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A Return to Silliness in a Song

Some time ago, I wrote about silliness (and more recently here), but I come back to it because I need it--and because I can't help it. Nothing is quite like the pressure of Self Importance, and I'm so much more likely to snap at you when, clearly, my agenda is The Agenda.

So, let's try something. I'll set my agenda down if you will. Deal?

I'll even set mine down first--there; it looks so much smaller on the floor, doesn't it? Now it's your turn--for we've made a deal, and we have a song to sing. Please, silly songs don't work all that well when our arms are weighed down. Good--I know you feel better because I do, too.

Now for the song. It's called "A Song Best Sung to Little Ones," and it goes like this:


Wiggle your toes and scrunch up your nose--

Yes, like that--for you have them! Your toes

And your nose, now what do they knows?

How to wiggle and how to scrunch!

"And what of my stuffy bears? What of

Their noses and wiggledy toeses?"

Oh! But they're only fluff! Though they comfort

And help us in darkest of night--they're fluff!

(Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful stuff,

All that fluffy fluff!) But you, oh my dear,

What are you? "Yes, what am I?"

Immortal, immortal, immortal stuff--

Yes, you, Immortal Diamond--though your shape

To our eyes is but small, and your true form

Is still to be formed, you are Immortal Diamond:

Wonderfully wiggledy stuff becoming

Immortal Diamond! "Oh, but how?"

The One who made toeses, He who made noses,

Is remaking you Immortal Diamond!


Well, that turned out to be more serious than we intended. It happens sometimes, you know, that we stumble upon things that are most important when we're being silly. Another piece of the silliness puzzle, I suppose. (Credit: Gerard Manley Hopkins for the phrase Immortal Diamond as applied above; see "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.")

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