EpictetusFAIL!

TED: Dougal, you know you can praise God with sleep?
DOUGAL: Can you, Ted?
TED: Yes. It's a way of thanking him for a tiring day.
DOUGAL: God, there's lots of ways you can praise God, isn't there, Ted? Like that time you told me to praise him by, you know, just leaving the room.
TED: That was a good one, yes.

-- Father Ted, Channel 4

I know my blog is called staticandstillness (which I may explain one day) but right now I'd like to take a little time to muse on the nature of sacred and silliness.

Early last year I was hanging out with a crowd of people who were all about our collective connnectedness to the earth and the universe, and how we could channel the infinite energy around us if we simply allowed ourselves to learn how. I have no gripes with that as a way to live your life if you accept some personal responsibility to actually take action instead of passively waiting for the universe to deliver. This group liked to observe a certain degree of ceremony, and that's mostly where I got bored and tired of them. On one occasion I was told that from the ceremony until the fire we should keep "sacred space." Apparently that meant "no laughing." And, for me, laughter is one of the most sacred things we have.

I wonder sometimes, how I will be remembered after I die, and I'm often sad to think that I'll be remembered as quite a serious person. Not that it's bad to be serious, but I wish that I could drop my guard more, enough to be totally, uninhibitedly silly -- because that's what I usually feel inside.

There are, or have been, a few people in my life who allow themselves to exist in the moments of laughter, not to get to the next laugh or outsmart the last one, but to exist right there where the laughter is and, invariably, more laughter comes.

I find myself tearing up almost every time I write this blog. Sometimes for things I've lost, other times for things I have never had -- and sometimes for things I never had but can imagine vividly in my head what it must be like, or things I've had, though the details are now only a frustrating itch in my memory.

Tonight it's memories of a crazy night of bowling, of playing Cranium and drinking Jamesons, of Terry performing "I'm Five" to a full table, or bouncing in the choir on Sunday morning, of Caroline rushing the stage to forget the words once she had the mic, of the children of friends unleashing Lady GaGa on Rock Band, and of a seven year old boy taking the stage as the lead in his elementary school play.

What happened along the way that made me so concerned with not being seen as silly?

Jeremy Piven has probably the best line in the movie "Serendipity." Though he has the best lines in most everything he's in, this is among my favorites:

Do you remember the philosopher Epictetus? You remember what he said? He said, "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." That's what you've done.

And while the quote isn't literal, it's close enough to accurate to make me ask: why am I not content to be thought foolish and stupid? Why do I have to be the guy with the answers, the thought-out, snarky comment? Why do I insist on being Groucho when I could be Harpo?

Lately I'm closer to letting go of the things that keep me tethered to worthless inhibitions, the fears that don't serve me at all.



In the meantime here's the Gigolo Aunts from the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. A stupid movie about foolish dreamers.

And the sacred moments of silliness are where I find my Heaven.