Don’t Get Rattled by Samsara
So many of my brilliant former students— Their families from Gujarat, Bijar, Delhi, Kerala, West Bengal— Would pity me Or express incredulity That I, their erstwhile quasi-prof, Hang on the words Of Sri Anandamayi Ma…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/9
400. If a man reads a book because it interests him and reads in all directions for the same reason, his reading is pure and interests me. –Ralph Waldo Emerson 500. The poor play a…
Saturday Share the Wealth with Barbara and Suzy–Turning Stumbling Blocks into Stepping Stones: Friendship Soul Partnering
Suzy Shepard and Barbara Sheets met in 1975 at a play-in start-up group for newborns and their mothers. Nothing could have prepared Suzy and Barb more for coping in life than what followed – leaving…
For PG, on Her 68th Birthday
I celebrate yourself And sing yourself And what I absorb from the Western canon you can absorb from the Western canon, For every classic belonging to me as good belongs to you
Exchange
“But how come those Palestinians can’t be like Dr. King?” Well then… “So, Rabin, did he make it even through a third of Gandhi’s Collected Works? And did Shimon Peres invite Gene Sharp to give…
“Scribbled Secret Notebooks, and Wild Typewritten Pages, for Yr Own Joy”
Inspired by Diana Raab, Writers and Their Notebooks I read Raab’s book right about the end of my time at SLU. Moving on to Maryville University, I found a way to assign Natalie Goldberg’s Bones…
“Every Moment Forever”
I shared the following earlier today with my friend Rob Trousdale, who lives at the Duluth Catholic Worker. These Katagiri Roshi passages are from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within… “Why…
Wherever We Are Useful
Katharina Mommsen, Goethe’s Art of Living Trafford, 2003 Translators: John Crosetto, John Whaley, Renee M. Schell A teacher who can awaken a sense of a single good deed or a single good poem accomplishes more…
Remembering Is Not Enough
Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 The following note is from summer 1999 when I was reworking my dissertation to what would become my first book, Elie Wiesel…
Share the Wealth with Wendy Lee & Xavier Vincent: On China, Minimalism, and World Travel
Wendy, a Saint Louis University alum, and Xavier, a French native, met in Shanghai, a metropolis that has gained importance on the world stage over the last decade. The two met in this city while…