as true of any of us as it was of Mary Oliver--that we don’t know a thing about praying, and we don’t know what they do, and we don’t know what counts. Mary Oliver wondered if the sunflower’s blaze is their prayer, if the cat’s half sleeping is its prayer.  And we wonder, from our ordinary lives through our ordinary days, what all counts.

Don’t Hold Me To This Podcast is a production of Don’t Hold Me To This

Music this week is by Humans Win.  Like the podcast, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you are on.  You can find out more, do some more reading, get in touch, and subscribe to our writings at dontholdmetothis.substack.com.

In preparation for Episode 11, here is a reading of the poem The Only Way I Can Figure.