Counter-the Culture
The highest way of living for those who take the tonsure is to aim to lack nothing while owning nothing. —Yoshida Kenkô, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney If you wish to possess everythingYou must…
Tag: Daniel Berrigan
Cheer Up: Reminders
Furnace. The first evening, about 5 o’clock, the pain from the extreme heat, exhaustion, and headaches make me completely lose control of my movements. I can’t lower the furnace damper. A coppersmith jumps up and…
Being Present (Somehow)
1. Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who…
Righteous, Remorseful Jews
As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago. For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…
Correspondents
Proximity by Martín Zaldivar Hi Mark, … The last two years have been rough. New York City can be a very lonely place, and I miss my good friends, as well as the calmness of…
Where the Tortured and the Torturer Shook Hands
How many of our most famous novelists, for instance, have bothered to take the two-and-a-half hour flight from Miami and see for themselves what’s going on here? —Lawrence Ferlinghetti I first read Seven Days…
“Why Must the Poet’s Mouth Be Bloodied, His Teeth Caved in?”
More than a decade ago, octogenarian Jesuit felon Daniel Berrigan spoke at the local Jesuit university (in the auditorium of the business school, no less). During the Q & A, a friend of mine asked…
Trying To Stop the War
Shawn Francis Peters, The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era Johanna Hamilton, 1971: On the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI Shawn Francis Peters’ 2012 book is an account…
On Daniel Berrigan
1. Some of Daniel Berrigan’s Whitmanian multitudes: Brother, uncle, jailbird, correspondent, chef, Jesuit, retreat master, playwright poet, peacemaker, mentor, reader, teacher, prophet, son, friend, logophile. 2. In our age they they talk about the importance…
Hearts and Minds, Revisited by Mark Chmiel and Andrew Wimmer
This article was first published at Counterpunch, January 12, 2005. The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there. –Lyndon Johnson, on Vietnam There is…