Easter Euphoria, Holy Fools and the Moment of Not-Knowing - by SC Skillman

It's not often that a church service  has a profound impact upon your emotions - and it would of course be a lot to expect.

Jester's hat, candle and crown. Maundy Thursday.
St Mark's Leamington Spa. Photo credit Marie Calvert.

And yet this Easter, our church of St Mark's in Leamington Spa has indeed achieved this. I came out of our Easter Sunday service feeling uplifted and euphoric - and not because any chocolate had passed my lips!

Over the course of Holy Week we've been on a journey using the theme of foolishness, working with that wonderful ironical coincidence of Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day. Through the medium of play - and quite a bit of silliness - we have glimpsed profound truths; such is the work of the Holy Fool.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, wrote St Paul. And our services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday all took us on the path of God's foolishness, using the symbols of the earthly crown and the medieval jester's hat.

As I gazed at the jester's hat and the crown on the table I thought of the traditional symbolism of Jesus as King. Then I thought of him, instead, as the Holy Fool.

And finally I found myself thinking about the role of the court jester throughout history.
The jester has, traditionally, been the only one who could tell the king what he really thinks - as long as he makes the king laugh. In my mind, there is something very special indeed about the Court Jester.

The comedians among us know that comedy can be used as a vehicle for deep truths. And despite the sad beliefs of the monks in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, Jesus laughed - and did so a lot, and smiled, and cracked jokes, and told funny stories.

I once went to a Holy Fool workshop and learned about Holy Fool clowning. Being a Holy Fool is not about traditional circus clowning but about working with innocence. Working in pairs, we took it in turn to do a clowning performance in front of the others - something normally right out of my comfort zone.

When an object is thrown to you and you haven't the slightest idea what to do next, you look at your partner and you look at your audience, then you pick up the object and start to explore it and do things with it. And just before the idea comes to you, of what you're going to do, there is the moment of not-knowing.

Later on when we received feedback from our audience, one person said, "It's the moment of not knowing JUST BEFORE getting the idea which is most precious, most exciting, which gives the audience most pleasure to watch."

I realised the essence is this: trusting people enough to show them your moment of not knowing what to do next, before getting the idea and acting on it.

Can we apply this to creative writing? Whenever we look at the blank page and are afraid to write those first words, with our over-inflated (and totally false) sense of the importance of the first draft of those first chapters... remember, the YES is synonomous with the moment and act of TRUST.

In the words of the final blessing of our Easter Sunday service: May God who gave us the foolishness to believe that one man can change the world, grant us the foolishness to believe we can make a difference in the world, and do the things that other people say cannot be done.