Author: Mark J. Chmiel

One-Pointed Attention

Make an orderly series of your different studies, so as to throw yourself into them completely. Let each task take entire hold of you, as if it were the only one. That was Napoleon’s secret;…

Today’s One-Liner (#275)

Though meditation you can learn to stand back from the heat of mental processes that are raging out of control.  –Sri Eknath Easwaran, Seeing with the Eyes of Love: Reflections on a Classic of Christian…

She Gave an Onion

Dostoevsky was concerned lest his depiction be considered blasphemous, and he thus includes in his postscript “one small nota bene: please don’t imagine that I would allow myself, in a work of mine, even the…

Microscopic Goodness

Grushenka recounts a Rus­sian folktale about a wicked ­woman who dies and is condemned to the burning lake. Pitying her, her guardian angel recalls that the woman did one good deed in her life: she…

Resurrecting the Frozen Heart

“Brother, in these past two months I’ve sensed a new man in me, a new man has arisen in me! He was shut up inside me, but if it weren’t for this thunderbolt, he never…

Today’s One-Liner (#273)

I looked with deep tenderness, and for the first time in my  life I consciously received the first seed of the word of God in my soul.  ––Starets Zosima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Gradual

A lost-looking pedestrian with a violin case asked a New York City policeman: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” the answer was: “Practice, man, practice.” There’s no easier way. You learn to do it…

Today’s One-Liner (#272)

 Yet who can tell how many times each day our curiosity is tempted  by the most trivial and insignificant matters? –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin

Liturgical Impermanence

Much of the excitement of guitar Masses, living-room Masses, sport-shirted celebrants, readings from Eldridge Cleaver, coffee-and-donut Eucharists, and post-communion dancing has depended on the dramatic clash of the old and new, the unexpectedness of it…