These Dreams of You

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I’m a traitor. Better to admit we’re traitors of the country of the banged gavel, the salem stench, the hate that hates in God’s name, so we might be patriots of the other country of the eternal pursuit, memory’s mystic chord, our nature’s better angels, and the promise that no God can help loving even when we break it. By its nature, my version of the country is blasphemous. By its nature, it allows for doubt, the possibility that my God is wrong and yours is right. The other country, where I commit treason, denies doubt, views it as a cancer on the congregation.

The one thing that Zan knows for sure is that, should the song of his country finally fade and be silent, it will never quite be possible again to believe in it. This is the problem, he reasons, with presidents who can’t be as big as the reasons they embody. A body can only hold reasons so big. Should the silencing of the song come to pass, not only will Zan be complicit in the loss of his own faith, he will be complicit for having had faith in the first place. But without such faith, the country — this country in particular — is nothing.