Many Moons

This is a profound book. I marvel every time I read it. It’s about a princess sick in bed whose father promises her he’ll give her whatever she wants. She wants the moon. His counselors all give long-winded, complicated reasons why it’s too far away, too big, and too heavy, but the court jester suggests asking the princess what she thinks. She replies that it’s as big as her thumbnail, not quite as high as the top of her window, and made of gold. So it turns out to be fairly easy after all.

I love it partly because of the whole “wise fool” thing. It reminds me of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, where he plays a jester exposing the shortcomings of scholasticism. “The true way to Heaven,” he seems to say, “is a lot simpler and less arrogant than you make out.” “Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye,” Emily Dickinson would agree. Or the apostle Paul, who speaks of being fools for Christ. The wisdom of God looks like foolishness, a stumbling block, a great divine jest.

I need more of that kind of profound lightheartedness in my outlook. I remember sitting once in my backyard in Kentucky trying to read in the quiet — and suddenly realized it was anything but quiet. I started trying to count the sounds: a softball game; birds singing; a lawnmower – no, two; cars – how many? Do you count birds by their song, or do you count each individual note? What birds are they? I threw up my hands in less than a minute, acknowledging that I was at the center of a chaotic symphony of joyful sound — none of it noticed till I started trying to impose my own order on it.

That’s kind of how things go with wifing, parenting, Christianing, and whatever else constitutes life. There’s so much more than meets the eye that when I start approaching it in a businesslike way with an eye toward improvement, I throw up my hands pretty quickly. That jester from Many Moons reminds me that this life is intricately, miraculously complex  — but God doesn’t require me to “figure it out” before blessing me. The blessing comes from a different source than my default methods look to.  If I could live in the simplicity of Princess Lenore, maybe it wouldn’t be long before I felt like I had the moon on a chain around my neck, too.