Followers of Shakespeare's plays or students of Roman history know:  yesterday was March 15, traditionally recognized as the Ides of March.  On this day in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar, the general and would-be dictator of the Roman republic was assassinated, set upon by a group of nearly sixty people, including his supposedly best friend and associate Brutus, and stabbed to death on the floor of the Roman Senate.  It was an ugly demise.
     As the historian Plutarch tells it, some time prior to that day, Caesar was warned by a seer that he would die before the Ides of March ended.  In a movie made about Caesar a decade ago, he was pictured seeing a crow fly overhead as he traveled to the Senate that day.  In much ancient lore, including that of Rome, a crow was considered to be a bad omen.
     How much did Caesar know?  More importantly, how much did Caesar believe what he heard or saw?  We all have our Ides of March.  We all have moments in our lives, not moments in which we die, but moments that, for reasons entirely unique to us, are tremendously important in our lives.  We all have our crossroads.
     Perhaps best known for his composition "Crossroads," the African-American blues singer Robert Johnson paints a picture of a decision to be made, a barrier to be bridged and, to borrow from Caesar once again, a Rubicon to be crossed.  Though the story is that the song describes a pact that Johnson supposedly made with the Devil, we cannot be sure.
     The point is this:  how much do we believe about what we see?  How much do we believe in the possibility of a transforming moment?  Maybe Caesar saw, and ignored it. Maybe he didn't see at all.  The world is speaking to us all the time.
     But why?  The world speaks because it has been spoken.  The world speaks because it is personal.  The world speaks because morality is real.
     Even Faust understood that good and evil mean nothing unless they really exist.  And they only really exist if we are not the ones deciding what they are ultimately to be.