12.06.2003
More from Children of God
I found this passage on pg. 362-3 in The Children of God which is a sequel to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell . This is a science fiction story of a Jesuit mission to the first discovered inhabitable planet where inter-species war was happening. Sean is talking to a survivor from the losing side of the war, Lady Suukmel. Tell me what you think of the following (highlights are mine):
The Jana'ata are alone, Sean thought then, like godlings whose believers had become atheists. In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God’s heart; it was indifference.
"Don't expect gratitude," he warned Suukmel. "Don’t even expect acknowledgment! They're never going to need you again, not like they did before. A hundred years from now, you may be nothing but a memory. The very thought of you will fill most of them with shame and loathing."
"Then we shall truly be gone," Suukmel whispered.
"Perhaps," this hard man said. "Perhaps."
"If you have no hope for us, why have you stayed?" she demanded. "To watch us die?"
Perhaps, he almost said. But then Sean remembered his father, eyes shining with the unadulterated glee that Maura Fein had loved and shared, shaking his head at some ignominious example of the human capacity for boneheaded, self-inflicted calamity. "Ah, Sean, lad," David Fein would say to his son, "it takes an Irish Jew to appreciate a cock-up this grand!"
Sean Fein gazed for a time at the pale northern sky, and thought of the place where his own ancestors had lived. He was a Jesuit and celibate, an only child: the last of his line. Looking at Suukmel's drawn, gray face, he felt at long last compassion for the fools who expected fairness and sense – in this world, not the next.
"My father was the son of ancient priests, my mother the daughter of petty kings long gone," he told Suukmel. "A thousand times, their people might have died out. A thousand times, they nearly killed themselves off with political bickering and moral certainty and a lethal distaste for compromise. A thousand times they might have become nothing but a memory in the mind of God."
"And yet they live?" she asked.
"Last time I looked," he said. "I can’t swear to more than that."
"And so might we," Suukmel replied, with frail conviction.
"Shit, yes, y'might at that," Sean muttered in English, remembering Disraeli's wee couplet: How odd of God / to choose the Jews. "My very much esteemed lady Suukmel," he said then in his strangely accented K'San, "one thing I can say for certain. There's just no telling whom God will take a liking to."
I found this passage on pg. 362-3 in The Children of God which is a sequel to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell . This is a science fiction story of a Jesuit mission to the first discovered inhabitable planet where inter-species war was happening. Sean is talking to a survivor from the losing side of the war, Lady Suukmel. Tell me what you think of the following (highlights are mine):
The Jana'ata are alone, Sean thought then, like godlings whose believers had become atheists. In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God’s heart; it was indifference.
"Don't expect gratitude," he warned Suukmel. "Don’t even expect acknowledgment! They're never going to need you again, not like they did before. A hundred years from now, you may be nothing but a memory. The very thought of you will fill most of them with shame and loathing."
"Then we shall truly be gone," Suukmel whispered.
"Perhaps," this hard man said. "Perhaps."
"If you have no hope for us, why have you stayed?" she demanded. "To watch us die?"
Perhaps, he almost said. But then Sean remembered his father, eyes shining with the unadulterated glee that Maura Fein had loved and shared, shaking his head at some ignominious example of the human capacity for boneheaded, self-inflicted calamity. "Ah, Sean, lad," David Fein would say to his son, "it takes an Irish Jew to appreciate a cock-up this grand!"
Sean Fein gazed for a time at the pale northern sky, and thought of the place where his own ancestors had lived. He was a Jesuit and celibate, an only child: the last of his line. Looking at Suukmel's drawn, gray face, he felt at long last compassion for the fools who expected fairness and sense – in this world, not the next.
"My father was the son of ancient priests, my mother the daughter of petty kings long gone," he told Suukmel. "A thousand times, their people might have died out. A thousand times, they nearly killed themselves off with political bickering and moral certainty and a lethal distaste for compromise. A thousand times they might have become nothing but a memory in the mind of God."
"And yet they live?" she asked.
"Last time I looked," he said. "I can’t swear to more than that."
"And so might we," Suukmel replied, with frail conviction.
"Shit, yes, y'might at that," Sean muttered in English, remembering Disraeli's wee couplet: How odd of God / to choose the Jews. "My very much esteemed lady Suukmel," he said then in his strangely accented K'San, "one thing I can say for certain. There's just no telling whom God will take a liking to."
