Crucifixion

The distance between us and true academics … is the crucifixion of the university. Is the sacrifice of the university.

And what’s worse is that no one notices it or cares about it, no one at the university. Which is yet another aspect of the crucifixion of the university.

The tension – the tearing. The distance between what is and what ought to be. The pulling apart of the universe – and the university.

That isn’t even suffered. That isn’t even remarked upon. That no one has noticed, apparently, but us.

But that we live, impossibly. In tension – in rending. That we suffer, in our way. And no one else notices.

 

We call it inadequacy. We call it our impostor’s syndrome. But it’s greater than that.

It’s our way of crying up like the psalmist, Father, why have you abandoned us? Old world, why have you abandoned us? Old standards, why have you abandoned us? The old sense of what’s right and wrong, true and untrue, why have you abandoned us? The old criterion between the bad and the good, between the worthwhile and worthless, why have you abandoned us?

 

This unbearable tension. Between us and the university. That cannot be resolved. Cannot be harmonized. Cannot be held together.

It’s too great, the tension. The contraries are not harmonised. The contraries remain utter contraries. In disharmony. In howling. There’s no one who could make sweet music out of this.

Is it our impostor’s syndrome? Or does it descend from God? Is it God’s gift to us – to know our shortcomings? To know what we’re not? To know how we fall short? Is this what God has given us: the knowledge of our idiocy?

And if so, why? Why increase our suffering? Why not allow us to be idiots who don’t know that they’re idiots? Why this self-consciousness? This self awareness? Which is only an awareness of being ridiculous. Of being laughable. Of being an object of deserving scorn.