Alyosha's Speech

I have decided to move to Indiana to attend the Earlham School of Religion. Part of me still doesn't believe that I've made that decision. And I don't think I fully have, yet. But I am trusting that, for some reason unknown to me, the Lord is guiding me there.

Before last week, I was planning on staying in San Diego. But when the school told me that I was accepted, I did not expect to feel such joy at the thought that maybe God was opening doors for me to attend. Now, a week later, my eyes are fixed on Indiana.

It isn't going to be easy to leave. At the same time, I'm excited for the road ahead. I will be studying writing and ministry there, and I'll also get to be with my good friend Dylan, one of my best friends from high school and my favorite drummer in the rock band Pasifire.

I was talking with my dad tonight, and something in our conversation reminded me of Alyosha's farewell speech in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I began reading that book when I first moved into the Redemption House and finished it almost two years later, around the same time I was moving out. Alyosha's speech to the the boys of his neighborhood isn't the same speech I would give the people I have befriended, people through whom Christ gave me life, but the emotion is similar, so I wanted to share it.

"Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact, here, at Ilusha's stone that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honour and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune--still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. . . . You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. . . .

"Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two! You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me!"