12. Fool!

Joe the Turk: God's Fool!

The Apostle Paul famously wrote these words: “We are fool’s for Christ…” Or as The Message paraphrases it: “We’re the Messiah’s misfits” (1 Corinthians 4:10).

Foolishness: absurd, insane, laughable.

Insanity: extreme foolishness or an act that demonstrates it – Encarta.

Misfit: Oddity, eccentric, nonconformist, somebody who is out of place in a particular situation or environment – Encarta.

There is a bit of the fool in all of us, innately part of our Genesis DNA. Somewhere along the way, a “Mores Committee” was formed by the best and brightest among us, its only item of business being to adjudge “normal” patterns of behavior.

Normal: conforming to the usual standard, type, or custom – Encarta.

Mores: (pronounced /ˈmɔːreɪz/) are norms or customs. Mores derive from the established practices of a society rather than its written laws. They consist of shared understandings about the kinds of behaviour likely to evoke approval, disapproval, toleration or sanction, within particular contexts - Wikipedia.

Early on in our life together, Doris attended a nursing conference on “Laughter in Healing.” The sessions were punctuated with a bit of tomfoolery, designed to illicit laughter; they even had a booth where silly stuff was sold: red ping pong ball noses, wolf whistles, crazy hats and the like. The idea being that a nurse’s bedside manner should include a bit of thoughtfully practiced clownery so as to speed up the healing process.

Upon her return she presented me with a red nose and baseball cap, its inscription reading: “Y B Normal?” Nonplussed, I wondered, “Was she trying to tell me something or was this given in the form of a challenge?” From that day forward normalcy took on a whole new meaning in our life and ministry, much to the chagrin of many self appointed MC members that were soon to follow (Look for illustrations in the pages to come). Sanctified misfits were we, ah but in good company, the likes of Saint Paul, General Booth and Joe the Turk.

After all, foolishness is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

To one it’s foolishness; to another power:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18 NIV)

To another wisdom:

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (20)

To another salvation:

“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” (21-22)

(From a War Cry article in 1880)
General William Booth: “If I thought I could win one more soul to the Lord by walking on my head and playing the tambourine with my toes, I'd learn how!” 
(Spoken to the young Rudyard Kipling)

(Message to last Christian Mission Congress)
“Cast off all bonds of prejudice and custom, and let the love of Christ, which is in you, have free course to run out in all conceivable schemes and methods of labour for the souls of men.”


The foolishness part of Booth’s Genesis DNA rings forth in these proclamations, giving his followers permission to release the fool that resides repressed within, thumbing their noses at that blasted, ubiquitous Mores Committee, which has unfortunately proliferated totally out of control.

Staff Captain Joseph Garabed, the quintessential historical essence of those followers, needed little coaxing, propriety be damned for Jesus sake! Appropriately, it was in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast in the 1880’s where “Joe the Turk” met The Salvation Army, literally a match made in heaven.

Novelty was his trademark, including the wearing of a turban or fez with his uniform, which usually was bright red with a gold braid. Joe carried a large umbrella decorated with slogans and pictures of the Booths. To the wonder of his audiences, little light bulbs made it glow in the dark, and on top was a small miniature statue of liberty with a torch that also lit up. If a goat cart suited his purpose, he would form a mini-circus and parade into town to gain attention.

Considered a misfit by many, the God-given fool within was translated into power, wisdom and salvation, winning the right to unleash that divine foolishness on street-corners everywhere: “53 times to jail for Jesus” his battle cry.

How would “Joe” be received in the Army today? Would his conduct be met with an tsk-tsk – that Mores Committee trademarked clucking, sucking sound signaling the onset of foolish behavior? And if the forefinger is moved back and forth along with the sound, look out!

tsk-tsk: to express disapproval of by or as if by uttering tsk – Mirriam-Webster Online.

Even secular innovators, historically, were met by tsk-tsks, or stronger, at the beginning of something new. “Orville. Wilbur. You’ve got to be kidding! Don’t go up in that! Are you insane? Tsk tsk."

The Genesis person, even more so, understands the power, wisdom and salvation of releasing the divine fool within. Tsk-tsk is not in the vocabulary of a Genesis thinker. It is saying “No!” to the wisdom of the world, and “Yes!” to the perceived foolishness of the Kingdom.

“William. Catherine. Joe. You’ve got to be kidding! Don’t dress up like that! Are you insane? Tsk, tsk."

Cyberspace Link: A dramatic portrayal of Joe the Turk’s life. It is a long video segment, technically challenged and starting slow, but listen to the first song to catch a glimpse of Joe’s Genesis spirit: Truly one of God’s fools.

10. Risk!

Mary (Matthews) Stillwell was a risk-taking, Genesis pioneer, obediently venturing her way westward, even in the face of great uncertainty - and, oh so young.

If passion is the fuel and vision the destination, risk-takings are the compass points that help chart the course. Trial and error is an essential component of Genesis thinking and progress, with adjustments and course corrections required periodically along the way.

