Hello friends, it is a joy to let you in on the new season of poetry unbound, which is underway.

And we're putting this one episode in our feed for you here. As you may know, this is the only

other podcast we produce at On Being Studios. Padregg is a former guest on the show. He's one of our

esteemed teachers on all things poetry and theology and conflict and healing. He's also one of my

most beloved friends. And this episode has everything in it that makes poetry unbound such a gift

in a noisy podcast world. It is quiet and quieting. It is crafted with care and beauty. It carries a

story that you sink right into and ponder and smile and feel and walk back out of just seconds

later a little bit changed. It's about a teacher and a group of boys and it's about all of us. So be nourished. Enjoy.

My name is Padre Gautuma and I trained as conflict mediator and kind of went into a speciality of

group conflict, which is really a study about how groups talk to each other. You can go in if you're

the group leader. You have an idea but you can't control it. You're ultimately there trying to

meet the group and see how the group wants to hold itself together and what it can say that

can make something creator or break something. And the word poem means a made thing in a certain

sense of group experience. If it's going well, it's a certain kind of poem. That's what you're

trying to do to let a group make something, to let it be its own poem, to let it delve into its

own creative possibilities and for the group to discover this is who we are together.

The Rongs by Benjamin Gutiardi

Only the person with the green dice should be talking, I remind the boys, holding up the oversized

foam cubes and the others should be listening, K says. And how should we listen?

Cornel Corazon em replies, thomping his chest with his closed fist. That's right, I say, with the

heart. Who wants to start? The dice are passed around the circle and the boys glass over the check-in

question. When they reach B who walked here on a company from Honduras three months ago,

...