Sometimes You Have to Play the Fool: A Theology of Resonance, Creativity, and Andrew Garfield

This reflection started with an A24 interview between Andrew Garfield and Harris Dickinson. The two of them — ex-skaters turned surfers in what they lovingly call their “old age” — joked about how they thought trading concrete for water would be gentler on their bodies, only to keep getting injured anyway. There was something tender in that: two men still chasing freedom through movement, still believing in the body’s ability to hold joy even after it’s been broken. From there, they moved into what it means to act, to feel, to carry a story. At one point, Harris shared advice he’d once received from Tom Cruise: “You’re not saving lives. Just give the soundbites. Play the game.” It was meant to be liberating.

But Andrew disagreed. Gently. Reverently.

He said there are plays and movies that saved his life. That stories matter. That storytelling isn’t just art — it’s medicine.

He went on to say that when cities cut arts funding, especially for young people, the culture becomes sick. Soul sick. And that makes sense to me. He goes on to share that I Heart Huckabees healed his teenage broken heart in a way he couldn’t fully explain. All he knew was that it pulled him out of his own head and connected him to something larger, something universal — the idea that it’s the experience of breaking that reminds us we’re alive.  

That’s emotional intelligence. Not needing to explain everything. Allowing for a sense of wonder.

And when I talk about wonder, I think about a quote I put in a paper for a program I ran at school:

"Wonder moves us past the desire to understand what things and concepts are. When you define something, you limit it, in a way imprison it, by its definition. With definitions, you are limited by words, by a state of knowing. There is something so wondrous about not having the words to express what we are trying to say."

I believe that too.

It made me think of Ethan Hawke’s TED Talk “Give Yourself Permission to Be Creative,” where he says creativity is sustenance. It’s how we nourish the parts of ourselves that don’t have spreadsheets or KPIs or 5-year plans. The wild parts. The sacred parts. The broken and still-hopeful parts.

He says, “Sometimes you have to play the fool.”

And when I really think about that, I realize: that’s what gets us resonance with God.

Because to us, down here with our mortal eyes and nervous systems, God can look like a fool. Wild. Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Whispering to us through dreams and movies and sunsets and breakup songs. Omnipresence isn’t polished. It just is.

And maybe that’s why I resonate with Andrew Garfield so deeply. Not just because he thinks through layers. Not just because he disagrees with power with kindness. But because he remembers the sacred in the story. Because he’s not afraid to be earnest in a world that rewards detachment.

He doesn’t mock the thing that saved him.

And neither do I.

To be resonant with God, you might have to look foolish.
To create what saves you, you might have to lose the plot for a while.
But that’s where the current lives.

The fool isn’t the one who’s lost.
The fool is the one who dares to leap without knowing who will catch them.

And sometimes, that’s the closest we get to God.