This is the season when we acknowledge who matters to us.
We love to be able to know that if we fall down, we can stand up and go forward, but only when we acknowledge that we have fallen.
When we acknowledge regulation's flaws, but adopt its hopeful guidance for the future, we will feel better about it as a nation.
Yet such concerns are largely unwarranted when we acknowledge that people are already trying to accomplish similar goals in the absence of relevant technologies, albeit less perfectly.
When we acknowledge the scale of surveillance and covert policing that we face today, the FBI's renewed attempt to "recapture" Assata should disturb every single one of us.
It is only when we acknowledge this political and cultural context that we can attempt to understand the origins of the England chanting; it is hard to believe it would have been heard at Hampden.
But that will happen only when we acknowledge that leaving no child behind means paying as much attention to those who've mastered the basics — and have the capacity and motivation for much more — as we do to those who cannot yet read or subtract.
But we can only fully grasp what it takes to be a wise intermediary in the world when we acknowledge that the intermediary has to master different roles (first-order wisdom) and to decide between them in each individual situation of intermediation (second-order wisdom).
The battle is fought within each of us: the foremost challenge we face is that posed by our own sinfulness, which is overcome when we acknowledge that control of our destiny lies finally with God, and give up our false claim to ourselves.
We become so much more relatable when we acknowledge our insensitivity and shortcomings.
