I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

– Charles Darwin

“The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good.”
…
“But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love them?” Alyosha cried sorrowfully. “With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you?”
…
“Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
‘That’s plagiarism,’ cried Ivan, highly delighted.”

Karamazov Bros

Out of our springing bright green river valley to visit an old friend. In a strange mood after a bad sleep and a long day, a long year, travelling through the flat grey landscape of strip malls during rush hour. You would not think that death had undone so many, sitting in their cars, stuck in traffic. Coming from work, maybe, or heading there. Thinking of the small worries, the little criticisms, the unsolvable problems that they’ve faced or will face. Or heading home to other small worries and criticisms, or to a warm house, a warm meal, a happy dog. Piles of bills and junk mail, but maybe a card or a letter or a paycheck. Maybe they set out the ingredients for their dinner on the counter, and they’ve been all day looking forward to going home to make it. That’s art, that’s hope, that’s important. But right now, next to me, sitting in their cars, with windows cracked or sealed tight shut against the chill spring breeze, they’re thinking their thoughts and listening to their music, and you can’t take that away from them.

Flights of starlings or blackbirds rise like fireworks from telephone wires and settle again with their quiet noisy urgency, to their own rhythm, their own purpose. Black in silhouette like beads on a string, but full of light and color when you catch a closer glimpse. Pigeons settle with fluttering indignation on the fake towers of box stores and retail outlets, then take off again in clumsy waves. I would wish them a more verdant home, but they have each other, they have a reason for being here, now. And you can’t take that away from them, because you’ll never understand it.

So many strange, to me, stores — Pool Tables and More; Hatchets and other sharp things; Blinking Neon Shop Signs emporium. So many stores selling birds, or just “pets” or just “animals.” (Oh, the worry, for those non-descript birds and pets and animals. What a strange caged life they must live.) I think about the people in these stores and imagine them having a real passion for pool tables or hatchets or for blinking signs to illuminate the bright visions of others. I imagine them setting up the business, happy to share what they love with customers, or just looking to get through the work day, looking to make a sale or two, and get home to the ingredients they’ve laid out lovingly on their kitchen counter or a wag-tailed dog. What a strange caged life we live. I wonder how these businesses survive in this bleak landscape, but we’re passing through a mountain valley now, and as I look up the hill, low developments stretch up beyond the trees farther than I can see. Lights just going on, people just pulling into their driveways and facing the evening ahead. There are plenty of people around, there are always plenty of people, plenty of consumers around.

We reach the restaurant as the sun is setting, and our old friend tells us stories about her youth and stories about her strange glimpses of life as it seems to her now. We’re sitting near a window, and outside, kids are walking home from school, vivid faces in black hoodies at close of day, coming from grey school desks, leaning towards each other, walking through the chill dimming air and talking about everything important to them now, that may be important forever, or maybe they’ll forget it all as I’ve forgotten so many things.

Ivan Karamazov is a man who can’t not think about human cruelty. He’s like another Ivan, from Chekhov’s Gooseberries, who believes, “Every happy man should have someone with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people.” And Ivan Karamzazov talks and talks and talks about it, as a desperately wanting-to-be-hopeful person might. His very young brother, Alyosha, is probably the same; we have to believe they’re the same, given their upbringing. But Alyosha is a man of faith, a student of faith. I think he’s a lover, in some version of the word people never use. And though it seems Ivan is trying to prove Alyosha wrong, in his long, strange speeches and recited poems, he’s really begging for Alyosha to prove that he is wrong. Which he can’t do, because there’s so much human cruelty. He can’t prove him wrong, but he can love him and listen to him, and maybe that’s enough.

Charles Darwin’s faith in God was famously called into question by the ichneumon wasp and her unsettling reproductive habits. But it really feels as though his discomfort with their lives wasn’t just because of their strange seeming cruelty, but because it occurred in the world of the non-human living. (She has a reason for her actions. She is part of some bigger system. There’s so much we don’t understand.) He must have known humans are cruel for no reason. He encountered and was horrified by slavery, after all.

Certainly, for compassionate humans in the U.S. right now, the actions of the people we supposedly elected and supposedly support are enough to let you lose faith in humanity, and in any definition of god, faith, and even hope, as they and their young eat our country alive from the inside. These are dark times. How can we not think about this senseless war? How can we not think about the bombing of a school full of girls in Iran all of those hopeful lives, those spring leaves? How can we not think about Israel directing deadly violence towards people who are offering food and aid to the sick and starving? Or targeting hospitals and schools and places where people live. With our money — we’re paying for it. How can we not think about the families that we’re separating in this country, too? Children sick and cold and alone, and parents frantic but helpless to help them? It’s hard to write about — I lose my words.

Sitting in a restaurant feeling a little lost by the shifting time of day and time of year, feeling a little raw, it’s not impossible to be undone by watching the people around you, by noticing the little moments of connection between them: The couple at the next table holding hands for a moment as their children try to settle themselves, bouncing giddy as balloons because they have cups with straws in them. The kindness of waiters. The beauty of people leaning together to share stories of their joys and sadnesses and to share food. Here, they have brought the soup for you, it will do you good.

Alyosha’s kindness to Ivan is just in listening to him, in understanding him, and in providing the reaction he was hoping for. His kindness is in his distress that Ivan can’t love the sticky little leaves and the blue sky; his kindness is in caring about that. But of course Ivan should love the leaves in spring, how can we not? How can we not love the new glowing leaves? How can we not love a welcoming blue sky after a few days of rain? How can we not love the rain, which brings us the green glowing leaves? How can we not love certain people, sometimes without knowing why? The people we know, and even the people we don’t know, the strangers we meet who are going on with their lives just as we are, coming together, moving apart, working and loving and caring and hoping, just as we do. Weaving connections with small kindnesses that must form some sort of fabric to shield us from the darkness.

Maybe every discouraged person should have someone with a little hammer to knock at their door and remind them that there is kindness, there is connection, there’s so much that we share. Whatever pattern the workings of the world take, which we will surely never understand, though there is darkness in it, we can only hope that it is balanced by the light.