A Vision of Fifty Years Ago

 

I discovered recently a notebook I kept back in 1982 or so. I was reflecting, in turn, on an event that took place ten years earlier, an important moment in my own spiritual journey.

It was the first winter of Elrond College, a student-owned high-rise co-op designed by and for Queen’s University students who considered themselves of the left or of the cultural avant garde.

It was towards evening, and towards Christmas. Snow was falling on the abandoned gas station across Princess Street. A Salvation Army band gathered in a circle of lamplight, and began to serenade. Not well, as I recall, but with some spirit. I opened the window to listen. It seemed to me a grace note just before exams.

What I soon heard instead were hoots and jeers from heads at other windows. 

The band persisted. The enraged spectators started to throw wads of paper. 

I felt suddenly, utterly alienated from my generational and intellectual peers. 

I can understand the annoyance of the other students. It was exam time. They had to study.

But I felt Mary had chosen the better part. What was it all for, anyway?

At around the same time, I had either a dream or a waking vision that society had descended into trench warfare. And I found myself, to my shock, fighting alongside evangelical Christians, against the left of which I thought I was a part, for basic human liberty.

The dream or vision seems to have been prophetic. Fifty years later, that is almost where we are.