Quirky
All Saints’ Day
November 3, 2019
The alternate reading for this Sunday is the story of Zaccheus. How many of you know about this charming story from Luke’s gospel? I am going to read it to you – it is only a few verses.
Luke 19:1-7
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”
Then the story continues explaining that Zacchaeus was so transformed by Jesus that he gives back all he took from the poor, he repays four-fold what he defrauded people, and will give away half his worldly goods.
It’s a quirky story about a quirky man. And it strikes me that during All Saintstide, which we are celebrating this morning, we are invited to remember the saints who were made so- not because of being purely extraordinary people, but because they were a little quirky.
St Paul was a little quirky. He had some kind of disability – we don’t really know if he had a peculiar walk, or had trouble with his vision, or he had some sort of speech impediment that made him a not very fluid orator. He called it his thorn in the flesh that prevented him from being conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Any yet, without him, Christianity would not have spread the way it did so quickly in the 1st century AD.
John the Baptist – super quirky – weird clothes (itchy camel hair clothing) and strange diet (locust and honey), and didn’t win over people by being charming – but by being outrageously judgmental and noisy – not a tactic recommended in the pivotal book, How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
St Francis of Assisi – another massively quirky saint – gave up all his family’s tremendous wealth, walked naked in the streets even in front of the Pope, and talked to birds and foxes.
Martin Luther – 16th century Father of Protestantism. Apparently for all the good he did to bring forth the Reformation, he had a potty mouth. My husband wanted me to add that he also loved beer and talked about it a lot.
And finally – the revered Saint Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Spanish Carmelite nun. We think of her as a paragon of holy wisdom and virtue, a mystic and religious reformer. But those who knew her knew something else about her. She was quite a hoot. Totally hilarious.
Here is a story about her which you might not know. The story goes[1]
As St. Teresa … made her way to her convent during a fierce rainstorm, she slipped down an embankment and fell squarely into the mud. The irrepressible nun looked up to heaven and admonished her Maker, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them!”
When teaching her nuns what it meant to be a faithful religious, Teresa put an emphasis on having a good sense of humor. She wrote, “A sad nun is a bad nun … I am more afraid of one unhappy sister than a crowd of evil spirits … What would happen if we hid what little sense of humor we had? Let each of us humbly use this to cheer others.”
Her sense of humor also allowed her to recognize her own faults and need for grace. She writes at the beginning of her autobiography, “Having virtuous and God-fearing parents would have been enough for me to be good if I were not so wicked.”
But Teresa wasn’t just a jokester. She also was a fierce reformer, who didn’t have any time for false piety. She once said, “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us!”[2]
So, here are just a few of the many people God chose to be the movers and shakers of the world. God used them in all their quirkiness – and through their conventionality.
So, I should tell you – I started thinking about this quirkiness last weekend when I heard an interview on NPR of a Professor Melissa A. Schilling who just published a book called Quirky. The subtitle is “The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World”. Dr. Schilling is a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In her book she researches 8 different innovators in science and technology to see what similarities they share – people like Marie Curie, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs. So, I ordered this book and have been reading it this week.
And to sum up the book’s 250 pages this is what Dr. Schilling found in her research is the following
- All of those she researched shared a sense of separateness – a certain degree of isolation. They did not have a fear of missing out.
- They were somewhat anti-authoritarian – their creativity and their inclination to challenge rules did not equate into being stellar academics. Many of them dropped out of school or were self-taught. This enabled them to think outside the box.
- They were fanatically hard workers and persevered.
At the end of the book Dr. Schilling describes some steps to help anyone with becoming more innovative. And I share them with you – because I think that not only are they good for innovation and creativity, but they are also good steps for following the Godly life –
- Go out there and challenge the norms. Be curious, ask big questions. See for yourself.
- Spend time alone. Each and every day. Spend a portion of time, as far as possible, alone. Not just from people, but from the constant stream of information that flows through our lives – social media, tv, radio, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram.
And if we can do these two things – these two guidelines will help us discover our own quirky selves that are made in the image of God and to lead holy lives and to lead others to the same.
Amen
[1] The following information is from the website aleteia and is a quote and near quote of their piece of St. Teresa. https://aleteia.org/2017/10/15/the-unexpected-humor-of-st-teresa-of-avila/
[2] https://aleteia.org/2017/10/15/the-unexpected-humor-of-st-teresa-of-avila/
0 Comments