Holy Fools and poetry readings
Community Arts Center of Wallingford
Along with some of my fellow poets, I will be reading a few poems this Wednesday, 1/6/2021 at 7:00 p.m., via ZOOM: a reading by members of the Mad Poets Society Critique Circle.
Hosted by Sibelan Forrester, the scheduled readers are Timothy Wade, Bill Van Buskirk, Joyce Meyers, Amy Laub, Matt Lake, David Kozinski, Sibelan Forrester, Finnegan, and Joe Cilluffo.
Here's a link to attend the Zoom meeting, which you could copy and paste into your browser: https://swarthmore.zoom.us/w/82590836036...
825 9083 6036 is the meeting ID.
Holy Fools
The fool for Christ, or the Holy Fool, is one who rejects the established rules of society for a religious purpose. The fool might renounce his inheritance, live as a beggar, wandering the streets asking for stones so that he can rebuild a church, as St Francis of Assisi did. The Russian Holy Fool, the yurodivy, might walk naked in winter and summer, weight himself down with chains, and insult Ivan the Terrible for not paying attention in church, as St Basil the Blessed did.
While the fool for Christ is obviously a Christian thing, non-Christian faiths have similar figures. Some Indian religions have the avadhuta, a mystic or saint. Buddhists have the mad/crazy monks. Qalandariyya in Islam are wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes. These Holy fools often speak in riddles, have the gift of prophecy or foresight, suffer mockery, beatings, and worse for their behavior.
According to Wikipedia:
One of the more recent works in theology is Fools for Christ by Jaroslav Pelikan. Through six essays dealing with various "fools," Pelikan explores the motif of fool-for-Christ in relationship to the problem of understanding the numinous:
The Holy is too great and too terrible when encountered directly for men of normal sanity to be able to contemplate it comfortably. Only those who cannot care for the consequences run the risk of the direct confrontation of the Holy.
