Patisotagāmi and NATO
The following will offer you a different take on Russia, Ukraine, and NATO than you hear in the mainstream media: Russell Brand with Aaron Maté: We Have Been Lied To… [11.5 minutes] Scott Ritter: NATO…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Sari
Last night at Medina Mediterranean Grill, I had a farewell dinner with Sari Al-Thubyani before he headed home to Saudi Arabia. We met in the Maryville parking lot on the first day of school in…
“The Duality of Man”
No wonder, as Martin, Dianne and I have been making our way through Anatoli Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, that a phrase that I first heard in 1987 has…
Open to Receive Others’ Viewpoints
Do not think that the knowledge that you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive…
The Good News of Tablet!
Given some of my preoccupations over the decades, I am grateful to have recently discovered Alana Newhouse’s Tablet. The following are a few essays and interviews that focused my mindfulness and provoked my gratitude. Rokhl…
Connect the Dots, Then and Now
All too fresh in my mind is the infuriating experience of experts like Scott Ritter who could prove that virtually all of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) had been destroyed. Neither Ritter nor other…
A Merton Hour with Liz Burkemper: Fourth and Walnut
In the waning light of the Buck Moon, let us read and reflect together on Thomas Merton’s moment of enlightenment at the corner of Fourth and Walnut (from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander). What is a…
Yoga Sutras Exchanges with Yael
Concentration, meditation, and pure contemplation focused on a single object constitute perfect discipline. 3.4—Barbara Stoler Miller, translation of Yoga Sutras Notes/Connections 1.Ekāgratā, noun, Sanskrit. One-pointedness, doing only one thing at a time, concentrating upon a…
“Concentration Is Consecration”
Yulia and I are meeting weekly to discuss Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. I found the following insightfulg passages from Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood’s translation. 1.2 Yoga is the control of thought-waves in the mind. 1.13 …
Thuy
I first met Thuy Khuu in 2006 when she took my Social Justice class at Saint Louis University. Born in Vietnam, she moved to the US at the age of eight with her family. Beginning in…