https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=W8H9BIQDi2k
I think that the fool for Christ shows us the limit of our system, shows us the limit of our hierarchy. For those in a talk that I gave called Pentecost with the Zombie Apocalypse, I talk about how we have to be careful when we understand hierarchy. We have to understand its limits and understand that the hierarchy is for us, right? It is for humans, but there’s always room for surprise. The fool for Christ appears as this exception, really, as this exception, as something which doesn’t fit, as this strangeness, as this stranger, as this weirdness, but in a manner which gives life to people and also in a manner which awakens some spiritual qualities in other people. It’s tricky though, because I always wonder, because I never met a fool for Christ, but I always ask myself, how do I tell the difference between just a crazy person and a fool for Christ? I don’t have a total answer for that. I don’t have an easy answer, except maybe studying some of the stories. Often in the stories, there will be some secret moment where people perceive in that person’s life that in fact they are hiding all their holiness in this kind of outward, kind of outlandish behavior which attempts to show the limits of the system. One of the things that can help you maybe understand the difference between a fool for Christ and let’s say a dangerous fool or a dangerous exception is that the fool for Christ will never have a revolutionary discourse, whereas some fools for Christ, in parentheses, will use their folly or use their exceptionalism to question the authority of the church or to question the normal hierarchy, whereas the fool for Christ, like an image, St. Francis of Assisi is a perfect image where St. Francis went around naked, did all kinds of insane looking, was a story about the Franciscans, they would spin on themselves and then stop and then just walk in that direction until God showed them something that they needed to do. It’s like that kind of weird behavior, but they always did it in a manner which did not, St. Francis never tried to take authority over the people there. He never tried to take spiritual authority over others. Maybe that is a cue to distinguishing a holy fool or a fool for Christ compared to the more subversive kind. Do you think that there’s hope we will have more saint fools who will help to turn this crazy world upside down or right that up? I think so. We’re already seeing it happen and I think it’s going to happen more and more as the world becomes more and more mad, then the fools will be the ones that will show us a way out. We need to pay attention. We need to be careful because some of the fools are just fools. We have to be really careful because in a world of folly it is sometimes hard to discern the holy fool, but the holy fool is flipping, that’s what he’s doing. He is flipping things. He’s working to the salvation of others. If you read the book, it’s really worth reading because you really do see this holy fool and you see that you don’t want that life. You don’t want to accept being the butt of the joke because that’s the thing. One of the ways maybe you can see the difference between a fool that is useful and a fool that is not useful is the fool that is not useful usually is just making fun of other people and the fool that is useful usually that turns then back on himself. The proper clown will be tricking people, but on the end he slips on his own banana peel and he falls. That’s the proper clown. That’s the clown that actually, the full turn clown. A lot of the foolishness that we see around in the world right now is actually extremely kind of like this angry foolishness that is once you accuse the system of being the oppressor, and all of this and all of this, but the real fool or the fool doesn’t do that, doesn’t accuse the system. He makes fun of it and then he realizes that he can’t avoid being part of it so it turns back on him. There are several cultures like in Native American cultures, they have these fools as part of their actual rituals. The fool has a function in the desert, Native Americans in the US, the desert, the plain Indians, they had called the hekoia which was this character that would come to the rituals and would pass gas and would start saying stupid things. He was acting in a way to show the limit of the ritual, to say this ritual isn’t all encompassing. They’re not there to destroy the ritual, they’re just there to show the limit of the ritual, to show that it doesn’t encompass everything. Do you have any advice to help us recognize the holy fool versus the regular fool? I think that’s a big one in terms of accepting to be humbled is one of the biggest aspects that you’ll see in a holy fool. Like I said, it usually ends up turning things, it’s hard because it’s so popular right now to criticize authority, like everybody does, it’s become normal to criticize authority. The holy fool would probably end up doing something different, would criticize criticizing authority or something like that and then it would turn. When I see one I can point you to him. I think Kanye West is playing a role that’s cloning close to it, the way that he’s flipping everything and the way he’s doing it is very funny also because he’s, just the idea of naming his album Jesus is King and knowing what it’s going to do and forcing people to say it, he’s kind of humorous but it does what it does.