Serendipity
I was searching for one thing on my laptop, and I came across this feedback from a SLU student in 2006… Dear Dr. Chmiel, I am writing you to finally submit my insertion. I apologize…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Lies
And therefore I think the solution I have found for myself will be valid for all sincere men who set themselves the same question. First of all, to the question: What must we do? I…
Mother and Son
There was one other constant in Viktor’s life, a quiet light that illuminated his whole inner world. It was his mother who had given him this light, but he did not realize this. She felt…
Why Read Dostoevsky
It was never my goal to put together a collection of horror stories, to overwhelm the reader. I was collecting the human. Dostoevsky asked the question: “How much of the human is there in a…
Forthwith!
All we can know is, what we, who compose humanity, must do, and what not, in order that the kingdom of God may come. That we all know. And every one need but begin to…
Tolstoy’s Feedback for Dostoevsky
“Just recently I was feeling unwell and read House of the Dead. I had forgotten a good bit, read it over again and I do not know a better book in all our new literature,…
Minute Particulars
Active love is always directed at somebody or something in particular. Abstract love of humanity is professed by Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor, by Rakitin, and eventually by Ivan Karamazov’s devil. When it comes to meeting…
Precepts and Parables
Of all the gospels, the Sermon on the Mount was the portion that impressed me most, and I studied it more often than any other part. Nowhere else does Christ speak with such solemnity; nowhere…
Reveling in Resentment
The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him,…
Russians Reciting Poetry as Prayer
Countless former prisoners described how memorized verse consoled them. It preserved their past life and their continuity with it. And it was something the authorities could not take away. Once stories about prisoners reciting poetry…