Do you want to know
What goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you.
In the core of the Trinity
the Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs
and gives birth to us.

— Meister Eckhart

A man of uncertain age, he was tall, thin, and awkward in his movements. Crowned with a tangled stack of gravity-defying hair, he’d shamble about in a vintage wardrobe that emphasized his gawky proportions. He’d frequently stumble into furniture or walls, mutter gibberish or burst into an unintelligible yelp. He would throw open the door of his friend’s apartment and burst in unannounced, sliding into the place as though blown by a powerful gust. He was a wiry scarecrow perpetually lit from within by spastic currents. Though he had no visible means of support, he never seemed to need money. Only the indiscriminate food items he would randomly seize from his neighbor’s fridge. He was heedless of boundaries. Despite his perpetual search for the million-dollar idea, he was content to remain in a reality all his own.

Over the course of nine seasons, Michael Richards played Cosmo Kramer on the Seinfeld show. His brand of physical comedy was singular—so nuanced that after countless viewings over three decades he can still make me laugh out loud. Kramer was the archetypal fool. 

A figure rooted in the collective unconscious, the fool says and does what most wouldn’t dream of. He’s unconcerned with others’ opinions, oblivious to social norms, and resilient. Disruptive and seemingly amoral, he continually challenges authority. Appearing in the myths, folklore, and religious traditions of diverse cultures, the fool may also be a trickster, jester, or clown. As with Kramer, his body is often the vehicle that initiates comic situations.

Humor involves the interplay of congruity and incongruity. The intrusion of something unexpected that calls a norm into question. It often derives from a paradox, and Christianity, like humor, is filled with paradox. The Bible itself is replete with seeming contradictions: exaltation through humility, strength through weakness, gaining through loss, and dying in order to live, among many others. (And let’s not forget the virgin birth and the resurrection itself.) This is the paradox of nonduality found in the mystical heart of Christianity. What it shares with humor is the potential to disrupt habitual ways of perceiving reality. Paradox drives the humor of fools in pop culture as it does the Christian Gospels. And the holy fool is an embodiment of Christian paradox. 

According to Paul, the Christian’s belief and behavior, guided by spiritual insight, is seen as folly in worldly terms. Yet by accepting mockery, humiliation, and ridicule as Jesus did, the fool for Christ would challenge norms to awaken society from its corruption and reveal truth: “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” (1 Corinthians 1:21). Paul’s “folly writings” in Corinthians 1 and 2 refute the wisdom of men. The role of the holy fool, modeled on Christ (Mark 3:21), involves deliberate provocation and theatricality.

Around 1601, Caravaggio painted The Conversion of St. Paul, an unusual depiction of Saul’s encounter with the light and voice of Christ on the way to Damascus. Here the holy fool Paul relates to the comic fool of our day through his awkward gesture—part of the larger intrinsic humor of the painting. It’s a humor that reflects Christian paradox. 

Submerged in darkness, a muscular young soldier is lying supine on the rough earth. His upraised arms catch a gleaming light piercing the shadows. His eyes are shut, and his legs spread. His helmet’s rolled off and his sword’s fallen aside. A brown and white steed towers over him, its hoof raised like a threat. An old groom, unfazed by the fallen man’s state, works to restrain the horse.

Capturing the moment Saul was blinded by his encounter with Christ to become Paul, the “fool for Christ’s sake,” the painting’s incongruities are like a metaphor of the holy fool’s antics. Saul’s gesture reminds me of a Kramer pratfall, where loss of control over the body is theatricalized. The fool archetype is expansive, its shallow end accommodates the buffoon and its deep waters the visionary. So I tenuously associate Kramer and Saul, and this leads me to reflect on the significance of intention. For physical comics like Richards, the goal is to make us laugh. The theatrics of the holy fool are meant to strip us of our pretenses. Yet, in both cases the body is used to disrupt the social order. Think of Simeon the Holy Fool tripping people in the streets and running about naked. Or St. Basil stealing for the poor, enduring beatings, and weighing himself down with chains. Reveling in paradox, the holy fool’s gestures create unease, surprise, or humor, opening a view to the hidden wisdom of God. 

