Reminds me of the quote, “No one cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.” 
Yes. Hell will be emptied when everyone finally realizes that sulking just doesn’t work.
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut the gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.
A good discussion 
I don’t know if I have a whole lot to add, other than how as a kid I thought that I was so deep and so profound in my thinking and in what I felt (and even nowadays I catch myself thinking that… oh my ‘deepness’ and profundity ), and thought I knew so much, thought I was actually better than others, but the older I get (and I’m still a spring chicken, though our dear Kate tells me if I’m a spring chicken then she’s an egg ) the more I realize that there are many others who have gone, and who go, deeper than I have ever gone, or likely more than I ever will go, and who know far more than I do, and whom I feel lesser than… others have cried harder than I have, have laughed more, written better poetry, reached and longed and ached into the dark more than I have, and I realize more and more how shallow I have been, and can be, and how very little I understand about life and love and everything, and how much I have to learn and grow… and to be honest, most of the time I just feel like I’m, well, kind of winging it.
But then again, comparing myself to others probably isn’t the best thing… perhaps it’s a foolish thing 
Maybe life is no contest, and as mediocre as we may seem or feel, or as humbled as we have been by our failure or our folly, by finding that the emperor of our knowledge and understanding has no clothes, so to speak, still we matter, still our lives count for something, and if we speak and live out of our hearts as much as possible, even if that’s only a little, or feels like a little, maybe we will have something worthwhile to offer.
I remember how in my initial reading of the Bible, I loathed much of the book of Proverbs because of all the threatening and belittling condemnations of the fool, which, naturally, I assumed was me. 
And I was like ‘Solomon, you didn’t even take half of your own advice, you pompous a-hole, so you have no room to speak!’
But then I have to cut poor Solomon some slack, as I’m the same. I too have failed to take most of my own advice, have been pompous and have spoken when I have had no room to speak. As much as I don’t like being condemned for being a fool, I have been one at times.
At times at the very least.
But maybe there’s a kind of wisdom that’s found in the train-wreck of our folly and our incompleteness.
Maybe realizing that we don’t really know and don’t have all the answers and embracing that as much as we can, embracing the mystery and embracing the ride as much as we can, is a knowledge of the highest order, and is worth its weight in gold.
Maybe honesty about where we’re at and humility because of where we’re at covers much failure and folly, just as love covers many wrongs.
It’s funny… I’m pretty good with words, or at least I think I am, and/or others tell me I am, but sometimes I just can’t articulate what I’m really thinking and feeling in those moments when life slows down a bit and I try to pray, when I try to find peace, when I want to be well, and for all to be well, and only have a half-baked idea of what that might look like.
Words escape me. I just feel, dimly, haphazardly, like a little rat scratching on the wall of heaven 'cuz he’s not big enough to pound on it.
But maybe God hears the scratching just as well as He does the pounding.
Maybe He sees us in our coming and going, in our failures and triumphs, in our wisdom and folly, in our remembering and forgetting, and in everything in between and in every which way we go, sees deep into us, sees what we can’t see, sees something worthwhile, maybe even something wonderful, beautiful… can He see it even in the worst of us and even when we are at our worst? Maybe.
Maybe He will work out my mess and work out all of our messes and make us all whole, tie together all the divergent songs of both dissonance and resonance in our lives and make a magnificent symphony, somehow, someday.
That’s my hope anyway.
My messy heart cries out dimly and haphazardly to believe that even in my unbelief, my old habits, my sad tendencies, in my pathetic anxieties and my silly meanderings in thought, word, and deed, in my feeling that I’m too much of this, or too little of that, or, as Frederick Buechner once said, in feeling that I am just eight parts chicken, phony, and slob, that God, if He somehow really is there, incomprehensibly but yes, there, here, and even more incomprehensibly somehow the Father of us all, of all, the wise Father of vast galaxies and goofy squirrels, of black holes and black cats, of sunsets and stars, sex and flatulence, of Jesus the 2,000 year old shadow of perplexing light and love cast across the world, and of fools like me; sees a real man, a true son, in the making, or even, shockingly, astoundingly, impossibly, already…
And that’s a hope I keep coming back to, even though words like this aren’t big enough to describe that hope really, and I will forget them anyway, and will forget the hope more often than not, as I mop floors and wipe down toilets, as I watch cartoons and movies, read and write and listen to music in my earbuds, listen to the voices in my head and heart, as I snuggle with my cat or with my lady, as I worry and wonder about life, here and there amidst all my stumbling about from day to day…
Okay… I thought I had nothing much to add… well, maybe I didn’t, or maybe I did. I don’t know. You decide
Blessings to all, and all that good stuff
Matt
Matt - it is the most foolish thing in the world for you to think yourself mediocre!!! Say peace good tickle brain whenever the thought crosses your mind. Wisdom comes from sitting easy with paradox and mystery -
Remember O man thou art dust
Yes - but
Remember O Matt thou art the Son of a King
love
Dick
Well, I’m only showing my true colors
‘But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round’
My pastor says that the spiritual life is a balanced life… maybe this is what he was talking about
Psychedelic ones?
Yes, I must stop nibbling on those magic mushrooms
A Fools’ Wisdom
We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no labouring i’ th’ winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly.
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.
I like that.
Hey Dave - since you’ve been reading Burton’s Anatomy - and are dropping it for Praise of Folly (good choice) - it’s interesting to note what Burton has to say about Erasmus’ view on hellfire sermons-
The greatest harm of all proceeds from those thundering Ministers, a most frequent cause they are of this malady; and do more harm in Church’, says Erasmus, ‘than they that flatter; great danger on both sides, the one lulls them asleep in carnal security, the other drives them to Desperation’’ (Anatomy p. 775)
‘’While in their ordinary sermons they still aggravate sin, thunder out God’s judgments without respect, rail at and pronounce them damned for giving so much to sports and recreations, making every small fault and a thing indifferent an irremissible offence they so wound men’s consciences, that they are almost at their wits ends. ‘Those bitter potions’, says Erasmus, ‘ are still in their mouth nothing but gall and horror, and with a mad noise they make all their listeners desperate’ – many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise, that follow sermons, that have the least cause, they are most apt to mistake, and fall into these miseries’’ (Anatomy p.776)
Oh man - those are some good words and a good diagnosis.
I’m looking for a copy of Folly - I don’t enjoy reading things like that online near as much as in a good chair with good light and pages to turn.
And I didn’t get that from ploughing all the way through the Anatomy - never done that I’ve read selections from it that’s all - and I found those quotations in an essay on Erasmus and his influence on 16th century English thought Praise of Folly is an easy read and a delight. Anatomy of Melancholy - its’ very long and I leave it to the experts to do some work for me !!!
The Penguin edition is cool. There’s also a really good verse translation by an American scholar - but he’s only got half way through the great work.
My Anatomy is NYRB Classics edition. I have not read all the way through it yet. It’s a very very thick book. I’ll look for the Penguin Folly, and no doubt I’ll praise it.
Beautiful words, Matt. I wish I could have borrowed you for my English homework. You always have very much to add, so like Dick said, dismiss any notion otherwise with, “peace, good tickle brain.”
And, yes, if you’re a spring chicken, then I’m an egg.
Reason #1 that I no longer have a Facebook – quite liberating! And Reason #2 was procrastination.
Great stuff Matt -
The fool finds gold in a ruin while the alchemist dies in pain (from lead poisoning generally)
Speaking of which, one of my ancestors was Surgeon Extraordinaire to George the Third. George went mad, poor man, probably due to heavy metal poisoning, probably from medicines prescribed by his doctor… 