Evil

Winston Churchill said of Neville Chamberlain that he had a `limited imagination for evil.' I am angry and nauseated by niceanity--that religion that turns the power of Jesus into a call to be nice. Smile--God loves you. Yes,ok--but what about the love of God and people we have loved dying excruciating deaths. What about the love of God and those faces of the starving and dying children besieged in Leningrad in 1943?

Christianity and any other religion/world view that is worth anything must have some power/some word to say/some reality to point to that will enable us to confront radical evil. Yes, we will be scared, we will be terrified, but from deep places within us and within the universe we will find courage that has had a strong imagination for evil. This courage will have been forged in the pain and suffering of our own life. This courage will have been tempered by the waters of the tears and sufferings of others. We will remember loved ones and friends and ancestors back generations. WE will honor them by telling the truth of their life and by searching out something of the truth of their times. Memory will heal us and make us strong for the battle.

In spirit, our souls connect strangely over the centuries to particular people. Oftentimes, we identify with and rejoice in the stories and struggles of people that we know though their creations and through stories others tell about them. It is as if they give some of their soul's blood to us. We can live more vibrantly, because they lived so gloriusly even with their sins and sufferings.

Back to Brothers Karamazov. One of the brothers, Ivan, torments his brother Alyosha with stories of evil done to children. According to his notebooks, Dostoevsky gathered the stories from newspaper accounts laying bare much of the evil of the human soul The chapter is called Rebellion. I will write more of Ivan in postings to come.

To be in the beautiful and fascinating city of St. Petersbuyr and to walk the streets and visit museums was a great joy. And I felt the evil present in the memories, in the stories of Petersburg,in its history, in the deaths of millions. I saw the hollow eyes of the dying children of the siege.

I want to have a strong imagination for evil. And you?