When there is risk involved, the conditioned response is to say, “No!” There can be no pioneering spirit without a healthy dose of “Say Yes!” risk-taking. Say what? Without it the wheels will spin, going nowhere, and that’s called status quno.

Every time Jesus said “No!” to law and “Yes!” to love, those were risk-taking compass points. When Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg that was a critical compass point. When Catherine said, “Never!” that was a ministry-changing point. When William said, “Yes!” to “Salvation” Army, military nomenclature, uniform wearing, et al, those represented course correction points. Without these risk-taking compass points, three movement making, inyesvative ventures would never have been undertaken.

Venture: an undertaking that is dangerous, daring, or of uncertain outcome – The Free Dictionary.

This is not meant to be an historical treatise; that’s already been written by someone more disciplined, detailed and astute than I am. For illustrative purposes only, allow me to outline a few seminal historical facts, letting your fertile imaginations fill in the blanks. Needless to say, it took a special breed of risk-taking pioneer to tame the West.

Fact 1: In 1882 Booth sent 24-year-old Irish Major Alfred Wells to establish Salvation Army headquarters in San Francisco “and sally forth daily and do battle with the sin and the devil.” Concurrently, Captain Henry Stillwell was sent likewise all the way to San Jose. Both left brides-to-be behind.

Fact 2: In 1884, two years later mind you, the two brides-to-be, Captains Polly Medforth and Mary Matthews arrived. The journey required a grueling ocean voyage and rugged, uncomfortable nine-day cross-country train trip.

Fact 3: Mary had been engaged to Stillwell for five years, while Polly had known Wells only a few days before his departure to America. Three short days after their arrival the two couples celebrated a double wedding. Four days later, the Stillwell’s commenced The Salvation Army work in Oakland, California.

Fact 4: In 1886, a convert migrating to Oregon petitioned London for officers. Henry, now in charge of San Francisco, was unable to answer the call. Guess what? Mary, with a ten-month-old baby, went solo, opening fire in Portland, Bible’s blazing Wild West style. Opposition was fierce, with Mary herself badly injured during a “shoot out,” when a saloonkeeper turned a fire hose on her, this in response to her “fire-a-volley!” Gospel shots.

Fact 5: Transatlantic ocean liner travel was rugged at best: no electricity, running water or portholes. Steam engine locomotion, prehistoric by today’s standards, was only a step beyond wagon train travel. It was indeed the “Wild West” they encountered, where lawlessness, disorder and dishonesty reigned with the likes of Pancho Villa, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, Black Bart, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch preying on banks, trains, and stagecoaches.

For the risk-taking part, I’ll let you fill in the blanks. There is no denying that their ventures were dangerous and daring undertakings, uncertain of what the outcomes would be.

Risk-taking: Saying “Yes!” in the face of danger and uncertainty – Noland.

Booth outlined TSA venture clearly when he observed, "Beginning as I did with a clean sheet of paper, wedded to no plan... willing to take a leaf out of anybody's book... above all, to obey the direction of the Holy Spirit... we tried various methods and those that did not answer we unhesitatingly threw overboard and adopted something else.”

There is nothing traditional or status quno about his modeled venturesome spirit. Trial and error is an essential component of Genesis thinking. The Genesis person is no stranger to uncertainty and risk-taking: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.”

Cyberspace Link: A humorous, creative rendition of William Booth’s venturesome spirit - points Westward: Hang Ten in Hawaii.

9. Vision!

“Start Practicing!” (My caption for this caricature drawing. Feel free to create your own).

Danger: Passion becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. Passion without vision is eternally purposeless. If passion is the fuel, vision is the destination.

A Stroke of Genesis
When William Booth said “No!” to Volunteer and “Yes!” to The Salvation Army, this was an inyesvative decision not lacking in passion and vision – seeing things as they were meant to be. In other words, striking out the word volunteer and replacing it with “Salvation” was a “stroke of Genesis.”

A July 31, 1907 editorial in the New York Times put it this way:

“The influence of William Booth throughout the English-speaking world is probably greater today than that of any other leader of men. It compels us to consider how dangerous that influence might be to the welfare of society, if it were possessed by a man who might combine with his courage and clearness of vision a controlling desire for self-aggrandizement and the capacity for self-deception that has distinguished so many popular leaders.”

The editorial goes on to say, “There are many others conducting a similar evangelical and spiritually uplifting work in smaller fields, but there is none his equal in the public vision.”

This is the New York Times speaking, mind you. The editorial phrase used to describe Booth’s vision was, “...to Christianize the multitude, to purify the public mind, and to improve the material welfare of the poor.”

Larger Ends
His vision in a word was “Salvation,” and by his definition, all-inclusive in scope – “The world for God.” Dare we not minimize the role Catherine played in this vision-casting thing, always nudging WB forward, “We are made for larger ends than Earth can encompass. Oh, let us be true to our exalted destiny.”

