much to learn!

I've been reading Fyodor Dostoevesky's The Brothers Karamazov for the past few weeks; I so very highly recommend it. It's one of the most masterful books I've ever read. The plot is so very logical and constructed with perfection, and this alone is fascinating to me. I visualize plot construction as a sort of literary juggling; to think that an author can start with a single starting point (almost like a period on an empty sheet of paper) and out explodes perhaps dozens of different lines, twisting and curving in every direction and getting more and more complicated as the book progresses, and bring it all back to a period at the end of the book so that the plot (conceptually) looks a bit like a diamond on its side. That is how Dostoevesky has constructed this plot. And the way that he weaves in the discussion of so many themes, or the development and existence of so many complex characters, and makes the whole chaos of seperate ideas intertwine and play off itself: it's a veritable masterpiece and I highly recommend the investment that reading and digesting the book necessarily is.

But one of the central themes of the book is the supremacy of love, and the crucial centrality of it in the words of Christ and Christian orthodoxy; it isn't a byproduct of the Christian life - it's the lifeblood. More particularly, the book champions that a prerequisite to loving your neighbor (that is, loving any man) is accepting his sin as your own. For me to love those around me, it is essential that I recognize my own sin in theirs.

For me, it took days for the profundity of that to sink in, but I am beginning to see that this might in fact be the sine qua non, the essential condition, without which I cannot love others fully. And accepting responsibility is assuredly not in my nature...I find that I tend to believe my thoughts or actions are shaped by various forces working upon me. For me, the question is often if what I have thought or done is 'understandable, given the situation' - a far cry from accepting responsibility for them!

I feel like I'm droning on and on in the spirit of explaining myself, and to be honest I simply want to say a few things. So here is the point I want to make:
I am learning that I am the ugliness I see in other people. The sins of others are my sins, and if any one is responsible then so am I. I still have much to learn about how all of this works, but I am learning that all are responsible for all. And more importantly, I am becoming acquainted with this - the wretchedness I see in the world around me is in every corner of my being, even in my best of moments. I conclude with excerpts from Aaron Weiss's online journal:


"The other day i got this thought: I'm very prone to judge people when they do things they shouldn't, but I realized (again) that someone else's problem is my problem, their sins are my sins, and what i see wrong in others is there in my own heart. I am part of you and you are part of me and when I judge you I judge myself. We are more connected that i think, I think."

"I don't mean to give cheap advice, 'forgive everyone everything' that is my advice, if you want it plainly, but grace doesn't seem to come naturally to us, so what do we do? If you feel unable to forgive someone who's hurt you please at least desire to forgive, and pray to God for help. We have the teaching that "the measure to which you forgive, you will be forgiven" (this is extremely powerful) all the parables to instruct us and the example of St. Stephen in Acts and Christ on the cross, who did not wait for an apology but prayed for mercy for the very ones who killed them. May we fix our eyes there, not only for a single decision but a perpetual life of unconditional grace. May God grant us such scandalous love!"

"This world is full of darkness and we alone are to blame. There is a paradise in our hearts right this moment, as I type this, as you read it, sleeping in our hearts is the paradise of the glorious, peaceful kingdom. The lion lies with the lamb, every tear is wiped from every eye, and this paradise is waiting to be found. My life is a shit storm - I don't care about anyone at all. People are a means to satisfying some desire of mine. You can live or die for all I care, my best friend can live or die, I don't care about anyone. But can I tell you something that's more Good than I am Bad? God is Good! By 'God', mind you, I mean the Intelligence that created the universe. And by God I mean the power that sustains all life, the force of life that is so much everywhere that we don't see it at all, like fish swimming in the ocean searching for water! The Beginning and the End of all things, the Healer of the heart, the Physician to the sick, the Father to the fatherless, the Mother Hen to us baby chicks, the Great Unchanging Eternal Existence, the reality next to which our lives are vapors, the Light, seperated from which our lives are shadows, the Beauty and Meaning and Goodness that is, and there is a single word that points to (but can never contain) this, the word I tell you is LOVE. Love, though, is only a word; the reality I can never tell. For the reality, there are no words."