created & maintained by Chris Biles
“You can’t stop time. You can’t capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.” – Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter) Things have been busy, and my mind as of late has been in a million places at once. That’s the joy of being at pre-service training, of being …
Continue reading "Words, Quotes, Sentences, and Mystery – 5 March 2018"
This world is a big place, and it is full of both beauty and darkness; love and hatred; peace and violence. I believe if there is a benevolent balance of light and dark we’re doing okay. I also believe the Ubuntu principle that people are only people through other people. We would not be who …
Continue reading "Contemplating the Yin and the Yang – 18 February 2018"
Tides flow in, pull out People come and people go Still, the sun will rise Time again to say farewell… In Peace Corps people really do come and go. There is the opportunity to make so many connections, some deeper than you’ve ever experienced before, but so often the people you connect with are gone …
This Swahili proverb basically translates to: patient eats ripe, implying a patient person eats ripe fruits, or, patience pays. Our all-knowing agriculture guru in Peace Corps (pictured below) introduced me to this saying two weeks ago, during my first day with the new PCTZ Health/Ag class. We were speaking of the pre-service training (PST), and …
“In literature and in life we ultimately pursue, not conclusions, but beginnings.” ― Sam Tanenhaus, Literature Unbound Some people are only good at beginnings, others endings, but most are only good at the balance that comes between the two once they find it. Those people live their lives with only a few beginnings, and therefore …
“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.” –Friedrich Nietzsche I leave my village in less than two weeks, two weeks that will absolutely fly by. I think the fact is starting to sink in, …
With only about three weeks left in my village, my time here is certainly nearing its end. When every day seems like a week, but every week seems like a day, time moves on in an endlessly confusing way... And now it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that it’s time to say …
Continue reading "Seems like just yesterday: Memories here at the end"
This is a new poem to express the pull and push felt for my two very different homes – my two worlds. It expresses how and why we go on in spite of exhaustion, shock, or injustice. When you come to love a place and a people, you also see the dark sides that inevitably …
Continue reading "Two Worlds: Discovery, Confusion, Recovery"
“Differences simply act as a yarn of curiosity unraveling until we get to the other side.” - Ciore Taylor Peace Corps Volunteers have the unique opportunity and ability to learn the humility and compassion that is required for intercultural communication. At the core of all cultures are varying power structures, different ways of communicating, contrasting …
Continue reading "Understanding: To bridge between great difference"
“… that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED Talk, Oct 2009, The danger of a single story One thing that always blew my mind when talking with friends or fellow …
marks in the sand 