There’s a continuum between the ordinary fool and the holy fool, in which the latter becomes the terminus of the fool archetype—the point at which identity dissolves. Caravaggio’s painting illustrates the transition from profane to sacred as Saul becomes Paul. The artist’s depiction suggests that a similar trajectory is possible for physical comedy, or humor more generally. That fully understood, the comedian’s embrace of paradox is a foretaste of religious insight. Physical comedy reveals truth in a limited way. Caravaggio’s painting speaks to the revelation of truth in the figure of the holy fool, who goes the whole distance, committing their life to turning the world upside down and eradicating the self. The incongruity at the heart of physical comedy—epitomized by the character of Kramer, is also the basis of the holy fool’s actions as he embraces the spiritual implications of paradox.

Seeing Kramer in Caravaggio’s (soon-to-be) Paul also leads me to reflect on the place of humor in Christian life. Something rarely discussed, but plainly evident to a mystic like Meister Eckhart. Humor can free us from limiting concepts, deflate our self-importance, and build community. Our response to physical comedy is an intimation of the liberation felt through subversion of the world’s order for God. All of this serves the body of Christ. The painting reminds us that our response to physical comedy shares a kinship with spiritual insight. With laughter, we let our pretensions go and a deeper sense of who we are emerges. And in the dissolution of boundaries a healthy disorientation ensues.

The visual disorientation we feel looking at Caravaggio’s vision of the conversion parallels Saul’s disorientation when confronted by Christ. 

In the image a supernatural light pours down on Saul, who’s been thrown from his horse. His form, occupying the lower section of the painting and radically foreshortened, seems to fall out towards the viewer. The composition is askew. With its center of gravity raised, Caravaggio’s monumental figures push forward, filling the dark, confining space in all directions. Saul’s body forms an upended triangle, inverting the classical norm in which pyramids balance multi-figurative compositions. Saul’s horse dominates the image, its legs indiscriminately mixing with those of the groom, its rear end jutting out at us as it steps gingerly around its fallen rider. Clutching its bridle, the older man emerges from the darkness to lead the horse away. The painting’s naturalism emphasizes the miraculous in the everyday.           

Caravaggio has emptied his painting of anything that’s not essential to conveying Saul’s mystical experience. His masterly use of tenebroso, a technique involving bold, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, eliminates anything distracting as it distills the moment of religious ecstasy. While the rough-hewn groom remains unaware of what’s happening, we are intimate witnesses to Saul’s inner transformation. We share the space in which he surrenders himself to God. Interiorization is stressed by our private view, the groom’s obliviousness, and the surrounding darkness. Saul is lit from within, his face illumined in transformative union. Body splayed and arms raised, his act is one of self-emptying. Saul accepts humiliation in love, vulnerably turning inward to embrace the sacred mystery within.

The image is remarkably still. A private moment of concentrated intensity, it’s invisible to the “natural” or unspiritual man, represented by the groom. Saul is hidden away, his conversion unseen by the world. The paired-down composition and intense spiritual drama reflect the holy fool’s life experience. The silent wisdom of God percolates within the painting’s incongruities as an order that inverts worldly wisdom. In its awkwardness, The Conversion of St. Paul portends the holy foolishness of the later life and teachings of Paul. In addition, the holy fool’s critique of power is visualized through the fallen soldier. Saul the persecutor of Christians, armored and fierce, is thrown on his back. He’s upended, fragile and defenseless before the power of the divine. The realism of Caravaggio’s painting extends beyond the immediacy and physical presence of its subjects to say something true about mystical experience. It’s in the staging of holy foolishness amidst the smells of old leather, manure, and hay. It’s the truth of divine presence dwelling in the ordinary.