A Holy Fool is a man or woman that views life through the lens of significance or meaning instead of acquisition and false identity. This is the man or woman who looks at the frantic pace of the world around them, where people are consumed with all the wrong things, and has to laugh (or maybe cry). Fame, fortune, power, prestige, and position are no longer important to the Holy Fool.
The Holy Fool goes from Success to Significance often when success become ashes and bones. The Holy Fool is (re)born in crisis and looks upon his or her prior life as an MBA CEO as a vanity. Only the Holy Spirit, or some pagan god like Fortuna, or a muse, can make a Holy Fool. "I am bound upon a wheel of fire," says Lear awakening from madness, to the sound of a medicinal flute, "that my own tears do sting like molten lead." I don't believe that any rational person would go in search of such enlightenment. Brokenness and surrender - who goes looking for that? It finds us like grace or cancer. Via.
The Holy Fool hopes that a wrong thing or two will drop from the bags or pockets of the people consumed with those things as they skitter down the path. He treats each unconscious castoff as a sign that the body seeks ground, seeks earth. He squirrels away and contemplates these found items, wondering if he can stack them into a meaningful whole.
When he tires of this, he picks from the stack testing items with his teeth for ediblity There is always enough to live on, oddly, to keep heart thumping and eyes blinking and so on, to keep disbelief at bay, and the bowl of good dog Detritus full stocked.
Maybe Sarah Palin will drop something should we ever cross paths, Maybe John McCain and Biden have full pockets from which things will leap, or maybe Barry O could set a spell and hunker in my midnight fog, both of us to the elbones in the meaninful mound, embracing.
A mound too much? Prolly. Not. But Fisheads keep you thinking about what you need to think about. The eyes do Calibrate to All.
Posted by: Flea Bitten | September 08, 2008 at 01:22 PM
"Brokenness and surrender - who goes looking for that? It finds us..."
God often brings us to a point of brokenness and surrender is by letting us follow our willful independence. We put ourselves on a tall pedestal when we assume the role of Judge; judging our fellow man, ourselves,and often God himself. When we slip, it is so very painful, but so worth the joy of true healing, humility, and restoration.
Posted by: Julia Youngs | September 08, 2008 at 03:35 PM
Julia, we say later, "It was fortunate in its own way...."
Posted by: Phil | September 08, 2008 at 08:58 PM