So these, you say to me, are the real things:
Freeways, deadlines, wrist-watches, cars, and jobs.
Loneliness, dusk, anger, the weight of imperfection,
The waiting and sighing, anything but thinking of God.
If those are the real things, then I want to be a phony.
But if you were a fool with me,
Then I wonder if we couldn't topple the world:
With a flick of the finger, we're free!
Escapists escape, which is more than can be said,
For the suit wearing drones who forget that we're dead.
Lovers love, which is more dear than they know,
When they tune in with wifey to watch their show.
The knowers know, which is no small thing!
When the world has petered out, the Church will still sing!
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I wrote this earlier today, perhaps it is appropriate (?)
How is one cynical in a holy way? There is a spirit of holy foolishness and then there is just foolishness, which is sin. To be a Christian is to be a living icon of love (which is justice, peace, mercy, sacrifice, and hatred of sin), that is, to say, to play the fool. But there is already so much false cacaphony, so much unholy cacaphony in the world that I wonder what a sanctified cacaphony actually looks like.
I find that I have to watch myself constantly to keep from slipping from sincerity to cynicism. Schuon has an essay called, "Sincerity: What It Is and Is Not" that helped me to see that my temperamental bias toward cynicism has spiritual implications for me. He talked about the duty of concealing faults. His basic idea was that a man who presents himself as more noble than he is, is not necessarily faking, given that in his essence, through Christ, he "is" temperate, generous, etc. This is presupposing that the man is not simply play-acting based off of his own personal idea of greatness, but is spontaneously responding to a revealed truth or instance of sacramental beauty. Also, if I can say this without embarassing or spoiling you, you have helped me to better understand how to be noble and sincere at the same time. Though, of course, it's all my fault when I don't follow your example well! In any case, I think this poem is a little too pat in its denunciation of the world to be an instance of "holy cacaphony". After I wrote it I found myself thinking about John 3:16, how God "loved the world" and how I would do well to understand that side of things too.
The fool from King Lear is my icon of holy folly. The fool in that play always speaks the truth. It is a delightfully cacaphonous truth, full of half-obscenities and seemingly meaningless poems that are almost indecent but nevertheless said in a spirit of charity. He is always acting from love: trying to make Lear see, through the humility that comes from laughter, that he "knows himself but little". There is a mysterious point in the play where the fool simply vanishes. The implication is that he goes off to die and is somehow absorbed by the character of Lear. In any case, the fool is always acting in obedience to Lear, just as Christ made himself a servant, though in respect of truth and power he is above all. (Of course, this is all my interpretation. So, take it with a grain of whatever you take when listening to me)
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