Theologians, have – let’s just call it – a bit of a thing for Dostoevsky. I first noticed the term Holy Fool in one of his books.1
Fools who are Holy, almost inevitably turnout to be seriously fallen characters.
These days I realize that the Spirit has a regular habit of taking me toward that which I am absolutely intended to see. And this Holy fool thing, once seen, has nibbled away and whispered to my heart ever since.
The thing about Dostoevsky’s Holy fools, that so compels me, is that as his plots unfold, the fools who are Holy, almost inevitably turnout to be seriously fallen characters. Folks who have the sort of unenviable pasts that no one would put their hand up for. They may well end up among the righteous few, if indeed there is such a category? But they sure as hell don’t begin that way.
Rather, they are the ones who become Holy precisely because they are so utterly broken by past misdeeds. What 12 step folk call “rock bottoms.”
Harriet Murav opens her book on the subject, by first stepping briefly outside the Russian context. She identifies Francis of Assisi, famed for his radical asceticism, as meeting all the necessary benchmarks to be a signed up member of the Holy fool’s gang. However, it is in the Russian Orthodox East, according to Murav, where this model of being an utter fool with Christ, has longstanding and imbedded cultural acceptance.2
Nonetheless, as mentioned above, it is not just the counter cultural embrace of poverty that these fools collectively embrace that gets my attention. Although it is damn impressive, it is rather Dostoevsky’s portrayal of them as deeply flawed broken ones who get down and dirty long before they get lifted up and made clean.
Holy fools have always been among us and still are.
There is it seems to me a vast chasm between these exemplars of Holy living and the more popular and let’s face it infinitely easier modes of pursuing the spiritual life.
It may well be that Holy fools are more ‘chosen,’ rather than people who choose that life. One thing is for sure, with all due deference to the Eastern examples, the fools for God have always been amongst us and still are. But you’ve got to get a little crazy to walk in the way of the mystics for whom the pursuit of humility and thus the Holy fool life is essential. “Power is is made perfect in weakness,” (2 Cor 12:9).
If you have followed the thread of my previous posts, you will have seen that up to this point they have centered on two brief passages from just one of Paul’s authentic letters, 2nd Corinthians 12:9-10. Clearly, this is a mere drop in a vast ocean, so it’s time to consider the next ripple along the way in what I call bottom up spirituality. A quest which, when all is said and done, is really a search for the most precious of all spiritual jewels, ‘Humility of Heart.’
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (London: Vintage Books, 1992). [↩]
- Harriet Murav, Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky’s Novels & the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992), 1-16. [↩]