; charset=UTF-8" A class traitor

A Plumbline in the Wind

The world is going to the dogs, but I refuse to learn to bark

Psalm 119:29 Put false ways far from me; and graciously teach me thy law!

A Plumbline in the Wind Near Lauder, Scotland: Sheep on a hillside

A class traitor

1 October 2008 · No Comments

These days I feel like Yeats’s Irish airman:

Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love

Actually I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t love them, but the ones I fight are not those I hate. They are my own people. In all likelihood, the elections will bring to power a regime that will put in place measures that will deprive Catholics and conservatives of freedom of speech and probably result in outright persecution, at least by exclusion from certain kinds of work and inability to carry on institutional existence. And those who are going to be putting that regime in power are my own people. They are my family, who taught me to hate everything I now am. They are my old friends, with whom I still feel the deepest affinity–some of them even friends with whom I have shared the faith. They are those with whom I share an education. I am a traitor to my class of educated, literate people. Those I guard are those with whom I share faith in God and commitment to His truth, and yet among them I feel like one in exile, speaking every day a foreign language, however fluent I may be in it. Like one who longs for the sight of a country to which he can never return, because the revolutionaries who have seized control there will put him to death, l remain a stranger and an alien in my new home, alienated from my old home.

I have become a stranger to my brethren,
an alien to my mother’s sons.
For zeal for thy house has consumed me,
and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me. (Ps 69:8-9)

It is not an enemy who taunts me–
then I could bear it;
It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me–
then I could hide from him.
But it is you, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to hold sweet converse together;
within God’s house we walked in fellowship. (Ps 55:12-14)

Tags: My Life · Politics and society

0 responses so far ↓

  • There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

You must log in to post a comment.