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Teachings

July 11, 2004 By Uncategorized

I am fond of blogging about the teachings I receive from Elders and the wise people in my life. Putting them here in this space gives them a kind of public life and memory that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Over this weekend at the giving conference I was privileged to meet Debbie Gleason. Debbie brought something absolutely essential to the my experience of the conference. She talked about love. Pure love, the love that connects a mother to a daughter in a myriad of unspoken and intuitive ways, that constructs a language of shared understanding. In the midst of all the talk about projects, ideas and politics, Debbie reminded me constantly about that which moves true gifts through a community: that they be given and received with love.

Debbie also had me rolling on the floor with an invocation of the above cartoon of Hipshot Percussion riding out into the desert, past the crowded churches to say his own hello to “The Boss.” Like Hipshot, she lives outside of convention, but connects with the divine anyway!

Debbie calls herself a “Foolosopher Queen” and I’d invite you to cruise over to her small but entrancing hand rolled blog to continue reading the story of a life that begins:

I am a foolosopher queen. I detest fools yet I’m the queen of the most foolish. I am educated yet I am also naive. Perhaps I should reread Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly. It’s been many years since I’ve cracked it open. I do remember the nod to Thomas More and how the title in the original Latin (not Erasmus’s native Dutch), was a pun on More’s name. There’s something to be said about appearing foolish. If you are foolish, then you don’t have to explain yourself. You’re not expected to know much because, well, you’re a fool. You can stealthily tweak people that way. They don’t expect to be tweaked by someone so inept. But that’s the deceipt. A truly good fool is one who is very aware and capable of being insightful. I know that not only am I not taken seriously, but that I’m invisible to most. That means I can gad about unnoticed and observe some real foolishness without being detected. I am wise enough to know when to speak and when to save my energy. Wise enough, yes, but I don’t always follow my own wise advice and desist. Sometimes speaking out is called for, but sometimes saving one’s breath is the better part of valor. And necessary for one’s own sanity, besides.

All I can say is thank god I figured out that there was a lot going on behind the veneer. In there is a woman who teaches in the truest tradition of the Elder: from her own experience and truth and the wisdom of a life lived as a poem.