Author: Mark J. Chmiel

The One Thing That Is Important

Christopher Isherwood, My Guru and His Disciple, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980. I’ve been imagining coming up with a class in which we’d explore Chris Isherwood, Ram Dass, and especially  The Gospel of Sri…

When Life Starts to Improve

Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited by Charles E. Moore Prophetic witness consists of human deeds of justice and kindness that attend to the unjust sources of human hurt and misery. It calls attention to the…

Glenn Greenwald and the Gospels

Today I received by email a Substack article by Glenn Greenwald, which is worth reading: Values and Character v. Political Identity: Some Personal Reflections–“The Brazilian firefighter, union leader, evangelical and ex-Congressman Cabo Daciolo was once…

What I Learned from Mev by Cami

My friend Cami Kasmerchak was generous enough to make this video for a talk I was to give at Visitation Academy, Mev’s alma mater, for the first-year students who were on retreat on Friday 16…

Ed Snowden, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald

Check out Matt Taibbi’s article today, The Washington Post Dabbles in Orwell: In scrubbed piece about Edward Snowden, the Bezos Post offers a preview of how history will be re-written. Here’s the penultimate paragraph: “That…

Share the Wealth

I started a project in September 2012 when I gave a name to what I’d been doing for a couple of years, namely, asking my friends and students if they’d be willing to share with…

Encouragement

You will have to go on discriminating and make a sustained effort to convince your mind of the fact that japa, meditation, and all other spiritual exercises, have for purpose your awakening. On this pilgrimage…