Tag: foolishness

Posted on

Listen to the Words

Last evening, bedtimes were late. The boys were hungry. Miska was (rightfully) stressing about oral surgery she would have today (all is well, thanks for asking). I sprawled on the couch, surrendering for just a few clicks to a deep weariness. This fatigue has lurked around our house for a while; though Miska has carried it further, we’ve traded it back and forth.

I waved Seth over, and he crawled onto the couch with me. I stroked his hair and squeezed him tight, this boy adding sinew and muscle and inches by the day. Since it was bedtime and, truth told, I didn’t feel like walking up the stairs to his room, I said we would commence our nightly ritual right there, prayer and blessing as the two of us lay like twin-pops across our leather sofa.

Seth buried his head in my shoulder, and I began:

God, thank you for my son Seth. Thank you for his strength and his courage and his good heart. Thank you for the joy he brings me. Help him know you are real. Help him know you love him – and that I love him. Amen. Without a pause, I raised my thumb to his forehead, made the sign of the cross. Bless you, my son.

Seth looked up, beaming. “I want that on my ipod.”

Don’t we all? Aren’t we all craving for someone to see us, to notice what is good and true in us? Aren’t we taken aback on those far too rare occasions when someone speaks a word that zings right past the trivial and pierces our hidden question, our smothered neurosis, our muted desperation?

And we need to hear these true words like an echo, an echo stuck on “repeat.” For some sad reason, we cling to the violent, wicked and demeaning words. Yet the words that bring life, the words that prompt tears, the words that catch our breath or make us nervous or hint that a rich vein has been struck — those words we let loose. We don’t receive them. We know a million reasons to cast them askance: perhaps the one speaking is biased or doesn’t know us well or is simply playing nice. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps is a joy-killer. Beauty can’t sprout where it isn’t welcome.

We need to hear these true words. We need to speak these true words. Listen for them. These words are life.

Posted on

Holy Fools

I believe in purgatory, as should anyone who passed through junior high. Seventh grade, I believe, and I was on the basketball squad. I didn’t play much, only at the end of games when we were behind so far that there was nothing for the scrubs to screw up. I was tubby and uncoordinated, not the best year of my life. We were playing Reicher, the Catholic school where all the guys were at least a foot taller, had hair in all the right places and seemed oh, so incredibly cool.

Thirty minutes or so before game time, I walked in front of a small cadre of Reicher toughs. Nerve-wracking, let me say. Intimidation. I wore my green and white uniform, too tight, too short, too polyester. I was directly in front of them when I heard: “There goes Santa Claus.” Followed by lots of snickering and chuckles.

I kept walking, exposed, like a fish flopping on the beach while everyone gathers round and points. It was the gym shower-scene every boy fears, only it was out in the open, with total strangers.

We all have a story like this. The fear of being foolish, of being mocked or scoffed or dismissed, taunts most of us. For my boys, it shows up strong the first few weeks of school. They are desperate to go chameleon and blend, just blend. One of our boys has become obsessed, when in public, about whether or not his hair sticks up. This, the boy that would go weeks without showering if we’d let him. Somewhere in his elementary-school world, he’s been told that hair sticking up is totally not cool, foolish.

Later, our tactics to keep from ever appearing foolish grow more sophisticated. We become snarky or sarcastic, knowing that if we make others seem foolish, the light never turns on us. Or perhaps we grow distant and aloof because, if we never show desire or passion (nothing that would get us noticed), then there is nothing for others to ridicule. Some of us choose our words with impeccable care. Some of us spend many of our waking hours gulping down shame. Some of us are crass, mean and cold. Our words slice others up. Everyone supposes we are the rocks, the ones who even though we’re SOBs are exceptionally self-assured. But if anyone could see, they’d know we’re shivering inside, a flopping fish stuck in junior high.

This must be why I like so many characters in the Bible who come across as brazen, unashamed holy fools. Peter, David, Mary Magdalene, just to name a few. They cried and ranted and slept with the wrong women and stormed off and were generous to a fault and unleashed fits of rage and joy that were in every way unseemly. If you’re looking for models for careful, calculated un-foolishness, look elsewhere.

But, they loved. Oh, how they loved. And they lived. And God called them friends. Proverbs rejects “the fool.” However, for the wisdom writer, the fool is the one who arrogantly stands apart from God, detached and wooden (but entirely “together”). The ones who stumble toward God, awkward and a screw-up and forever on the verge of making a scene – that person is beautifully foolish and God’s friend.

Buechner put it well, “If the world has never lacked for damned fools, it has never lacked for holy fools either.” I should hope not.

Let it loose, I say. Live wide-open. Live. Foolishness is underrated.

Top