The Prophet, the Fool and the Poet

Man’s mind is so powerful that it can trump reality and replace it with a world of delusion and illusion. When someone tells us truth that hurts, we seek to still or quiet that voice – sometimes subtly, sometimes violently.

I have always loved this quote from Pasternak: “In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.” When truth is painful, we tend to laugh it off and pretend it was a fool who said it. Often, fools speak the truth more often than do wise men who are often guilty of double speak in their wisdom.

Sometimes the truth is too ineffable for us to express in words. We turn to poets and to the sensitivity of their souls to express for us what we know and feel deep within us to be true. Poets are able to in words “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.”

At other times, we know that truth has a deeper meaning than what is right before our eyes. We need to remove layers of distractions and preoccupations for us to get to the core of things. And at that core we discover who we really. Prophets have always been in touch with this sacred core that sustains us and they are able to see God’s hand even in the ordinary events of our lives.

The Prophet. The Fool. The Poet. They are all proclaimers of the truth. Prophets are killed. Most fools are dismissed as insufferable. Many poets dies penurious. There was once a fool on the hill who spoke the truth the prophets did, seeing God’s loving providence as he saw in his poet’s eyes the lilies of the field and the birds in the air.

For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been telling him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her.’ Though Herod wanted to put him to death, he feared the crowd, because they regarded him as a prophet.
Matthew 14:3-12

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