A PSALM OF LAMENT
"Hypocrisy"
To say one thing and mean another
Is to sing a hymn, but intend a curse.
To speak of justice and corrupt its precepts
Is to trample wildflowers on a photo-op in the hills.
With a log in my eye, I claim to see your flaws,
And all that I accomplish is mayhem and cruelty.
What frightens you so, that you hate what is good?
What futures do you taste that seem so bitter?
Are you weary of losing your grip, of standing naked
Before us as you are, just another broken, forsaken soul?
Instead you pervert what you say you love
And assign your children's future to derision.
You are unmasked now--yes, unmasked!--
Frightened and weak, unimaginative and unjust.
What's coming is not yours to say, thankfully:
Holiness doesn't work that way.
Invitations to freedom's feast cannot be unsent.
No court of small minds will prevent
History's long pilgrimage to hope.
For Mitch and Lindsey
9/21/20
DGJ
The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means "jealous", "play-acting", "acting out", "coward" or "dissembling".[4] The word hypocrite is from the Greek word ὑποκριτής (hypokritēs), the agentive noun associated with ὑποκρίνομαι (hypokrinomai κρίση, "judgment" »κριτική (kritikē), "critics") presumably because the performance of a dramatic text by an actor was to involve a degree of interpretation, or assessment.
Alternatively, the word is an amalgam of the Greek prefix hypo-, meaning "under", and the verb krinein, meaning "to sift or decide". Thus the original meaning implied a deficiency in the ability to sift or decide. This deficiency, as it pertains to one's own beliefs and feelings, informs the word's contemporary meaning.[5]
Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance (including the art of rhetoric), hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure. In Athens during the 4th century BC, for example, the great orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a hypocrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. This negative view of the hypokrites, perhaps combined with the Roman disdain for actors, later shaded into the originally neutral hypokrisis. It is this later sense of hypokrisis as "play-acting", i.e., the assumption of a counterfeit persona, that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative connotation.
