How to be a Holy Fool
And why you may want to
I used to attend an annual gathering of punks, anarchists, and witches.
Every summer, we would meet in the woods for a week and practice liberatory, Earth-based magick together.
We worked for the world we long for.
Just.
Relational.
Animist.
Every year we failed. The world didn't change overnight.
But we kept showing up, knowing that our magick and our power made a difference.
As in any community, conflicts arose frequently.
One of the most fracturing fights was around the clowns.
The clowns were an undefined group within our camp who reached connection with Spirit through clowning: irreverent sass, interruption, disruption, snark, heckling.
When it was good, helping those of us caught in seriousness break through into divine play.
But a significant faction of us found the clowns irritating, disrespectful, and did not appreciate the irreverence. It was NOT FUNNY.
For example, the clowns did a skit at the no-talent show.
Probably 7-8 clowns, some in clownface, others not, stood in a row.
The first brushed their teeth, a great display of foam and vigor.
When they finished, they spat directly into the next clown's mouth, who then brushed their teeth, before depositing the saliva, food bits, and well-used toothpaste into the next clown's open mouth, and so on.
I am nauseated as I write this.
The clowns would mock our well-planned rituals (as well-planned as a bunch of anarchist witches can make) and often conduct their counter-rituals behind the central ritual.
Feelings ran high, and tensions grew intense.
In what would come to be known as the clown problem, after a couple of years, some people had had enough.
A meeting was called.
Clowns were called to be accountable for their clownish ways.
Which they clowned.
Now I'm laughing, remembering the mockery, how the clowns Would Not Be Serious.
"This is a very bad situation," they kept yelling.
I was not a clown.
I was an organizer, concerned with everyone at camp having the best possible experience.
I felt the impact the clowns were having.
Had been annoyed a time or two myself when in a particularly tender ritual moment, a cackle or howl would disrupt the energy, or the words to sacred songs were spontaneously rewritten from "Stir the Brew" to "Sip the Goo."
While the clowns put up a grand show of being unfussed by the criticism they were receiving, something inside me knew it hurt.
What they were doing was their best: sacred work to break taboo, and undo white uptight-ness and religious trauma.
They were bringing a form of non-consensual yet very necessary magick and healing.
A different kind of light.
So the day of the meeting, a feeling grew in me: grief, but wild and feral.
We had forgotten this sacred role, and the necessity of its awkward, splendiferous power.
Uncomfortable yet holy.
Disruptive.
Playful.
Childlike with a critical edge of mocking norms.
Freedom for anyone who could claim it.
I, and a couple of others, spoke up for the shamed and projected-on clowns.
We spoke about the gifts they brought to our camp and the necessity of their presence.
We named the divisiveness and asked how these different approaches to Spirit could co-exist.
Was there room at camp for clowns?
Miraculously, hearts opened on both sides.
Tears.
Wonder.
Appreciation for the role the clowns were committed to holding.
Acknowledgment that sometimes, to get to the sacred, you have to go in through the door of the profane.
Mid-week at every camp, we held the HEALING RITUAL, caps intentional.
This was a Big Deal Ritual where some people waited an entire year to receive the healing they needed.
It depended on group cohesion, on offering our best to each other, and letting ourselves receive healing energy from the love the collective held for us all.
In the year of the clown problem, the clowns abducted me during the Healing Ritual.
I won't say it was totally nonconsensual, but I'm not sure what would have happened had I protested.
But instead, I went soft, and they took me down to the forest floor.
Rolling around in the pine duff and dirt, they whispered things in my ears: “Lick the Earth,” one whispered.
Feeding me bark, another commanded, “Chew and swallow!”
I complied.
They bathed me with their spit.
They rolled me over and over, singing and laughing, covering me with dirt.
Until I went quiet, still.
I gave in.
That moment has become a lighthouse, ever shining in my life.
The presence of the holy mystery roared and tickled, leapt and giggled.
I felt it flow in, and bring a tide of quiet ecstasy.
My surrender was absolute: I just let go all the way.
Once the clowns felt it, they left, on to heckle and harass others.
I tried to draw the threads of my undoing into a new weave.
When I could finally peel myself from the forest floor, I arose as GlitterHeart, a silent clown who could face everything with compassion.
A clown with the capacity to be with the world as it is, not turn away, not lose my heart.
I've never told this story.
I write it today because the clowns gave me back an essential piece of my soul that had slipped away.
Freedom through silliness that is without boundaries and limits.
A lack of societal conditioning where I can do anything, but not be a sociopath.
I trust my clown more than any other part.
The most loving parts of me come through GlitterHeart.
I share this now because I want you to join School of the Holy Fool happening next week at Camp LightHeart.
It's not a pitch.
It's an invitation back to irreverent play of the most joyful, highest vibes kind.
No spitting on each other, promise.
That's just what I needed for my clown initiation.
I needed to embrace disgust and see what was beyond my programming.
What was actually going on? Those clowns loved me back to life.
We'll be gentling each other into a more playful way of engaging with the world as it is: broken, blisteringly beautiful, and holy.
Play is the antithesis of trauma.
You might not need to be rolled in dirt or baptized in spit, but I know there's a clown in you waiting to be freed.
A part (perhaps undiscovered) that could lighten your grief, interrupt your programming, and help you laugh yourself back to aliveness.
GlitterHeart didn’t emerge because I was healed.
They came because I stopped trying to be so… put together.
School of the Holy Fool is where we can come undone, for the sake of holiness and wholeness.
It’s where we play our way into freedom.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in reverence, afraid to be ridiculous, or too tired to be earnest anymore, this is your space. This is your clown’s call.
Here I am, nuzzling in your ear.
Come play with me.
Come get whole with me.