- When can singing become stairs? Times when a melody is as though it were making a route to a second floor we had forgotten and moved us there.
- From a description of a Apple computer center invoice form describing a broken device and what God created us to be, however broken we ourselves may be: "One Big Bright Pixel".
- "The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers." - Basho
- A lesson plan for all those who's profession or volunteer commitment involve exuding comfort to the dying, to those in distress and pain: Pet a kitten. Your job is through touch and/or through your voice invoke a cat to purr and for the longest possible time.
- In Mae Ra Moe Refugee Camp, nothing is paved with certainty. The ground, like waiting, is covered with the dust and mud divots of 'maybe'.
- In the Buddhist monastery on the hill, the novices were left in charge because the abbot had to go to another camp. They found a way to put DVDs of Burmese cop shows on the television and turned on the generator. Some of my students joined. I don't know if the novices were reprimanded, but later that night, faithfully between 6:30 - 7:00, the gong again rang four times.
- My second year students completed their first English resumes. In the section heading "Work and Experience", being young people without "work experience", the following were listed, with a fun "marketable correctness":
cooked curry and rice (prepared community meals)
made pillows (designed bedding materials)
sold noodles
thatched roofs
raised pigs, chickens, ducks (specialized in animal husbandry)
collected cans, plastic, and paper for recycling (refuse elimination)
cut hair (barber, hair stylist)
built bamboo houses (construction engineer)
weaved baskets (crafted home furnishings)
"We are well instructed only by the words that God speaks to us personally. And what instructs us is what happens from moment to moment." - de Caussade
