October 9th is the birthday of John Lennon, born this day in 1940.

The biography on the official website describes his work as suggesting "not merely a profound musical and literary sensibility -- a genius, in short -- but a vision of life that was simultaneously reflective, utopian and poignantly realistic."

There is no doubt that John Lennon was a central and pivotal figure in the tumultuous wrestling with civilizational issues and legacies that took place during the 1960s and 1970s -- legacies that stretch all the way back to the events that separated what became the "west" from what became the "east," events that took place during the Roman Empire and that shaped the world for centuries to come, and resulting assumptions handed down through the centuries.  Those issues and legacies and questions are still of course with us today, as are the perspectives John Lennon brought to those questions and legacies and issues as he encountered them.

And of course, so is his music, which is as moving and as important today as it ever was.

Rest in peace.