In a novel of immense power and complexity, I found the prayer of Dimitri (Mitya) Karamazov, the sensualist, the extremist, to be a powerful portrayal of the negative avenue a mind of passion, self-consumption, and obsession can lead one down. In Book VIII dedicated to his upheaval, Mitya frantically rushes about in pursuit of the love of his life. Open to drunkenness, living constantly on the edge, burning the candle at both ends, he is a maniac trying to swallow the world, a destiny of misfortune and misery forever preying upon his mind. Even in prayer, his appetites and misperceptions dominate his disposition, and therefore his being. There is no hope. There never has been hope. There never will be hope. A profound message to contemplate with Divine Mercy Sunday approaching.

But Mitya did not catch this. In frenzy he prayed, wildly whispering to himself: ‘O Lord, take me in all my lawlessness, but do not judge me. Let me pass without your judgement … Do not judge, for I myself have condemned myself; do not judge, for I love you, Lord! I myself am loathsome, but I love you: if you send me to hell, even there I will love you and will cry from there that I love you until the end of the ages … But let me love to the end… Here, now, let me love to the end, only five hours before your intemperate ray. For I love the empress of my soul. I love and I cannot but love. You yourself see the whole of me. I shall fly to her, fall down before her: you were right to walk past me… Farewell and forget your victim, never trouble yourself more!’ –“The Brother Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Contemplating the state of Dimitri, left me advancing thoughts to the embodiment of evil, and it’s worldly demise–dying committed to the cause. The thoughts arose from a conversation with a deacon involving the story Lonesome Dove. Blue Duck was a Larry McMurtry character who fascinated me. Righteous anger perverted, a horrid upbringing abandoning a highly intelligent and skilled man to a devotion to evil. Blue Duck was a force to be reckoned with beyond the might of normal men/women. Even the combined forces of Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae were no match. Heroically, devotedly, beyond the concerns of the world, Blue Duck would dramatically take himself into death.