The Church Of The Infinite Grin, Sermon 3: The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
To: THE CHURCH OF THE INFINITE GRIN, JESTERS, WEIRDOS AND ODDBALLS Et Al
From: J. LACROIX, Laughing Stock In Chief
Subject: NEW SERMON
Well now, it’s been a while hasn’t it?
My dear devoted jesters, I do apologize for making you wait. Don’t tell me you forgot how to smile? I most certainly haven’t. Nor have I forgotten all of you.
I’ve simply been a very busy being, traveling all over the earth like old scratch themselves. Through every crag and valley, to the top of every mountain. All that water and salt and sun. My brain positively would have fried had I one to begin with. Onward I went, a smile on my face as I’d bend to feel the caress of the flowers, the kiss of the wind itself on my neck.
Dear Jesters, don’t think even for a moment my ears were deaf to our cause. They weren’t. Much like the Grin itself, I’m with you always. There was nary a prank or punchline I didn’t catch. After all, doesn’t a good steward work best silently and unnoticed? A crooked smile was the only give away. The lot of you didn’t noticed, thought of I was one of your fellows-or just flat out didn’t say anything. That’s my dears.
I figured this “staycation” would be one of intense alleged research as I slipped further and further into the tendrils of the world’s gifts, but lo. I was a blithering idiot. No, dear jesters. I spent the last year slowly letting that grin slip until I could barely hold it up at all. I thought I’d be halfway bewitched by fae bells-but no. What held my attention the most throughout my journey was one ongoing nightmare spouted from your lips ad nauseum.
That nightmare, that hideous writhing agony given flesh by our own words and worry? It was the ceaseless march towards fatalism. Bah! Fatalism of all things! Did I not tell you to meet it with a grin, a laugh? Did I not-
Forgive me, dear jesters. Harrowing hermitages are rarely conducive to good manners. Let me begin again.
Fatalism, dear jesters, is a disease not just of the head, but the heart and soul. The wisest say “look at all around us, look at what’s burning! Why, surely this is the end”. This parasitic line of thought worms it’s way down through every limb, biting away at our resolve until it reaches the We that never shows it’s face to the world. Insatiable and corrupt, it never stops until we give up entirely. It’s a perverse thing built inversely to our own Rules of Three.
Do not be so naive as to assume Fatalism cannot reach you, dear Jesters. Regardless of your title, your experience or the strength of your own smile, Fatalism comes for us all. It’s the crueler sibling of Death, lacking her philosophical and metaphysical ramifications and implications. Unlike sweet lady Death, Fatalism only has one emotion in it’s range-to consume from the inside.
Hells, that’s depressing isn’t it?
You’re damn right it is. That’s what this entire bloody hermitage felt like too! Everywhere I looked, the most hilarious among us dropped their once resolute and stout smiles. I watched as Jesters became SERIOUS for once. When those smiles dropped, the arguing came. Ideas that we at one point would have laughed at-like NOT caring for our fellow beings-turned into all out squabbles. In any other circumstances, “hey wear this life saving piece of cloth over your face” would have been an easy thing to do. We would have had a FIELD day, wearing the most audacious pieces of clothing we could! But lo, some of you-and it pains me greatly to type this-some of you GENUINELY thought it would be funnier to risk the lives of all around you for your own SELFISH INTERESTS.
Does it LOOK like we’re laughing now, Jesters? I’ve half a mind to strip you of your rank post haste! That’s not funny, it’s just STUPID!
Ahem. I did say I wasn’t going to yell. I’m trying, I promise. But this wasn’t the only thing the lot of you argued over. It was just one of dozens of things, and all the while Fatalism took hold. Not just in our own ranks, but the world. It damn well feels like there’s little to laugh about anymore.
But.
That’s where you’re wrong, Jesters.
Have you forgotten so easily the very ROOTS of our church? Has lack of laughter turned you into an amnesiac? Then let me remind you once more. May these utterances reverberate within your frame, building in tempo as they curl around your mind and obliterate the dark encroachments of Fatalism.
The Grin Stands Eternal.
The grin existed before any of us did. Before time, before history the universe was already smiling. Because there was something funny about a ball of rock with a bunch of hairless apes on it. It couldn’t quite put a word to it, but that didn’t matter. The Grin sprouted in that harrowing void all the same, a shining star that stood against the yawning chasm of space. We bathed and grew in it’s radiance-and in time, found our own reasons to smile.
Come closer jesters. I’ve a secret to share with you, one I crawled across as I traversed the wide, wide world as a pokey mutt.
The Grin…
The Grin is HOPE.
Not a well thought out and reasoned hope. Not a logical, acceptable hope. No jesters, we don’t DO logical and methodical here, remember? No, The Grin is the enduring and endless hope that seizes your very heart with a fury to strike down any wall and wrestle deities. The Grin is the wreckless, idiotic and totally unstable idea that this world is absolutely worth fighting for. Not just for the soggy, half thought out punchlines-but the long form ones. The jokes we take years to craft, execute and deliver. Why, can you imagine it? A world where we’ve all the time and radiant thought to craft pranks that last CENTURIES?
I can, dear Jesters. I think about it every single day. It’s a paradise. But for us to reach that distant nirvana…
We have to HOPE.
Against all odds, against all facts and information and dreary forecasts-we have to commit ourselves to hope. Not just for ourselves, but every single person walking this planet that ISN’T SMILING YET. The alternative is a dreary and grey hell, and I damned well don’t want to be a part of that! I want to fill the world with the vibrant sound of endless laughter. I want to see our church cover this entire damned PLANET in a smile!
So I smile, with a single hope in my heart:
That one day, when I’m too old and weary to carry on this charade anymore, I can look out into an endless field of beauty as I hand this title off to someone else. Someone a bit more spry, a bit more cunning, and a hell of a lot younger. I long for that day, Jesters.
And as such, I have to hope. I have to fight against despair and fatalism and ruin-because otherwise, gods. I’ll be stuck as your primarch forever. What torture that would be.
But I can’t do it alone. No, I need ALL OF US to once again…
With feeling…
Embrace the eternal radiance of The Grin. Smile against the dark, against the hells and devils that come for us. Smile despite it all-because otherwise, the whole world falls.
Fatalism consumes, and we go out with a whimper in the night.
Won’t you join me, Jesters? Do your old primarch a favor?
That’s my dears.
I always knew you would.
And now, I return to my hermitage! Perhaps somewhere cooler for the time being.
Until we speak again,
Yours always,
Primarch Jack LaCroix