Vision: “the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be: prophetic vision; the vision of an entrepreneur” – Dictionary.com.

“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible” – Jonathan Swift: “He who can see the invisible can do the impossible.”

Practice the Impossible
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass the White Queen is speaking to Alice:

“I can’t believe that,” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said, in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Coincidentally, Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. Looking Glass was its sequel written in 1871; this while The Salvation Army was still in its infancy. Not only were Carroll and Booth contemporaries; they were on the same wavelength. Who knows, it might have happened something like this:

One rare quiet evening at home in their little flat, CB was sitting at the table reading a newly published copy of Through the Looking Glass, when she suddenly came upon this very dialogue between Alice and the Queen. Breaking the silence she blurted out, “William, You must read this!” Slumped relaxingly in his easy chair, eyes half closed, he mumbled back, “Yes dear, when you’re finished. I’ll get around to it eventually.” “No! You must read it now!” She said. He read. They practiced. The rest is history.

The editorial above was written some thirty years later and bears witness to the result of that practicing, however it was inspired: “The Salvation Army’s doings have frequently been ridiculed by the frivolous, and given much pain to the morbidly discreet. But the purity of General Booth’s methods has never been questioned, while the immense good he has accomplished speaks for itself the world over.”

Booth was a practicing visionary, seeing the invisible and doing the impossible, no question about it. Vision is a prerequisite to Genesis. People are not naturally imbued with it; visioning takes practice, practice and more practice. The Genesis person is a vision practitioner.

Practitioner: “somebody who practices a particular profession…” – Encarta.

Faith: “It’s our handle on what we can’t see” – Hebrews 11:1, The Message.

Get a handle on it:
START PRACTICING!

Cyberspace Link: In this video segment William Booth says “No!” to “Volunteer” and “Yes!” to “Salvation.” Pay close attention to a sampling of the evangelical creativity (inyesvations) that followed in response to a series of repetitive yeses.

8. Passion!

Catherine Booth poses contemplatively in this photo. Can you feel the passion in her gaze? I can!

Evil, chaos, Genesis…
Evil, chaos, Jesus…
Evil, chaos, Luther…
Evil, chaos…

The Salvation Army
...in its epochal Genesis years, dared courageously and with great conviction to sing and dance in the chaos beyond the culture that spawned its early pioneers.

In those years Great Britain was undergoing profound industrial change, chaotic in every respect. Mark Twain, while visiting London in 1897 for an event honoring the Queen, observed: "British history is two thousand years old and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together."

The Industrial Revolution
Twain’s observation captures the sense of dizzying change characterizing this Victorian period, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where ever-growing urban slums awaited them. Someone wrote, “The rhythm of the seasons was replaced by the rhythm of the water wheel and the steam engine.” Women, youths and children comprised almost two-thirds of the manufacturing workforce.

Traditional ideas were being challenged, including the role of women in that society. Advances in the printing press during this period made information and knowledge more accessible to the masses, resulting in a more informed reading public, leading to controversy and debate on political and social issues.

And what about organized religion during this time? Findley Dunachie notes in his historical writings, “The church quiescent supports the status quo. In neither country was the established Church a force for change…”

Quiescent: Inactive or at rest. Dormant. Inert. (Encarta) Devoid of passion (Noland)

Passion: Fervor. Zeal. Enthusiasm. Commitment.

William Booth’s passion for these displaced souls disturbed the quiescence of New Connexion Methodism greatly, so much so, that at their 1861 annual conference in Liverpool a decision was made to minimize the magnitude of Booth’s ministry. This action disquieted the soul of his wife, Catherine, so much so, that from the gallery she spontaneously stood forth and cried out...

Never!
When Catherine said, “Never!” she was saying “Yes!” to Genesis and “No!” to status quno. This is one of those rare instances where the word, “No!” is appropriate because, in this case, a “yes” would have been a “no” to Genesis. In the same breath she said “No!” to culture and “Yes!” to need.

Souls crying out in dizzying confusion
  Two of them spiritually aware
 
Products of unwieldy, chaotic diffusion
  Yielded together in prayer
 
Desperately seeking a healing infusion
  Asking, “Who’s out there to care?”
 
Viewed by some an unwanted intrusion.
   Thus igniting her passion with flare!
 
NEVER!

This one word, felt passionately and delivered spontaneously ignited a Genesis movement, unstoppable. Chaos is the incubator for creativity and inyesvation; Passion is its fuel and energy (The singing and dancing part, so much so that...).

Passion: Spontaneous spiritual combustion (Noland).

Cyberspace Link: In this video clip listen to William Booth say in his own words, “No! Ten thousand times no!” Listen closely and you will hear in that no, a resounding yes: “No!” to status quno and “Yes!” to need. As you listen begin to feel the passion. Soak it in! Let it percolate. Start tasting it. This passion soaking process is critical and foundational to the makings of a Genesis person.

Ready? Get set. Ignite!