Saint Fussy
Insights into disorders within the Order, or… the holy desire for fame
Saint Fussy is always fussing about to ensure everyone is as convinced of her saintly goodliness as much as she is. In one sense, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because she’ll occasionally volunteer to make cookies or to cleanup the party after everyone else has gone home. But that’s not her usual style; she sees such activities as ‘extra credit.’
Mostly, she’s busy and prodigious, thrashing her wizard cane, holding courses, writing books, penning articles or sublime poetry — all the while tirelessly promoting her ‘work’ with the missionary zeal of an evangelist.
Her passion is designed to make people draw holy comparisons to someone who lives a life of enormous sacrifice solely for the benefit of humanity. She is, indeed, “holier than thou.” Obviously, in all modesty, she’s too holy to concede that. Unless you get her talking.
Saint Fussy states - to anyone within earshot of her steroid-infused mixed media marketing campaign - the importance of isolating herself in prayers and meditations. Sometimes she wears purple robes, dressing to drive the point home.
But the thing is, she clothes herself in a form of self-described isolation that, strangely enough, makes her astonishingly prominent and visible. Go figure.
Her’s is a recluse's cave that contradicts common sense. Yet for her it works, all oddly surrounded by strobes, neon lights and flashing signs. Her followers sift off grateful crumbs of hope, as they sort through rumors of her stunning Vegas-designed, gilded mystical retreat palatially set near spirt-filled mountaintop intersections of wealth and power.
Self-appointed leaders, saints like her are typically accompanied by herds of adoring followers. For Saint Fussy, followers are her proof, her holy sign of legitimacy. Without followers she wastes away in the dark, a corpse of numbed ambition. But with hundreds or thousands of followers, well, her bathrooms get remodeled and her expense accounts allow her to soar to the highest holy mountains — usually by private jet.
Of course, she doesn’t stop by The Monastery of Nothingness too often. Mostly because she gets an uncomfortable sense that she’s being viewed with detached bemusement, or maybe even some embarrassingly attached resentment. After all, there’s not a single monk or nun who’s beyond at least a touch of resentment. About something. Maybe even their childhood. These things linger.
Speaking of lingering, Saint Fussy is not one to believe in wearing out her welcome. Because once she’s made one sale to you on behalf of The Lord God Almighty, there’s simply no reason to not go back for more.
And let’s be clear, Saint Fussy is not solely a religious zealot. She’s found everywhere.
As she often says,
“The fields are ripe for the harvest.”
