{"id":2052,"date":"2017-09-01T11:05:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T15:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2017-09-01T11:05:49","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T15:05:49","slug":"the-st-francis-holy-fool-prayer-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/the-st-francis-holy-fool-prayer-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The St. Francis Holy Fool Prayer Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpted from the Introduction<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

HOW IT IS GOOD TO BE A FOOL
\nFor those who try to live the Gospel, and by doing so, feel like fools<\/p>\n

I will always remember the day I decided to introduce my preschool-age daughter to one of my favorite movies, Singing in the Rain<\/em>, starring Gene Kelly, Donald O\u2019Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. We sat and watched it together on the couch. She didn\u2019t wiggle much and laughed at the right places. I knew she was enjoying it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But then we got to the title song and dance number. There was Gene Kelly, blissfully enjoying a rainstorm. You probably remember how he runs back and forth across a city street at nighttime in the pouring rain, singing at the top of his lungs, tap-dancing by stomping in puddles, grinning at a cop on patrol, becoming completely drenched in his business clothes. He is wearing a suit\u2014and even gives away his umbrella!<\/p>\n

As my daughter and I watched, I laughed out loud and was grinning ear to ear. That\u2019s what I always do when I watch that scene. She watched carefully, and was smiling, but to my surprise, she then turned to me in the middle of the scene and said, \u201cThat\u2019s kind of stupid, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was only four at the time, but I was sort of offended. I don\u2019t know for certain why. Forget that she said the word \u201cstupid\u201d for a moment; we\u2019ll deal with that another day. Why was I bothered by her reaction? It isn\u2019t as if the movie has anything intimately or immediately to do with me<\/em>, but I wanted her to like it as I did. \u201cWhy?\u201d I implored. Then I suddenly realized that I probably knew what she meant by what she said. So I revised. \u201cDo you mean . . . because he\u2019s getting all wet?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d she replied, still smiling, looking at the screen. The puddle-stomping continued even as we talked, and she was still trying to figure out the meaning of the scene. \u201cBut he\u2019s being kind of stupid,\u201d she added, yet again.<\/p>\n

How do I answer this? <\/em>I thought. How do I get her to understand what this means? <\/em><\/p>\n

Adults easily understand that what Gene Kelly is doing is anything but stupid. But can his spirit be communicated in words? I at least gave it another try. \u201cNot stupid<\/em>, honey,\u201d I said. \u201cMaybe he\u2019s just being . . . foolish<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe.<\/p>\n

A child can\u2019t really appreciate what \u201cfoolish\u201d means, nor how being a fool can be a virtue, a really good thing. Nor can she appreciate how foolishness might be a healthy sign that something good is happening, or able to happen, in your life. After all, how could someone who is still innocently carefree most of the time\u2014without real responsibilities or stress\u2014understand the absolute delight that can come when we allow ourselves to \u201clet loose\u201d others\u2019 expectations? That\u2019s what Gene Kelly is doing by singing and dancing in the rain: allowing his joy to overcome his decorum. We adults know this, and that\u2019s why we love watching him do it. Probably, we are wishing, deep down, that we could do that too.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy<\/em>, \u201cAngels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.\u201d We\u2019d all like to fly like angels\u2014or at least like Gene Kelly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I might have communicated better with my daughter that day as we watched the movie together if I\u2019d said that Gene Kelly was being \u201ccrazy.\u201d She sometimes likes to be \u201ccrazy\u201d with her friends. They seem to know and appreciate that word for its sense of nonconformity and playfulness. But as an adult, \u201ccrazy\u201d is a word that doesn\u2019t seem appropriate. I know how it means a lot of things, some clinical, and how sometimes it might be perceived as an insult, or at least out of place. That\u2019s why I quickly decided it wasn\u2019t the way to go when I was trying to explain why singing in the rain isn\u2019t necessarily \u201cdumb.\u201d<\/p>\n

    I used the word \u201cfool\u201d instead, but then again, \u201cfool\u201d is also an insult to many. The word was even used that way\u2014as a kind of insult\u2014in the Hebrew Scriptures, as we will see in a second. But to many Christians throughout history, foolishness has been a goal, a spiritual occupation, even a badge of honor. They have gone out of their way to earn the name fool<\/em>, even when they knew that those who were saying it never intended it as a compliment. They have been \u201cfools for Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d to quote St. Paul, who says it like this:<\/p>\n

    Here we are, fools for Christ\u2019s sake, while you are the clever ones in Christ; we are weak, while you are strong; you are honored, while we are disgraced. To this day, we go short of food and drink and clothes, we are beaten up and we have no homes; we earn our living by laboring with our own hands; when we are cursed, we answer with a blessing; when we are hounded, we endure it passively; when we are insulted, we give a courteous answer (1 Cor. 4:10\u201313).<\/p>\n

    Otherwise known as holy fools<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    This can be confusing and for good reasons. Even the Bible seems to contradict itself about fools. A fool for Christ\u2019s sake is altogether different from the kind of person the psalmist describes when he or she begins, \u201cThe fool says in his heart, \u2018There is no God.\u2019 They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one\u201d (Ps. 14:1\u20133). That\u2019s not a foolishness to emulate! Nevertheless, St. Paul\u2019s foolishness is. The Bible speaks about both kinds of fools\u2014good and bad\u2014but for the most part, the good sort has been lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Excerpted from the Introduction HOW IT IS GOOD TO BE A FOOL For those who try to live the Gospel, and by doing so, feel like fools I will always remember the day I decided to introduce my preschool-age daughter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}