Foolish UUs!

Foolishness and Salvation, part 3

St. Paul, I think, took a wrong turn when he cast Christianity as fundamentally about what one believed. For us Unitarian Universalists, as well as for followers of Judaism and Eastern religions the question is not, "What shall we believe?" but, "How shall we live? Who shall we live with in community? And, those moments we’ve had of mystery and wonder, glimpses of eternal goodness, transcendent oneness, what shall we make of those? How can the power of such radically nonsensical flashes be integrated with our daily life?" Those are our questions.

The answer isn’t one that can be spoken or written down but must be lived out. So we come here, come together once a week to light some candles, share of ourselves, sing some songs, hear and consider a sermon, center ourselves on what is important, worship in the sense of worth-shape, give shape to what has deepest worth in our lives.

Since it is in our relationships that we find who and what we are in the vast web of reality, we come here to live by a covenant for how we relate to each other. Within our relationships as Unitarian Universalists, we can come to spiritual depth and wisdom and find the grace to walk on this planet fruitfully rather than destructively. We mutually agree to strive for authenticity and honesty together amidst mutual respect and care. We share not a belief, but an attitude, a faith that life is good, that justice is attainable, that caring redeems us, and that joy is one another’s company.

A family member of mine, an Uncle, told me once that he had visited his local Unitarian church a couple times and found it, he said, “empty and devoid of anything to grasp.” Well, OK. Think of us as the zero – the number of the Fool card.

The zero, as a concept – a nothing, symbolized as an empty circle devoid of contents – came rather late to Western civilization. Did you ever notice: Roman numerals have no zero? Sallie Nichols reflects on the zero in her study Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey.

“The concept of zero, unknown in the ancient (western) world, did not appear in Europe until the twelfth century.”

The first people with zero were apparently the Mayans, whose mathematicians discovered or invented the zero for their elaborate calendar system, around the year 350 CE. Independently, zero was discovered/invented in India around the year 500. From India, it reached Baghdad in the 8th century and was incorporated into Arabic numerals. It got to Europe, finally, through the Moorish conquest of Spain.

The discovery/invention of this apparent ‘nothing’ enlarged (humanity’s) thinking in important ways. It created the decimal system. It made computers possible. It concretized the astounding paradox that ‘nothing’ is really something, and that this nothing occupies space and contains power. It’s appropriate that zero is the number assigned to the Fool. “Like the empty, worthless zero, the fool’s magic can turn one into a million" (Nichols). How absurd is that?

In terms of creed or doctrine, Unitarian Universalism is a zero. Unitarian Universalism has no beliefs. But each of us has beliefs. We all believe something. Whatever you believe, our way of living in community, our rituals and shared practices of worship, our covenant, augments your convictions, increasing whatever positive number you bring by powers of ten. Therein, our foolishness. Therein, our salvation – our freedom from doctrine that would bind and constrict.

It’s a hard job, being a fool, seeing what others don’t. How do we tell what is just plain foolish, and what is a foolish way to wisdom? Which folly is worth persisting in until it becomes wisdom? As Unitarian Universalist minister James Ishmael Ford says,

“The line between being fully present and one’s self, and being narcissistic and dangerous to others is as thin as the line between an in breath and an out breath. A bellows, indeed.”

Here, I think we find some of the wisdom in being fools together. As Reverend Ford says,

“Fools together. Here, in our coming together, we find how we are, and what it means. When we rub up shoulder to shoulder with others wisdom emerges as a magical third. Here, in this company, we see what our behaviors mean. Here as we crowd up together in our holy company of Fools, we find the alchemical process that burns dross and reveals gold. Here, as we foolishly pursue our individual depth among others, we discover our relationships and our obligations and the possibilities of intimacy and action. All this flows out of the trickster-like quality of our foolish way, that is both the last and the magical zero.”

Coming together provides us with a check on the darker, less wise aspects of foolishness.

Then, again, returning to the jester fool can also help us puncture the pretensions of our foolishness. The joking, laughing fool can depict our most exalted in another light. In our laughter we may recognize that the most exalted is at the same time the most profane.

Jehovah was chatting with the other Gods about where to go for vacation.
Zeus said, "Try Earth. Some nice beaches. In the mountains, good skiing.
Jehovah demures, “Mmm. I don’t know.”
Zeus says, “What?”
Jehovah says, “Well, I went there a couple thousand years ago. Got this little Jewish girl pregnant, and they’re still talking about it.”

