Lay down your weary tune, lay down...

Earlier this week, at our conversation and discussion of "Play-fullness" as a spiritual path, I asked the 15 adults:  "What did you do this week that was goofy?"  After an awkward moment of genuine confusion, filled with looks of mild distress, I wondered out loud if "perhaps we were all just a little too serious?"  And after another long pause and some nervous laughter I shared my own Billy Big-Mouth Bass - the mechanical fish - singing "Take Me to the River."

The next day was Fat Tuesday - filled with lots of goofiness and beauty - only to be followed by Ash Wednesday - a totally goofy day in the eyes of the world - wherein we own our mortality and the foolish wisdom of the Cross. 

We're the Messiah's misfits. You might be sure of yourselves, but we live in the midst of frailties and uncertainties. You might be well-thought-of by others, but we're mostly kicked around. Much of the time we don't have enough to eat, we wear patched and threadbare clothes, we get doors slammed in our faces, and we pick up odd jobs anywhere we can to eke out a living. When they call us names, we say, "God bless you." When they spread rumors about us, we put in a good word for them. We're treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture's kitchen.

As I drove home quietly after the evening liturgy of the ashes, I found myself thinking about my personal paraphrase of the words of Jesus at the end of St. John's gospel. The Bible puts it like this:

Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

But I found myself reworking it like this: "When I was younger I used to think Stealer's Wheel's song, 'Stuck in the Middle with You' was my theme song - clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right - here I am: stuck in the middle with you.' I didn't want people to waste my precious time. But now, mostly by the grace of God, more often than not I find myself singing Sondheim's 'Send In the Clowns' because they are so often a blessing."

Imagine my delight upon reading today's reflection by Fr. Richard Rohr:

My dear friend, Dr. Gerald May, made a distinction years ago that I have found myself using frequently. He says spirituality is not to encourage willfulness, but in fact willingness. Spirituality creates willing people who let go of their need to be first, to be right, to be saved, to be superior, and to define themselves as better than other people. That game is over and gone and if you haven’t come to the willing level—“not my will but thy will be done”—then I think the Bible will almost always be misused.

I would like to say that the goal in general is to be serious about the word of God, serious about the scriptures. We have often substituted being literal with being serious and they are not the same! (Read that a second time, please.) I would like to make the point that in fact literalism is to not take the text seriously at all! Pure literalism in fact avoids the real impact, the real message. Literalism is the lowest and least level of meaning in a spiritual text.

Both Origen and Augustine in the third and fourth centuries said there were at least four levels of interpretation to every scripture text. Recent fundamentalism, which says that literalism is in fact the truest meaning of the text, is totally inaccurate—and very late in coming. Literalism is the lowest level of meaning and if you just stop there you will never come to any real Encounter. You have engaged your own critical and self-protective mind, instead of bringing your mind into union with your heart. It will not get you very far. It will make you willful but not willing, and that makes all the difference.

So, come on, people of faith: let's get goofy - playfull - it is Lent!