Alyosha Lives

William Blake said "Imagination is the Divine Vision not of The World nor of Man nor from Man as he is a Natural Man but only as he is a Spiritual Man." Jack London's "To Build a Fire" suggests that imagination is a survival skill for humans. Dostoyevsky imagined an Alyosha. And if we can imagine an Aloysha, either as a writer or a reader, we can also become one, or the best parts of one.

So today I am thinking of Alyosha, and wondering if this line of thought would lead me toward him:

Love, perhaps, is something beyond good and bad. Maybe humans think they have to justify love for a person the way they justify love for an object or an activity; if the object performs well or the activity gives us present pleasure, they are GOOD.

To whom do we have to justify our choice to love another?

We are faced with the face of the other, and sometimes that person, just like ourselves, makes unhappy choices. What if we left the “goodness” or the “badness” of that person’s situation aside and just said “I love that person,” or “I want to love that person?”

Amen! Amen! Amen!

Today President Obama took office and urged us as Americans "to choose our better history."

Today is a day I will choose to remember as part of our better history.

(And I'd love to see a red man be headman.)

(And eight years from today I would like to see a female president.)