Amen.

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This is part 3 of 3 of "Foolishness and Salvation"
See also
Part 1: An April Fool's Easter
Part 2: Jesus as Wise Fool

Jesus as Wise Fool

Foolishness and Salvation, part 2

The fool, however, is not just a jester – and isn’t always aiming just for laugh, however insightful the laugh might be.

The word fool derives from the Latin follis, a pair of bellows, a windbag. “A silly or stupid person; a person who lacks judgment or sense,” says my Random House Unabridged as the first definition of “fool.” So, in addition, to the wisdom we can discern through laughter, there is a second approach to wisdom through sheer, unfunny folly.

In his life, Jesus played the role of the fool in this sense of appearing to lack judgment. His went around Galilee telling people the kingdom of God was like a mustard weed. What an absurd thing to say. Jesus’s audience would have been familiar with the prophet Ezekiel – who spoke of the Lord taking a twig from the lofty heights of the mighty cedar and planting it in Israel where it would shelter beasts and birds, a symbol of the glorious restoration of Kind David’s realm. Jesus’s audience would also have been familiar with the prophet Daniel – who spoke of that tree reaching to heaven and extend to the ends of the earth. And this Galilean vagrant turns the mighty cedar of Lebanon into a lousy mustard weed?

A fool is one who doesn't know what everybody knows. The fool knows nothing. His knowledge is a zero – like the number on his Tarot card. A fool can look at things that nobody else can see because they think they already know what's there.

The Commonwealth of God, said Jesus, isn't what you think: the fulfillment of the prophecies of Ezekiel and Daniel that looks just like any other kingdom you ever saw only bigger and mightier. No, it's like this silly weed that you, in your cultured despair, so readily despise. It is made up of the people you call weeds, and it grows from the smallest seed of genuine love, or genuine hope, or genuine vision.

Jesus says, "the last shall be first" (Matt 20:16). What crazy talk is that? "Blessed are the poor," he says (Luke 6:20). What nonsense! "Blessed are you when people revile you" (Matt 5:11). Huh? This is clearly a guy who doesn’t know what everybody knows.

When someone asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he answers, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor.” (Luke 18:22). What kinds of fools does he take us for? Sell everything and give away the money? We'd have nothing. How could we live? That's crazy!

I probably won't be selling all that I own and giving away the proceeds. But when I read that passage in Luke -- also, emphatically, included in Mark and Matthew -- I do get, for just an instant, a flash of how liberating that would be.

The poet William Blake says, "If a man would persist in his folly, he would become wise." Or if a woman persists in her folly, she becomes wise. If you and I persist in our foolishness, we may well become wise. By persisting in the foolish message that the insignificant weeds are the really the most significant of all, that the last shall be first, that there is blessing in poverty, not in wealth, the wisdom begins to emerge.

How foolish it is of us, this congregation, to come together and call ourselves a faith community, to meet on Sunday mornings. We foolish Unitarian Universalists! We have no creed, no shared beliefs, not even a canon, such as the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, or the 27 books of the New Testament, the Quran, or any set of sutras, scriptures, or texts that we are united in making central. How can that be a religion? What utter foolishness.

Church is for getting together with others of like mind, and sharing a substantive doctrine. But we Unitarian Universalists come together to be a community of diversity. Community of diversity? What an outlandish notion – an outrage to good sense.

Still we persist in our folly. We don’t know what everyone else knows – that the point of a religion is to have definite, graspable beliefs to convey. And, since the point of a congregation is to be the body of those who share the one true doctrine, then diversity of beliefs could only mean admitting false ones.

We Unitarian Universalists are so foolish as to say that religion is not about beliefs. That’s why I argue that we are not agnostic, and that we misunderstand our own religiousness when we say we are. “I’m agnostic,” is the answer only if the question is “What do you believe about God?” Or, “What do you believe about the soul, in particular, its prospects for an afterlife?” But we’re there with our silly jester’s cap and wand saying, “But that’s not the question.” The next card in the Major Arcana – the magician, or the wizard, or the shaman – represents the character who knows the answer. The fool is the one who keeps changing the question.

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This is part 2 of 3 of "Foolishness and Salvation"
See also
Part 1: An April Fool's Easter
Part 3: Foolish UUs!

