Hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest. The concept of hospitality arose in ancient times when the reciprocity was easier to see: in nomadic cultures, the food and shelter one gave to a stranger yesterday is the food and shelter one hopes to receive from a stranger tomorrow. By offering hospitality, one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which all can depend-thus the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a gift of hope for the host.

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

Everybody is on a lifelong journey toward trying to live more deeply. There is nobody who can say, "Well, I've got that one checked off my to-do list." We have to be honest with ourselves about where we are on this journey and about the difficulty of living in our own identities and integrity.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.