The Spiritual Journey pt. 5: The Three Fools

August 26, 2:07 PMFaith & Culture ExaminerDr. Bob Beltz

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Three Outcomes of the Crisis

When last we connected with our motorcycling pilgrim, John Calvin, he was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, engaged in conversation with one Father Flaherty.  Flaherty had started to explain to Calvin the role the “Crisis” plays in the journey of spiritual transformation.  In Somewhere Fast, Flaherty proceeds to show John Calvin the three possible outcomes the Crisis can produce.  Calvin helps him replicate the diagram Calvin had previously carried on a napkin, and later on a rumpled piece of paper.  This time, Flaherty draws it on a whiteboard.

Part of what I found helpful about the model of spiritual growth I learned from Richard Rohr was the idea that one’s life coming apart at the seams can be a critical part of God’s plans.  This becomes clear when we understand that coming out of the Crisis, a man or woman will tend to take one of three paths that result in three very different outcomes.

Let’s pretend that you are 50 years of age, and things are not going quite like you planned.  For the sake of illustration, lets say that nothing is working for you any more.  Perhaps you have played into the trap of shooting for a dream that was based on all the wrong values.  Let’s even assume that you did a pretty good job of pulling it off.  Then the floor drops out from under you.  You enter into full blown Crisis.

There is no easy answer to the question of how long the Crisis phase lasts.  For some men and women their Crisis event or events can be so powerful that it lasts a relatively short period of time, and produces profound change.  Then there are those hard cases - the ones I identify with.  If you look at the biblical stories of transformation you might remember that it took Moses 40 years in the wilderness to “get it right.”  Someone once told me that Moses spent 40 years thinking he was a somebody, 40 years learning he was a nobody, and 40 years seeing what God can do with a person who knows that apart from Him, they are a nobody.  He went from living as the grandson of the Pharaoh of Egypt, to herding sheep in the boonies of the Sinai desert.   It could be that the more “successful” a person is in cultural terms, and the more that success has shaped their false identity, the longer it takes for the Crisis to do its work.  I also wonder whether God takes into account the desires of our hearts.  Face it, not everyone wants to be God’s man or woman.  Many men and women want to be cultural successes, and don’t care if it is not authentic.  Even if they go through a Crisis-type of experience, they will probably end up in one of the first two outcome categories.

The Old Fool

What happens when you go through the Crisis, but don’t “get it?”  I must say that in my own life, if I hadn’t had the benefit of Rohr's model, I don't think I would have.  Growing up, no one taught me this model of spiritual growth, or if they did, I wasn’t listening.  So, some people go through the Crisis - but it does not change the trajectory of their lives.  They come out of the Crisis and once again seek the path of upward mobility.  In Somewhere Fast, Flaherty draws a line out of the Crisis heading upward at the same angle as the original “ascent” line. Ultimately, Calvin is told, these men will become “Old Fools.”  They have the ability to pursue cultural success again, and the idea that their lives are “not about them” doesn’t register.  They continue to succeed, culturally. They might end up rich in material things, but their lives tend to be bankrupt spiritually.   If you pay special attention to the world around you, you might begin to see that contemporary Western culture – and increasingly the newly prosperous East, which is now emulating us – is perfectly designed to produce scores of Old Fools.  Notice also that this is a person who either never was taught the “facts of life,” or has decided they aren’t true.

The Bitter Fool

Flaherty draws a second line on the white board.  This line runs directly horizontal from the Crisis.  Flaherty makes this a broken line, and labels it “The Bitter Old Man.”   For our purposes, let’s call this person the “Bitter Old Fool.”  This is the man or woman who goes through the Crisis, and again does not experience the refining and illuminating purpose which crisis is intended to produce.  But, unlike the Old Fool, they emerge without the resources or ability to continue to ascend.  They still live out of a false identity, and they still pursue the cultural dream, but they can’t pull it off.  The result: bitterness.  This is the cruel joke the promise of success plays on the vast multitude of men and women in America.  They spend hour after hour looking at the images of success the marketing machine has surrounded them with, and know they will never have it.  Often, this produces a degree of self-absorption even greater than that resulting from so-called success.  I would again point out that this is a person that has either not been initiated, or thinks they are smarter than the combined wisdom of the ages.

The Holy Fool

The final line Flaherty draws for Calvin is identical to the original “descent” line.  At the bottom of this line, he writes the words, “Holy Fool.”  He explains that the intended purpose of the Crisis is to launch a man on the downward journey toward becoming a Holy Fool.  He explains that “Holy Fool” is a term borrowed from St. Francis of Assisi, who referred to himself as “God’s Clown” or “God’s Fool.”  This is the person who “gets it.”   They come through crisis with an understanding that a great deal of their life and identity is false.  This is the man or woman whose world has been “rocked” and they have discovered that they have built on sand.  Their "tower" proved to have been erected against "the wrong wall."  As crazy as it sounds, this often is an immensely liberating experience.  It takes a lot of energy to live the false life.  The man or woman who begins the descent, or the wisdom journey, begins to understand at a visceral level that they really are not that important.  They have learned they really are not in control.  And they begin to seek to understand how to live in a way where their life will not just be about themselves.  The passion of their life becomes to know God and to become the man or woman God intended them to be.  In Somewhere Fast, Calvin isn’t sure he buys into all this.  He asks Flaherty if he is a Holy Fool.  Flaherty laughs.  He tells Calvin he isn’t old enough.  When Calvin asks how old you have to be, Flaherty tells him he has rarely met a Holy Fool who is younger than 70.  Augustine was 80 when he finally wrote, “Late have I loved Thee, beauty so ancient, and so new. Late have I loved Thee.” 

I guess you could say, that if you buy into this model of the spiritual journey, everyone ends up some kind of fool.  You either become an Old Fool or a Bitter Old Fool; or you "get it" and take the Wisdom Journey toward becoming a Holy Fool. 

I’ll write a bit more about the Wisdom Journey in the next article.