A New Era

Postgraduates, singing: The Loneliest Postgraduate. Supervisor Blues. My Deadlines Getting Me Down. Back in Them  ol’ Undergraduate Days.

Their reedy voices. The postgraduate falsetto.

 

Maybe all songs are messianic, postgraduates.

Except songs that are actually about Satan.

Maybe singing itself is messianic. Raising the heart. Lifting it. With a hope that’s not of this world. That comes from elsewhere. That’s the fact there is an elsewhere.

 

And even on such a night! Even here, the towers towering all around us. Buildings spouting cranes, all around us. Buildings, building themselves.

And your small, fragile voices, nearly lost in the wind.

 

We know you’re cold, postgraduates. And hungry. And that we’ve nearly run out of wine. And that there’s only a few of us, and so many of them. And that doom is almost all around us, as thick as the night. And that it seems that they’ve won so utterly. But it’s when the hour’s darkest that hope grows. What’s the quote, Sophia?

Never is God closer to you/as in the deepest doubt:/in the selfwithdrawn light of Zion.

No – not that one. Too complicated.

But where there is danger, a rescuing element grows, too.

Exactly, Sophia! That’s the stuff, Sophia!

Where there’s no hope, there’s hope after all. When the end seems utterly nigh, a new beginning appears.

 

We’re in a new era now, postgraduates. We’ve left history behind. This is a new epoch – a time of great spiritual danger. And great spiritual hope, too.

 

You’re with us in the time of the greatest uncertainty, postgraduates. The greatest darkness! As the Tribulation deepens. The last outpost of European thought in philosophy, pretty much. It’s down to us to keep the European philosophy flag flying, postgraduates.

 

You’re on the Nebuchadnezzar, postgraduates. Don’t forget that. The last best hope …