Some "together" words in literature

     Sometimes there is a move of God’s spirit. God acts. And he acts upon us corporately because he has joined us as a spiritual body (see my previous post here). We’re all in this together. I like how Fyodor Dostoevsky talks of this in The Brothers Karamazov. Here’s a couple quotes:

And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins….so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality. 

For as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for every one and for all things. But throwing your own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God. 

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.  

Fathers and teachers, I ponder “What is hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his coming to earth, the power of saying, “I am and I love.” Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active living love and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. 

     And here’s what I see then as Dostoevsky’s vocation for the Church:

And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking out ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that—it’s something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, under ground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. …It’s for the babe I’m going. Oh yes, we shall be in chains and there will be not freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it’s His privilege—a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer!...One cannot exist in prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!

Yes, may the name of the God of love and joy be magnified!