more on Lin Jensen and Pavement -
Lin Jensen is 75 years old, so hardly a kid, though he comes to see that sitting on the pavement is "fun." He learns from all sides, from everyone.
He writes:
"The person of right and wrong for whom right is always right and wrong is always wrong lays waste to his surroundings. What's offered us in the place of moral certainty is doubt and love, which are, ultimately, so intertwined as to be nearly synonymous. Doubt wears the hard edges off right and wrong, turning the soil where love sprouts like spring flowers. The old masters placed the site of ethics within the inward, instantaneous grasping of circumstances in their entirety, a living truth not divisible into categories of right and wrong. Truly, we can know things most directly when we lay no claim to knowing anything at all."