An April Fool's Easter

Foolishness and Salvation, part 1

Sun Apr 1
Yesterday was the full moon. It was the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which makes today the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, and that means . . . it’s Easter!

Easter brings out a bit of the impish in me. Every Easter, for the last 7 or 8 years, I post on Facebook, early in the morning – the same post every year:

“He is risen! She is risen! They are risen! We are risen! OK, everybody up? Excellent. Now what?”

I mentioned to an Episcopalian priest friend of mine that I do this. He said, “That’s actually pretty good theology.” Clever man.

So my impish streak is particularly delighted that THIS Easter is also April Fool’s day. Easter and April Fool’s day coincide, on average, about once every 30 years, but it’s very irregular. Last time it happened was 62 years ago – 1956 – so in my lifetime, it’s never happened before. I’m so excited.

So let me talk about the Fool, whose day we herewith celebrate – and also about that great jester, Jesus, whom we also celebrate today.

The Fool is a character on Tarot cards that first appeared in early Medieval Europe as a vehicle for fortune telling and gambling. The Tarot, and particularly the Major Arcana represent archetypal images for our western culture and spiritual paths. There are 22 Major Arcana, numbered sequentially, zero through 21, with the Fool being zero.

Sallie Nichols, Jungian psychologist, author of “The Wisdom of the Fool,” writes that,

“Here the Fool is the central character of the Tarot Trumps....To see him dance is to plumb the mystery of all creation, for his essence is all-inclusive and his paradoxes many. He strides forward yet he looks backward, thus connecting the wisdom of the future with the innocence of childhood. His energy is unconscious and undirected, yet it seems to have a purpose of its own. He moves outside space and time. The winds of prophecy and poesy inhabit his spirit. Although he wanders with no fixed abode, he endures intact throughout the ages. His multicolored costume spins a rainbow wheel offering us glimpses of eternity.”

The Fool offers us fresh, often startling perspective – so it’s appropriate that the Fool’s day comes in early spring. April Fool’s Day, Ground Hog's Day, Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and almost seven weeks later, now Easter are all observances of the coming of spring -- as is the “official” day, the Vernal equinox. This plethora of celebrations of the ending of winter and spring's resurrection of life, and green, and flowers, and hope is appropriate, for, in fact, we don't know when spring will begin. We never know exactly when the freshness of the world will make itself evident to us.

So it's best to be ready. And never miss an opportunity to party.

In the joy of new life, the resurrection of hope from the cold, barren winter, death’s victory is never final. And the Fool is the one who points to new possibilities to break us out of the deadening crust of frozen convention. In Foolish wisdom, we see truth. By turning the world to a different angle, the fool exposes our ridiculousness to us.

For examples, one only need type “The Onion” into one’s search engine. This morning’s headlines from the Fools at “America’s Finest News source” include:

“EPA Rolls Back Emissions Standards To Increase Consumer Choice Over Type Of Apocalyptic Hellscape Earth Will Become”

Funny – and true. Another headline:

“‘I Don’t Fit Into Any Of Corporate America’s Little Boxes,’ Says Single, 18-To-36-Year-Old Hispanic Female With Brand Loyalty To Tom’s, Chobani”

The fool deftly punctures our illusions of uniqueness, or of independence from categories.

The fool shows us foibles, and helps us learn from them – slyly insinuating that we may be taking the wrong approach to a problem.

A husband visits a doctor and says, “It’s my wife, doc. I think she’s losing her hearing.”
“How bad is it?” says the doc. The man doesn’t know. The doctor says, “We have some tests, but first we can get a rough idea. Try this simple test at home. Stand across the room, speak in a normal voice. If she doesn’t hear you take two steps closer. Keep doing that – and come back and tell me how close you had to get before she hears you.”
So the man goes home. He stands on the other side of the living room, and he says “What would you like for dinner?”
Nothing.
Two steps closer.
“What would you like for dinner?”
Nothing.
Another two steps.
Still no answer.
Finally, he’s only three feet away.
“What would you like for dinner?”
The wife says, “The rice and beans will be fine, for the fourth time.”

Sometimes we think we’re stuck in a situation in which we cannot be heard. But the jokester applies elbow to ribs to remind us that maybe it is we who should be listening better – and that we cannot feel heard except within the context of a conversation in which we ourselves are hearing.

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This is part 1 of "Foolishness and Salvation"
See also
Part 2: Jesus as Wise Fool
Part 3: Foolish UUs