Recollection
In October 2003 We were in Nablus Awarta, Ramallah Being alert in the olive groves Dashing across the settler-only roads Learning a thing or two about sumud In Louisville the minister and civil rights activist…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
The Good News of a Fence, 7.11.2017
For her 60th birthday, Joanie’s family helped resurrect our backyard, including setting up a bamboo fence.
Lobbyist for Tenderness
I first read Allen Ginsberg’s City Lights paperback Howl and Other Poems late one autumn night 1980 with friends at the White Castle at the corner of Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway. A few months…
Share the Wealth with Ben and Liz Burkemper: The Hidden Ground of Love: Exploring the Writings of Thomas Merton
Ben and Liz Burkemper, father and daughter, are fascinated by the figure of Thomas Merton — a prolific writer, Trappist monk, poet, prophet, peace and civil rights activist, theologian, and mystic. Fresh from the latest…
Liz, Here’s Another Work to Add to the Wisdom Literature List
But the whole teaching, the “way” contained in these anecdotes, poems, and meditations, is characteristic of a certain mentality found everywhere in the world, a certain taste for simplicity, for humility, self-effacement, silence, and in…
“I Denounce the US Government’s Threats of War against North Korea” by Andrew Wimmer
Andrew shared this early this morning, and I want to share it with others… Dear Friends, Our first obligation in the face of US war threats is to speak a word of truth, wherever we…
Mad Farmer’s Liberation Bumpersticker
Over on Newstead Avenue Organic farmer’s car parked in front of me Had this bumpersticker: Compost Congress
Another Ukraine Khurbn
Dear Bella I just finished my second Svetlana Alexievich book, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. You are one of the very few people with whom I could share this text…
Remember–Longing, Too, Is Impermanent
To a man who said we should meet, even if it were only for a single time Even if I now saw you Only once, I would long for you Through worlds, Worlds. –Izumi Shikibu…
The Good News of Giving and Receiving Books, 6.26.2017
Ten years ago, because of a Social Justice theology class, I got to know Melissa Banerjee, a Bengali-American. It made sense to me to give her a hardback edition of the The Gospel of Sri…