I know a guy who does things that I just don’t get. Crazy things. Stuff you hear about and have one of those surreal moments where you feel like you’ve stepped into Fraggle Rock or something. This guy does it all in the name of spirituality, in the name of orthodoxy, in the name of Christ, and yet his balance is so far off he’s walking sideways.

How do you get there?

How do you become a crazy person?

I mean, I understand mental problems, but how does a person go from being a rational and fairly normal guy with regular opinions and regular questions to taking this wild tangent and heading off to who knows where?

Most of you who know me will tell me I’m a pretty odd guy most of the time (and those of you who don’t get my humour, doubly so), but I don’t believe the sky is pink or that aliens are farming us for meat by gradually reducing our numbers or that George Bush somehow masterminded 9/11. I’m not a nutbar.

But I think I could be.

I mean, I think I could one day wake up and find myself the champion of something that doesn’t really make any sense, some stupid crusade in the name of something good, some Quixotic quest to rid the world of windmills. That’s the best case scenario. But what if I were so enraptured by this thing that I was doing or so deeply wrapped in it that I couldn’t or wouldn’t want to wake up? If I were the idiot, the circus freak so freaky that the other freaks freak out? If I were on the train to wherever everyone else is going, with everyone wondering, “When is this crazy guy going to get off?”

How would you take me back from this place?

I’ll tell you how I’d get me out of there. Or how I’d try: I’d try to convince myself that community is important and get me involved in a community full of good, level thinkers, the type of people that keep the boat from veering too wildly. I would try to get me into a community, and watch my opinions change over time, watch me come back from the brink.

Or else I would kick me out. Declare myself persona non grata. I wouldn’t be afraid to do this, either. The last thing the world, the church, your family, your friends, and you need are more morons making the whole thing look like a zoo.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is that people go batty when you leave them alone. Because being alone is like being in the dark.

Fungus grows in the dark, and mushrooms.

And the people you find jousting lamp standards are often that exact thing: closed off from the real world, and left to redefine their world into whatever they choose, and finally unable to tell fantasy from reality or opinion from fact or a windmill from a giant. You can slap them upside the head with scripture but it won’t help; there’s a fog in there.

I remember reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis and being struck–though I hated the book; oh, was it awful–by the metaphor of dwarves sitting in a dark stable, unable to see what was around them. Finally, presented with a great feast, they react like it’s manure and cattle feed.

Is that what it’s like to be one of the crazies? To be in all points sane but at the same time at all points twisted and backwards? To be a loony? To be one of those people whose opinions might as well be mental problems for all the good they’re doing?

Tags: opinions, questions, ruminations